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Comment by matthewmacleod | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely baffled what value anybody sees in this article.

Regulation of social media is a serious issue that deserves serious attention. There's a huge amount of nuance, with lots of deep questions about what publishing and freedom of speech look like in a world where everybody has access to an algorithmically-controlled global platform.

In contrast to that, Greenwald just presents an absolute mash of ridiculous clickbait, dogwhistle phrases, and vague insinuations. It contributes precisely nothing to answering any of those questions.

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> and vague insinuations

He isn't being vague, he is directly accusing the US Congress of authoritarianism. Then later despotism. He names names. He includes video excerpts. He questions if political censorship is maybe not a good idea and makes it clear he is accusing Congress of exactly that.

You can disagree, but he is specific.

Most of his specific insinuations/inferences are simply wrong. Parler was not removed because some MoC said for it to be removed. It was removed because it was hosting calls for violence. Greenwald is a crank, looking for attention. He's not worth it.

And Twitter, FB, etc. was hosting the same sort of messages. We all know why Parker was removed; it’s right-leaning users (i.e. the great unwashed) are deemed unworthy of being part of the conversation.

It’s not surprising Jan 6 happened; the parallels to the French Revolution are uncanny.

This is fool talk. Jan 6 and the entire MAGA movement to a first approximation is a grift. It is precisely the opposite of the French Rev. It is the selling of cake in the form of hats and delusion.

FB was allowing this messaging. Twitter not so much, T was much more aggressive at moderation.

Removing FB is a completely different issue for an app store than Parler, for obvious reasons. Parler also of course was funded by sources that were in US terms problematic.

Apple is going after FB in more structural ways. Google tried, but failed. FB is an issue for DoJ now.

I think he successfully highlighted a certain lack of competent leadership, which therefore makes is difficult to do the deep regulatory Q&A you had hoped for.

It's a shame how much Assange and Greenwald have fallen.

Care to elaborate?

Don't feed the trolls.

I'm not trolling, see my response to the op.

I thought the stuff I put in there was common knowledge. Sorry if it wasn't

Assange was pedaling weird assertions in the far right Seth Rich conspiracies making completely baseless claims that have since proven absolutely false, it was him just fabricating stuff. It harmed both the Rich family and fueled the online conspiracy machines. He's followed it up with satanist cabal and earpiece nonsense. He's done rhetorical acrobatics to stand his ground instead of owning his own bs. Go to the "conspiracies" section on their wikipedia page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks

That happened right before the 2016 election.

Greenwald has gone from groundbreaking reporting to political theater and shock jock punditry, palling around with bullshit merchants like Tucker Carlson. He quit the intercept which refused to publish him making clearly incorrect claims about major candidates shortly before the 2020 election https://theintercept.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-resigns-... . Essentially a repeat of 2016 was primed but the rest of the intercept told him to screw off.

They've both gone from the gold standard to completely unreliable political ops.

It's almost like the con artists in the red pilling bullshit machines targeted both of them, it's pretty bad.

Assange is in prison, possibly for life for the crime of making US war crimes public.

Greenwald has 24/7 protection because his recent reporting exposed the corruption in Balsonaro's administration and lead to Lula being freed from prison.

All the journalists who advocate censorship of things they don't like and engage in smear campaigns have never broken or reported on anything meaningful and probably never will. Many of them probably think that Assange deserves to be extradited and charged, even though that is a direct attack on their profession.

Assange more recently "reported" wild far right conspiracy theories about Seth Rich, satanic cabals, secret ear pieces and other things of that nature.

Greenwald More Recently has been on shows of hard right people like Tucker Carlson and quit The Intercept because they refused to publish conspiracy theories about Joe Biden right before the 2020 election. Here's the actual hit piece the intercept wouldn't publish https://greenwald.substack.com/p/article-on-joe-and-hunter-b... it was an attempted October surprise the paper wouldn't sign on to

Here he basically says January 6 was a bunch of peaceful protestors misrepresented as violent, really https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

And here he is suggesting vote counting misconducts https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-inability-to-count-v...

And here he says you know who the "actual fascist" are? Facebook and Joe Biden https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarian...

Splendid, just great, sounds like my uncle. Dude's totally pilled. The takeaway is effectively "don't trust the mainstream media, Trump is amazing" every time.

The conspiracy land world has a main door via Trump. But there's side doors that can hook people in as well. Through leftism (via strasserism the first time it came around), natural medicine, holistic spirituality, gamer culture, theres a bunch of fascist pipelines out there to hook people.

Look into their Recent records.

They shouldn't be facing state repression of course and should be free to do this.

But it's also just political hackery

Pretty wild list of misrepresentations you have there, your points about Greenwald are downright slanderous.

> Greenwald More Recently has been on shows of hard right people like Tucker Carlson

He goes on his show because the other outlets are not interested in his topics and therefor won't have him on, probably because they are too busy spouting conspiracy theories about russia. He always says this: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-greenwald-defends-going-on...

> Intercept because they refused to publish conspiracy theories about Joe Biden right before the 2020 election

That's a news worthy story, especially because they did not deny it, which is basically admitting it. They censored the whole story and even lock the new york post out of their twitter account for reporting on it.

> Here he basically says January 6 was a bunch of peaceful protestors misrepresented as violent,

That's not what the article is about, it's about how the media pushed fake news about the event, most egregiously the death of the officer.

> And here he is suggesting vote counting misconducts

again that's not what the article is about, it's about the US inability to count the votes, which takes literally months.

> And here he says you know who the "actual fascist" are? Facebook and Joe Biden

I disagree, He just points out that how the Silicon Valley - Biden/Harris axis will pursue down the path of censorship. I think this was a correct analysis, just watch friday's hearing.

> "don't trust the mainstream media, Trump is amazing"

the former is true, the latter couldn't be further from the truth.

He selectively reports and focuses on things that support a conclusion that Trump is amazing, the rise of fascism is real but it's actually from groups like liberals and the CDC, and anything telling you otherwise is a liar.

For instance, he focuses on where the guy got the zip ties but totally ignores the constructed gallows on the lawn or that a guy in military fatigues literally broke into the capitol.

He focuses on the fire hydrant event but totally ignores all the pipe bombs

He's selectively painting a narrative. It's called apologetics.

People have been doing it for centuries. Here's an article from counterpunch https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/30/what-happened-to-gle...

He's super excited about essentially a form of right wing National Socialism, literally what Nazi meant. I'm not kidding https://www.mediaite.com/politics/glenn-greenwald-describes-... ... He thinks it's j-kewl awesome.

He could be reporting anything but it's constantly excuses for right wing terrorists and fanning the flames of conspiracies.

He's free to do it but it's quite literally just propaganda dolled up to pretend it's journalism which is why the only news organization paying him these days is Fox News.

Think about that

Greenwald has always had some right wing views, here he is in 2005 https://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/yelling-racist-a... but now he's all in.

It's a shame but let's not deny reality here. Some people got pilled, even Glen Greenwald. Fascism is pernicious. Look here for an example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave_(experiment) - it's required study in German schools for a reason

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