Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0xy | Hacker News Reader

I want to point out that Vox only labeled the edits and tweeted about it after they were caught red handed stealth editing their deception.

The other "usual suspects" were all attacking lab leak theory in 2020, including CNN, Washington Post and the NYT.

Washington Post's chief fact checker called it "debunked".

These people are quite literally controlling the flow of information, given their secret contracts with Facebook and their influence on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms.

Corporate media needs to die before they get more people killed (NYT lied about WMDs in Iraq and thousands of innocent people died, nobody was fired).

View on HN

I think the situation is far more dire. The same types of political ideologues are taking over FAANG and other tech spaces, and other information outlets, like Wikipedia, where only "approved" or "authoritative" sources are typically accepted.

Corporate and social culture have been hijacked by a sort of soft, insidious, growing authoritarianism and the consequences for the future of the west are severe, especially because these newly dominant voices are increasingly openly hostile to the ≈50% of the population whom they are effectively disenfranchising. Even fundraising for controversial figures who have anything remotely in common with right of center ideology is impossible between the fundraising sites and credit card companies. Something's got to give and it won't be pretty for anyone.

Considering the Overton window, the argument could be made that today's "right of center" would have been considered dangerously extremist by the right a few decades ago, and that growing extremism is causing previously right leaning groups to apear to "change sides" and "ganging up" when they're not actually changing their stances at all, they're reacting to what they perceive as growing extremism. When a minority group gets more extreme, it appears to people in that group that everyone else is moving away, when in reality, it's them that are actually shifting beliefs.

> today's "right of center" would have been considered dangerously extremist by the right a few decades ago

Extremist in what, supporting LGBTQ?

I don't think so. A decade ago was the tea party, that was effectively a Libertarian action by Democrats and Republicans. Libertarian being very "right of center" and combined support indicates some level of popularity. In my experience as formerly labeling myself Libertarian was the only shitty time to be one was around elections because Democrats and Republicans like to blame their failings on you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com