germanlee

Why don't they just support the growth of their own homegrown "WhatsApp"?

With government support and financial support, india could easily have an indian "whatsapp". WhatsApp isn't technological sophisticated. It's simply a large network. With government/business "tweaking", india could help their own "whatsapp" company take over much of that market from facebook.

Why hand the entire indian market over to facebook and zuckerburg?

There is no reason why large and significant markets shouldn't be dominated by local businesses. Not to say whatsapp should be banned from india, but it's only the incompetence of government/business that cedes their market to foreign companies. This also applies to the EU. It's insane to me that the EU doesn't have their own google, facebook, etc.

I told you why your assumptions were false. And please don't use philosophical and logical concepts you clearly don't understand.

> To give an example, if news A presents a factual statement, and news B presents a lie that contradicts A, you are no better off by watching both news sources.

Actually you are better off since you can then verify the "factual statement".

You are assuming "news A" is pushing "factual statements". That is itself a logical fallacy. I'll let you furiously google a list of logical fallacies to find out which.

You aren't addressing any "fallacy" because you built up false assumptions and are now arguing against your incorrect assumptions. That is also another logical fallacy.

You have a very "journalist" way of thinking. Illogical, agenda driven and misleading.

You forgot other Pulitzer Prize gems.

Pulitzer Prize winning news source : Nayirah, Yellow cake, assad syria chemical attack, Trump working for Putin conspiracy.

But then again, Pulitzer was the founder of yellow journalism, the original fake news.

I don't think winning an award named after the founder of yellow journalism is anything to be proud of.

"Back to Moscow comrades"?

That sounds like the fake news we've been hearing from many pulitzer winners.

The difference between infowars fake news and pulitzer winners fake news is that the pulitzer winners' fake news has resulted in the death of millions of people and the pulitzer winners should be facing war crime charges.

There is a difference between bad science and "not being a science" ( aka pseudoscience ).

The difference is that in one you can formulate replicable science. In the other, by its nature, you can't. Because on deals with "natural law" and the other with society.

There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether capitalism or socialism is the best economic system. There is no "replicable scientific test" to determine whether to have the death penalty or not. So on and so forth. Much of it is pretty much a "religious" endeavor. Pretty much those with power decide and social "science" is used to justify whereas in the past religion was the justification.

1. I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased". Saying all news sources are biased is not the same as saying equally biased. Some are obvious more biased and more propagandistic than others. But without a doubt, every news source has biases. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to look into the history of every news company. Who created them, funded them and who is running them. But I suspect you already know this.

2. I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result. I didn't mention anything about "aggregates". Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious. I'm not saying watching both somehow magically makes CNN or Foxnews "objective" and "honest". Quite the opposite.

3. Neither of those assumptions are credible because I didn't make them. You made those assumptions in an attempt to defend mainstream media. Which I see all over social media recently.

Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder.

HTTP is the Web. HTML is just the superficial face of the web.

Rather than being an honest game to reduce "disinformation", this game is simply defending mainstream media. It's message is essentially "trust mainstream media". Not that shocking coming from cambridge considering they are at the forefront of cultural war being waged in the west today.

How about get opinion/news from a wide variety of sources ( mainstream and fringe, big and small, national and international, right and left, globalist and nationalist, etc )? That's the only reliable way to wade through all the disinformation.

Especially regarding controversial, cultural, military, trade and geopolitical issues.

If you are getting your "news" from one source then you are getting propaganda and lies. How many wars have we been sold on lies by the media? And yet, we are expected to trust them regardless of their lies. And that's just the most glaring and obvious example.

For example, with the recent hong kong protests. It would have been nice to see what the chinese media or asian media were also saying about the issue. I suspect it's a lot different than the "news" we've been seeing about it in the US. If we are interested in the "truth", then it would be nice to see what iranians/iranian media and the media of nearby countries are saying. Rather than just a one sided pro-war "news".

But I suspect that neither cambridge nor the media they are protecting truly care about "news, disinformation, fake news, etc".

It's called propaganda. Go back 4 or 5 years ago. The NYTimes, Bloomberg, WSJ, etc all ran the same stories back then. The comments were the same. Usually some "expat" living there giving his "expert" propaganda or some "expat" talking about had he had to leave hong kong because it was so bad. Back then, there was a lot of "ghost cities" scare mongering. A lot less of it today. You notice the same patterns. The "britain tried to give democracy to hong kong" propaganda. The "people of hong kong" prefer britain propaganda. China is about to collapse.

Once the trade war nonsense ends, you'll see these stories and comments disappear. Just like all the "I hate facebook" stories and comments. Just like the "Russia controls everything in the US" stories and comments.

Until it's time for "We've always been at war with eurasia". If only these people cared about freedom here at home as much as they "care" about freedom in china. You'll notice that most of the people ( journalists and commenters ) crying about censorship, privacy, freedom etc in china are the same ones demanding more censorship, less privacy and less freedom here and on social media.

I didn't say HN was "all tech oriented". Please stop misquoting me. I said "There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. Meaning "HN was tech oriented", "reddit was tech oriented", "digg was tech oriented", etc.

I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like reddit, digg, etc.

I suggest you read 1984 critically instead of repeating the nonsense you were told.

Which "news organization" in 1984 was punished for reporting on topics that made the state look bad? Did you even read the book?

The point of 1984 was that even the opposition was controlled by the "state".

You can talk about Russia, China, North Korea and mindlessly participate in your 2 minute hate. But 1984 was not about Russia, China or North Korea. It was about 1940s Britain and the West.

And your comment didn't address what you quoted: "Who are the champions of censorship in the west? The news industry". Who were the champions of censorship in 1984? The Ministry of Truth.

Even if everything you wrote was true ( which it is not ), it didn't address what you quoted.

There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. The problem is that once a platform gets slightly popular, journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc sneak in and push their wares ( sometimes with the help of the forums themselves ). Slashdot might be worth a look but I gave up on them years ago.

The problem is that so much of "tech" forums, magazines, sites, etc are not run by "techies" but agenda driven media people masquerading as "techies". TheVerge, arstechnica, etc being prime examples.

My advice is to browse the "new" section of HN for the interesting tech/science/hack stuff. But unfortunately, most of the interesting stuff has no traffic or discussion. But maybe that's a good thing.