Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

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In the past this kind of material would be collected and analyzed by state intelligence services.

Combined by allies and used to gain leverage for individual or combined strategic priorities.

Something like, “Here is how negligent you were. Install this person in power or we leak this and your people revolt and you won’t be able to walk away.”

More recently, it seems, some news organizations have begun assembling reports using modeling and expert analysis.

A good example is The NY Times report on Philadelphia Police use of tear gas against a group of trapped protestors. [1]

Having this information about the Beirut warehouse explosion open-sourced so-to-speak, seems to signal a further shift away from reliance on state intelligence and the advertising-funded third state.

This reminds me some of the collected content created and posted to social media by the public in the aftermath of the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752. That loose set of content eventually forced the Iranian government to admit responsibility.

I’d presume that the quality and speed of independent research and analysis of public data will increase to where a scene of non-media, ngo research groups grows, beating out the resources of any given media or government.

Sort of like warez, but with information analysis.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007174941/philadelphi...

OSINT is certainly a thing, but there's a parallel development in shamelessness and polarization so that accurate reporting of the real history of events makes much less difference. Are there that many people whose support of the police will be shaken by the NYT report, or is the support of the police a matter of political affiliation that leads them to dismiss it as "biased"?

You've reduced this to only two possible positions: support the police or don't support them. How polarizing is that?

What about supporting the need for police while also supporting a need for reforming the police? I doubt there are even many cops that would disagree with a need for reform to some degree.

But creating two extreme positions, and then lumping everyone into those positions, is called politics and is considered mostly harmful.

> But creating two extreme positions, and then lumping everyone into those positions, is called politics

American politics. The amount of bipartisan countries in the world can be counted on one hand. But I get what you're saying and I agree completely.

America is certainly not the only country that divides things into "us vs them". I can think of several notable events in the past few years in various European countries that were exactly "us vs them" subjects. Even when there are multiple political parties in European politics the parties still tend to split into one of two major coalitions and those coalitions cause the people who support people in those coalitions to also divide.

Sure, fair enough. But then again those coalitions aren't generally static, but formed around circumstances, and thus don't necessarily create the same kind of blind team mentality that we see in sports for example. And the parties within the coalitions are still aware of their internal differences, they just choose to work together for a common cause, for a period of time.

That’s how it works in the U.S. as well. The political parties are made up of coalitions of voters and over time certain groups shift or change affiliation.

In Europe, you have coalitions of parties. This means voters have many choices along multiple spectra, as opposed to the US where it's one of R or D.

At least where I've voted in the US, there are rarely only two viable choices for a state or national legislature position. Some states resolve this using primaries for D/R candidates, and a few use stricter runoffs where there are frequently several D/R candidates. At least in the towns where I've lived, there were noticeable policy differences between many of these candidates within each party, although I will readily admit that I doubt this holds for most of the US. Also, it's still generally not as widely varying in views as in countries with 3+ parties (if made viable through proportional or similar voting) instead of the multiple rounds system popular in the US.

Going back to the original point someone made in this thread, I think this two-party multiple-views system in the US actually helps a bit to drive polarization. Seemingly disparate views are drawn together under a banner of [party] with an obvious (not actually clear or cohesive) enemy in the [other party].

America is one of maybe half a dozen countries in the world with a two-party system. The others are Malta, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, and a few other Caribbean countries.

What's your source? That seems extremely specious to me, for two reasons.

First, the US does not technically have a two-party system. If your standard is how many parties have seats in the national legislature or parliament, the US has three parties represented since Justin Amash is now affiliated with the Libertarian Party, as well as a few independents.

Secondly, many countries only have two parties that really matter in terms of having a realistic chance of forming a government--the UK and Canada are two examples that spring to mind. The third largest parties in those countries are the SNP and Bloc Quebecois, respectively--parties who want some specific part of the country to have greater autonomy if not independence. If your complaint is that the US doesn't have a Texas Independence Party winning seats in Congress, weird flex but okay.

Virtually every polity that uses a first-past-the-post voting system will end up with a two-party system. That's Duverger's Law. The primary counterexamples only prove the point, because they more or less replace one of the two national parties on a local level. (I used to live in Seattle, and while Seattle politics are officially non-partisan, Seattle has actually developed a de facto two-party system between mainstream Democrats and socialists.)

I personally favor multiparty systems with proportional representation, but that's no guarantee of anything. Israel (which somehow still ends up with a de facto two party system anyway) and Belgium have both notoriously failed to form majority governments for long periods of time.

The typical third party in Canada is NDP, which has had support between 15-25% of the vote within the last decade depending on the election. Which is quite different and quite more than the Libertarian party in the USA which has a very negligible influence. They also have been in power within a few provinces quite frequently. I don't think Canada was your best pick to make your point.

Canada has only ever been ruled by the liberal or conservative parties

NDP won fewer seats than Bloc Québécois in the last election. And it’s worth pointing out, I think, that the most prominent US politician who would be aligned with the NDP ideologically, Bernie Sanders, is actually an independent rather than a Democrat.

> NDP won fewer seats than Bloc Québécois

That's mostly because Bloc Québécois is concentrated in a specific province, and often specific parts of that province, while the NDP's support is spread across all the provinces.

It's the same in the UK, where the Lib Dems got triple the vote of the SNP, but less than a quarter of the seats.

Yes, as I pointed out, this is an artifact of how Duverger’s Law guarantees that first-past-the-post voting systems lead to two-party systems. BQ is one of the two parties in Quebec just as SNP is one of the two parties in Scotland.

Independents won almost 20% of the popular vote in the 1992 U.S. general election. Also hold more seats in Congress. That’s a more apt comparison, not the Libertarian Party.

You're only seeing these for specific issues that have become polarized because normal organic growth/reform/development/etc. has been halted. If it were not for the insular and unaccountable behavior of police, we would not be in a position where "abolish them entirely" would have more-than-fringe support.

Ask someone what they think of something as "political" as the H-1B program, let alone, oh, federal cheese labeling standards, and you'll see a lot of people who say "There are good and bad parts, I think we should keep the good parts and reform the bad ones, and my opinion on which specific parts are good or bad can be influenced by quality journalism."

> Ask someone what they think of something as "political" as the H-1B program, let alone, oh, federal cheese labeling standards, and you'll see a lot of people who say "There are good and bad parts, I think we should keep the good parts and reform the bad ones, and my opinion on which specific parts are good or bad can be influenced by quality journalism."

Nah. That's what I would say, but everyone else is a rabid partisan who will slavishly push whichever side their tribe is taking right now on skilled immigration. Or cheese.

Both the positions that police should completely cease to exist and that no reform should ever be carried out are so rare that they represent straw men.

When people talk about "support for the police" they are either referring to the degree to which they are comfortable with reform, or disingenuously trying to portray the situation as more partisan than it is.

"But creating two extreme positions, and then lumping everyone into those positions, is called politics"

Nice definition. Sadly, way too accurate.

Very few people outside the anarchocommunist subreddits think police are unnecessary. Reform vs police-are-untouchable are the two major wings in the US.

It’s not necessarily a binary though, is it? Articles like that enrich the discussion with new information, and may act to shift policy and perspectives over time. Expecting one article to turn someone’s opinions around completely is usually expecting too much. It’s a common expectation that “this story will change everything” but it seems to me that it takes time for things like this to sink in and change the momentum.

While not directly assembled by state intelligence services, some of today's "independent" reports surely are supported or financed by them.

I'm not saying this one is, but verifying the independence and financing of any organisation is quite hard. A lot of work has gone into this fantastic presentation, and somebody had to pay for that. Since I watched it for free, it wasn't me...

The funding link works. I suspect there was just a typo in the other posters link:

https://forensic-architecture.org/about/funding

Thanks; I followed a broken link on the About page. Just sent them an email about it.

You'd probably be interested in the Bellingcat podcast about their investigation into MH17.

https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2019/07/17/mh1...

Worth to keep in mind that Bellingcat is believed by many to be closely linked to MI6, so take their publications with a grain of salt.

Is there any evidence of that?

"is believed by many"

He already said no.

No direct evidence as you would expect. We only have circumstantial evidence such as selection of topics to cover and general view regarding covered events, which align quite well with position demonstrated by intelligence services. It also has some questionable funding sources (e.g. National Endowment for Democracy and Integrity Initiative), but I would say it also nothing more than circumstantial.

One recent analysis of Bellingcat behavior (not in general, but using a selected case) can be seen in this video (in Russian, but it has good English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDhhCLyYCU4 Author of the video is a Ukrainian opposition leader, who fled the country during Yanukovich rule, got asylum in Europe, and since then lives there.

Haven't watched the video, but is it from Shariy? If yes, then you wildly misrepresented him.

How so? I wrote only factual, easily verifiable information about him.

If someone does not want to judge by the video content alone and wants to learn more about the author, you can read the following wiki links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Shariy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Shariy

Similarly we've gone from the CIA/FBI being "big brother" to social media companies filling the role.

Why the hyperbole? "Big Brother" can disappear you into the night, never to be seen again till someone unearths a mass grave many decades later. Social media has no such power.

stochastic terrorism would enters the chat

Stochastic terrorism still isn't Big Brother.

You think so? Get the right campaign, the right urgency, and you can embolden people to do anything you want because they think it is right.

Not sure if this is mildly better or severely worse

Definitely better. Facebook won't make you disappear.

I mean it will, just socially and financially.

Sorry, as someone who doesn't use Facebook, how does Facebook have the power make me disappear, socially and financially?

Organize and signal-boost the mob that wants to persecute you, ban and deplatform anybody who dares to defend you, promote any material saying bad things about you, suppress any material that says good things about you. You don't live in a vacuum, neither does your employer, neither do your employer's clients, neither does your family, neither does their employer, neither do teachers at the school you kids go to... etc. etc. You get the idea. You don't have to be a member of the platform for it to be used to attack you.

I think the argument is that, should Facebook use become pervasive enough that the bulk of interaction, be it social or financial happens there, you have already disappeared by nature of not using it.

If you ARE using Facebook socially, they can turn down who sees your communications...kinda like shadowbanning.

Facebook, willingly or not, is part of the same entities' sourcing and influencing activities. We know this as established fact. Both your side's and various multipolar others.

Snowden. Cambridge Analytica. Cozy Bear. Black Cube.

"How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps" https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqm5x/us-military-location-... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25113117)

I'm curious as to what if any disagreement there is here.

> the advertising-funded third state

Did you mean Third Estate? Or a state-like entity governed by ad revenue?

Yeah, I am a bit lost on that line. Third Estate refers either to commoners (in the Middle Ages) or the judiciary (in modern times).

Third party

I know where you are coming from but you are missing one big thing. Inherently in all observations coming from a newspaper, to a research paper and to an intelligence agency the reporting will be biased. What you have to do instead is to figure out what the bias is from that source of information and then combine the other sources to attempt to understand the outcome. The second thing is to remove your own inherent bias.

Idea: Commission them to investigate themselves and their source of funding so now you are the supporter

NGO research groups are not as innocent as they appear.

> More recently, it seems, some news organizations have begun assembling reports using modeling and expert analysis.

This is hardly new and when it comes to news media it's hardly a good thing. It is incredibly easy to find biased experts and it's even easier to craft a false narrative using "modeling". Moving away from reporting directly observable events and interviewing people who observed them is a sign that modern media is exiting the business they are supposed to be engaged in. They're now (more than ever) firmly in the realm of opinion-shaping.

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