Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence.
No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen and unrelated ways like this. Every purchase carries potentially immense future costs that are almost completely opaque.
Free market maximalists need to confront this fact before praying at the altar of complete deregulation, and every consumer should pay more attention to who they are buying from.
What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds?
There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.
The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else.
Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas.
I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.)
Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.
The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat.
The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction.
And it would quickly be destroyed by competing governments that don’t believe in free markets and actively subsidize their industries to capture market share.
Trump forced the UAE to buy $2 billion of his stable coin in order to avoid tariffs. He is making $80 million a year farming yields off that. The tariff nonsense was 100% just a backdoor for corruption.
Edit: and I forgot he pardoned the binance guy for facilitating this corruption too. Trumps pardons are the most corrupt in american history but MAGA is still yelling about the hunter biden pardon even though Joe was absolutely right that trump would maliciously prosecute him
It’s actually a lot of small to midsize manufacturers importing subcomponents that are getting hurt in the heartland. They can’t lobby for exemptions & don’t have the supplier negotiating power of the megacaps.
The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably.
> There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.
Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way.
I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent?
I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces.
Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch.
For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D.
These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich?
The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies.
However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen.
Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government.
Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster.
Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted.
The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
> Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests?
Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate), or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
Edit: if the above are too extreme, another approach would be firm and consistent application
of anti-competitive laws, resurrecting the fairness doctrine, and stop pretending that artificial constructs have human rights.
> or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control.
> Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate)
The reason why this worked is because FDR oversaw the US during a period of incredible change and after the Great Depression. It's not like the tax rate was responsible for his successes.
That's no solution, since once someone has corrupted said small government, the obvious next step is to use the influence to increase its size and power.
But theres a balance to be struck there — keep the government too small and weak and it is susceptible to corruptive forces from domestic and foreign enemies alike.
So imho it isn’t enough to simply keep government ‘small’ —it is also important to keep it the size proportionate to other potential threats.
It’s also important to keep in mind that size is but one dimension and is only being used as a proxy for power which is the ultimate factor that matters — a government of one person with control of WMDs can be much more of a threat than a large government without WMDs.
That's a solution. Another would be to enshrine in law independent watchdog agencies whose goal is to win trophies for rooting out corruption, reducing waste, preventing or breaking up harmful monopolies, etc.
How valuable are those trophies compared to bribes, or the tacit bribes of cushy "consultancy" roles? How do you stop lobbyists from gutting those regulators - what use is a fiercely independent regulator that has no resources?
That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely.
Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of.
I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane.
Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could.
Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all.
That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way.
And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way.
In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC.
The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job.
Were you saying the same thing in 2014 and 2015 too?
According to data from Thomson Reuters, 2015 is set to be the biggest year ever (once the planned deals close) in worldwide dealmaking, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions—up 42 percent from 2014, and beating the previous record of $4.4 trillion in 2007.
The year stands out, not just for the total value of the deals but for the number of so-called mega-deals, which refers to any deal that exceeds $5 billion. Just in the last three months, notable mega-deals include AB Inbev’s acquisition of SABMiller, creating a $104 billion beverage company; Pfizer and Allergan’s announced a $160 billion merger; and the chemical companies DuPont and Dow Chemical Company’s plans to unite as a $130 billion company. Thomson Reuters counted 137 mega-deals last year, which accounted for 52 percent of the year’s overall M&A value.
Agreed. Let's also not forget that a large part of the reason that the Skydance/Paramount merger likely went through in the first place was because Paramount paid off Trump to the tune of 16 million USD by settling a lawsuit in which he alleged deliberate deception during his Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes.
What existing regulation are you accusing the FTC of not enforcing? Is it illegal for a rich person to buy a company? It's not like he's cornering TV news or something. He's a minority player by any measurement (revenue, viewers, etc..).
Not a fan of Trump, Ellison, or obviously this expose being buried, but I am just trying to understand what the FTC did wrong.
> The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation.
I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US.
But whatever, it just seems like what you want is not more regulation (Trump is adding lots of regulation on solar and wind, that's good right?), but different regulators.
It sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then makes them governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem.
> I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US.
Okay well I basically copy/pasted from ftc.gov:
The FTC’s Bureau of Competition enforces the nation's antitrust laws, which form the foundation of our free market economy. The antitrust laws promote the interests of consumers; they support unfettered markets and result in lower prices and more choices.
The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation
I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.
Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.
- At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.
- The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.
- Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?
- We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.
My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.
I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.
The whole thing is poorly-conceived and obviously false but I just have to call this out-
> Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this.
The story isn't that people found guilty of crimes went to jail, the story is that half weren't even charged with crimes! That's the whole point of the story! We should not be aiming for a balanced diet of criminals and not-criminals in our government-sponsored foreign death camps!
The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.
> We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?
What about charged? What does charged with a crime have to do with anything? Why bring that up at all? Do we send people to prison because they were charged with a crime? Is Bari Weiss a newborn baby who has never heard about the presumption of innocence?
It’s not just that, it’s that the administration knew they weren’t guilty of any crimes and sent them to be tortured anyway.
If you can stomach it, propublica has been covering stories like this since the summer [1].
Meanwhile, the MS13 has been cutting sweetheart deals with Bukele [2] and we have been releasing actual gang members for the privilege of sending innocent people to the torture facilities [3, 4], even in the face of reports of USAID being diverted to the gang for a money-for-votes scheme for Bukele [5].
Even the people who were convicted of crimes don't deserve this. There's this sick belief in parts of society that criminals (which becomes a permanent state of being) are valid targets for unlimited suffering.
People should not be sent to torture camps where they have no hope of every leaving for the rest of their lives for committing crimes.
I would ask you if you know the case El Salvador in enough detail.
If Bukele had not reached power, innocents would still be killed and dying in the streets.
They gangs were extorting business systematically, if you sold outside of your place they would kill you. You had to ask for permission to enter and leave your colonia to the gangs.
If a gang pointed at your sister and said "at 18:00 at my place" she'd better go or you do not know what would happen next, including revenge to relatives. I mean, yes, raping, and yes, killing.
None of these things I said are made up. There are lots of cases.
It is very easy to talk in the abstract but there is a reason why Bukele gets massively voted.
Nothing is perfect but before the exception state the gangs killed almost 80 people in a weekend to show Bukele who they were. Random innocent people.
No, El Salvador, unfortunately, did not have an option.
It will take one generation to make it a permanently safe place at least. In 30 years almost 80,000 people were killed in the streets.
It was a real horror. That is why Salvadoreans support Bukele. I think it os easy to complain from far but one must be there to really understand it.
I understand your argument, but the problem with Bukele is that he is a bad human being, too. A gang leader with slightly less proclivity for torture and rape than the other gangs.
He knows that he has many innocent people locked up in those jails. He knows that his deal with Trump is immoral and unnecessary for the safety of El Salvador, but does it anyway. His social media savvy relishes in his authoritarianism, rather than explains it.
Unfortunately, the dire situation you describe is how Authoritarians gain power: desperate populations struggling for multiple years with widespread societal problems that government has seemed too inept or corrupt to fix. 1930s Germany, 2020s Trump, El Salvador.
Her own excuse is either a complete lie or betrays the fact that she doesn’t understand the story. I invite her apologists here to choose which interpretation they prefer.
I’m into the full meal deal theory. Her own excuse is a complete lie, she doesn’t understand the story and somehow doesn’t even understand journalism. In this case, 60 Minutes asked the White House for comment and they refused. If a party to a story can kill the story by not being involved, that’s not journalism it’s PR.
We do unfortunately send people to long times in jail (sometimes over a decade) before their cases come to trial in the USA. And jails in the USA generally have vastly worse conditions than prisons (as they are "short term" facilities).
CECOT is a whole different beast altogether, though :(
I was a jurist on a murder trial. The defendant had spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting his trial. Then went back to jail after the hung jury did not deliver a verdict.
Sure, that's true. Let's say you file a motion, though. Say the cops beat a false confession out of you. You file a motion to suppress. Now you've stopped the speedy trial clock for a year, maybe two, while the motion is responded to, witnesses and discovery are sought, hearings are had, etc. You're stuck in jail that whole time.
Just like in theory the cops can't steal your stuff. But in reality there are more than enough ways around such little restrictions unless you are backed up by an expensive and powerful legal team.
It's worth highlighting that continually driving focus onto a few spectacular examples of criminal histories is exactly how this regime has been justifying its actions.
> The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.
I think you don't understand MAGA mentality. Honestly, that's probably a good thing, but understanding MAGA would help understanding this whole situation.
You don’t hold a story because you want to push the government harder to respond, especially when you have the executive’s official spokesperson giving a reason on the record already.
And what does she mean that we should spend a beat explaining that half do have criminal histories? She wants them to give a cookie for that? And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged.
Lastly she misstates the administrations legal justification for deportation. She doesn’t appear to be an unbiased actor here.
The fact she sent that out publicly is a good indication of how prejudiced she will be with editorial content.
Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved. So as long as the government is united in its desire to commit horrible acts and stall justice, I guess we shouldn't bother reporting them? Not sure where the logic is there. And I guess since it's possible some bad apples exist, then we should just take the word of the government that everyone there is a gang member? I wouldn't ever call 60 Minutes cutting edge journalism, it's quality for sure but they are never the first on the scene. Who cares if other media companies have covered CECOT? 60 Minutes got first hand interviews with detainees that have good backgrounds. That's important, it lets viewers empathize with "good" immigrants just trying to create a better life for their families. This letter is weak.
> The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?
The analysis shows another way in which the government is trying to be secretive about how it's treating people that were within its borders and subject to its laws and protections. I can only hope someone pointed this out because the question suggests a baffling level of ignorance despite the message overall sounding like some reasonable feedback on the story, despite coming far too late in the process to be considered reasonable.
This isn’t the real “why”. Holding the release back is a political decision. Why hold the story specially? Why not just issue any corrections later? It’s already gone through the same approval process other stories would. The choice to do something different here and treat Trump-damaging stories differently is by definition, biased.
To me, Bari’s response is a manufactured cover up. I’ve followed Bari for years and seen the progression from someone who was a balanced moderate to someone who is slowly developing a strong bias and letting the mask off a little bit at a time. The recent Turning Point townhall was the first big revelation of her bias to the public. But as someone who subscribed to her for years, I’ve seen the progression over time. And the language in here feels less like her usual journalism and more like something carefully put together to deflect.
Here are the excuses Bari Weiss gave to bury the story.
The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond. If you insist on holding off publishing until you have a comment you’ve just given the government the ability to block the story by endlessly delaying comment.
More broadly the problem here is simply that Weiss has no legitimate authority to make calls like this. She’s never worked as a reporter. The 60 Minutes staff have decades of reporting experience. The only reason she has the job is because a billionaire who is trying to curry favor with the administration installed her there. That context hangs over every decision she makes.
This seems dishonest, she couldn’t possibly think the administration is going to share more useful information here, and if they did it would have no value. These people were illegally sent to life in prison at a brutal torture camp with no charges or trial, at the expense of US taxpayers. There is no possible excuse or rationale that would make it anything but extremely illegal and unethical, and a betrayal of all of the values our country purports to stand for. It doesn’t matter what crimes someone is accused of or not.
That explanation is days late, though. It's attested that she didn't even take a call from the episode producer before killing it. I mean, sure, if you put a bunch of people in a room and ask them to retcon a reasonable-sounding explanation for why you did something embarassing, you can do it! The world is a complicated place.
It's abundantly clear why she spiked it. I know it. You know it. We all know it. She was brought in as a clearly partisan voice to put exactly this finger on exactly these levers at CBS. We all saw it when she was hired and we all warned about this. And she did.
I mean, why bother stenographising the excuse? No one is fooled. "Partisan hack does partisan hackery" is like the least surprising line in this story.
For those not familiar: there were five screenings in the prior week that journalists attended to discuss it. She was aware of those and did not attend.
When she did look at it, her feedback was minor, and they made adjustments.
Then she killed it a day after her delayed feedback, on the weekend it was to air.
That context, combined with the response above, is telling.
She is at absolute best, entirely unfit and amateur for this role combined with dangerous arrogance.
More likely, she is the malevolent puppet of a billionaire ally of the current corrupt administration.
Honestly, the argument that CBS buried the piece to protect Trump is difficult to accept because, well, watching brown people being treated like shit or even tortured is MAGA porn. Innocence or guilt is meaningless - Dear Leader said they're all enemies!
All the MAGAs I know on Facebook are posting about how the video is great ("It's about time someone does something!"), so I would think Trump would want the piece to air.
Exactly. You give people a reasonable chance to comment, but you can't let them veto your story if they decline. That would be a naive way to be fair and balanced.
Bari wisely points out that if the deportees are being tortured, then there must be a secretly good reason why if they dig a little deeper. Suggests asking Stephen Miller.
The timing of this might lead one to believe Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery is a consideration in their editorial decisions. They and their competitor (Netflix) need regulatory approval for such a merger and the administration has already inserted itself into the deal.
Hard to imagine that's the a core part of it, and pretty naturally in America the clear ongoing and unprecedented (in modern times anyway) corruption on that front is the focus. But it probably doesn't hurt that she appears to just be a really big fan of that particular dictator and torture prison specifically. Earlier this year her site "the Free Press" was all over them [0]:
>"The hottest campaign stop is this Salvadoran supermax: House Republican Riley Moore went to the super maximum security prison in El Salvador to take some photos in front of the inmates. “I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador,” he writes, with pictures of him giving a thumbs-up, shirtless inmates standing at attention behind him. Moore gave a double thumbs-up in front of the men, densely packed in their cold metal bunk. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took the same tour recently, posting a fun video in front of caged, tatted men."
>"After Bukele left the White House, he thirstily tweeted, “I miss you already, President T.” Trump returned the favor, learning to say MAGA in Spanish: “¡America grande, otra vez!”"
Etc. And she's been very positive on Bukele personally as well. Might be multiple reasons she'd gleefully want to spike such a story even if the commands of her owners take precedent.
Edit: whew, this one sure triggered the technofeudalists and Baristans! From 3 to -3 for her own publication's and her statements.
I'm not sure how you can read that and think it is speaking favorably about the prison.
Here are some parts you left out:
> The El Salvador supermax prison is becoming the new Ohio Diner. It’s the new Iowa State Fair. It’s the new Jeffrey Epstein jet: It’s where every political leader needs to visit, the place to see and be seen if you’re ambitious and in politics today.
> They agreed that there was nothing to be done about the mistakenly deported Maryland man, now in Salvadoran custody. Two leaders of two great countries simply cannot find that one random wrongly deported man, and everyone should move along (I’m assuming that means he’s dead, right?).
We shouldn’t anthropomorphize any billionaires. They’re not even people at that point, just destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time.
We need confiscatory taxation for a better future.
It's kind of saying we should only focus on the #1 mass-murdering dictator in the world, so while many of them are actively slaying people, lets just focus on #1 for now.
No, we can have many targets. People who hoard money for the benefit of themselves with the detriment of society and the population at large are all "destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time" to borrow the words of parent commentator. If just 10% were slightly less evil and egoistic, it would lead to huge improvements, and only a slight reduction to their own lifestyles. That they don't, is a stain on the legacy of humanity.
I have a feeling this will get DMCA-ed off of Internet Archive in an attempt to suppress it. Here's the infohash of the archive.org torrent download for future reference, this should allow the file to be retrieved in any torrent client as long as someone in the world is seeding it still.
Qbittorrent, Transmission etc. The Transmission daemon can be installed headless with negligible system load on a vast number of devices, from Raspberry Pi-like and smaller SBCs to Linux/BSD NASes, then operated from remote through the web interface or a phone app.
Then you probably don't want a free service that costs money to run where they can only make money by converting most users to paid or monetizing your information in a country where you are unlikely to have an attorney whilst operating what amounts to a honeypot for every government on earth.
Fascinating how this got leaked. A TV station in Canada accidentally ran the original episode version, implying that this was pulled super late and the episode was completely in the can.
It was completely finished. There's an article out today that says the main reporter on the story complained that the censor Bari Weiss had not bothered to appear at the previous five earlier screenings and reviews by the editorial team.
Probably as accidental as the people doing the censorship of the latest Epstein files released today that had "accidents" about how they censured stuff.
It doesn't feel like it's suppressing the news. Can you give examples of suppression? I'd say hacker news is very open to contrary ideas and disagreements.
If it's political, there's a good chance it gets flagged. The problem is pretty much everything is political when you have a government that sticks it's grubby little fingers where it shouldn't.
Have you actually ever browsed the secret “active” page where you can see what people are actually voting for without the mods putting their thumbs on the scale? It’s constantly filled with dead posts because someone said something that was vaguely unflattering towards Israel, venture capital, capitalism in general, the United States or Apple. Literally happens dozens of times every single day.
It's hardly secret—it's on the /lists page which is referenced in the footer of every page on HN.
It simply isn't the frontpage, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. How you guys turn this into sinister suppression continues to escape me.
Edit: perhaps this will help:
HN is designed to downweight sensational-indignant stories, internet dramas, and riler-uppers, for the obvious reason that if we didn't, then they would dominate HN's frontpage like they dominate the rest of the internet. Anyone who spends time here (or has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) knows that this is not what the site is for. The vast majority of HN readers like HN for just this reason. It is not some arbitrary switch that we could just flip, if only we would stop being censoriously sinister. It's essential to the operation of the site.
The closest I can give to an account of "how things work in reality" is the 80,000+ moderation comments I've posted over the last 10+ years: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang&type=comment&dateRange.... You're free to decide it's all lies, of course, but if you (or anyone) randomly scroll back through that feed, I doubt you'll find much that's miles apart from the rules as they are written. As a matter of fact I'd be surprised if you found anything that could be fairly be described that way, because trying to apply the rules as they are written is a matter of integrity for us. If it weren't, we'd change the rules until it were.
Just wish it was distributed instead of such a US-centric organization. For survival, I hope they're thinking about how to make it more decentralized, because eventually the arm of the law is gonna come after them (again), and probably with less mercy this time.
Still a proud supporter of archive.org for many, many years. Their work is invaluable and I hope it stays around forever.
Even calling it "deportation" is far too charitable towards what they've done. Deportation involves sending them back to their home countries or, if that's unsafe, to another country. These people were rendered to a prison where they're meant to spend the rest of their lives, without any of the due process even a foreigner who had committed a crime would normally be accorded in the United States under our constitution.
I'm reminded of the Letter on Justice and Open Debate[1] that Bari Weiss signed only a few years ago, now she's spiking stories like this one on CECOT for showing the current administration in a negative light.
I also wonder if this story will get the type of leeway to stay on HN to collect the 200+ upvotes and 300+ comments of that previous example or if it will be flagged off the front page within minutes like so many other similar stories.
EDIT: No idea how long this post actually lasted, but checking in an hour later to see this has been flagged completely off the first 10 pages of HN despite getting close to that 200 point total.
Weiss got her start screaming about how various college professors should be fired. There has never once been a moment in her career where she seriously cared about open debate.
Literally not a journalist. She went from the opinion pages to writing opinion on substack. And for "some reason" was put in charge of a news organization.
She has worked as a staff editor in newsrooms, most notably at Tablet. It’s not accurate to say her career has solely been in the opinion section.
Also, it’s not unheard of for people working on the op-ed side of the house to become editors in chief. Most notable example I can think of would be Katharine Viner at the Guardian. And in the reverse, James Bennet went from being editor in chief at the Atlantic to running the op-ed page at the NYT.
Her upward trajectory has been facilitated mainly through pleasing select silicon valley billionaires by echoing their views back to them in her ironically named The Free Press outlet, which they also helped found.
This really is the future of journalism. Just make content that a few deranged billionaires like and rise up and up and up and up. CBS doesn't have to care whether ordinary people like it. What matters is the asshole with billions of dollars.
She is more or less an Israeli propaganda agent. She was hired at CBS because, after purchasing CBS from Zionist Shari Redstone, Zionist Larry Ellison and his son needed a reliable Zionist editor in chief. Weiss’ primary qualifications are her extremely pro Israeli career path.
Larry Ellison needed a woman like Weiss because he’s invested in Israel’s success. He’s both a close personal friend of Netanyahu and the number one private donor to the IDF. Netanyahu has declared US public perception of Israel as the 8th front of their war, and Ellison (with the help of Trump) is doing his part stateside.
Why we have so many powerful “Americans” exercising their power on behalf of a foreign country is the real discussion here.
Hundreds of comments and the only one speaking the truth is downvoted. Bari Weiss is unqualified and the only reason she was put into this position is to be a useful idiot for Israel.
The signatories have spent years attacking free expression. A particularly acute case is when it comes to things like advocating for the end of israeli occupation in palestine, but there are many others. Whining about BLM is a particularly common approach for Thomas Chatterton Williams.
The signatories have generally continued to complain about censoriousness from the left even while the right wing is detaining people for their speech, insisting that media personalities be fired for their speech, insisting that people (including naturalized citizens) be deported for their speech, cancelling grants because they are too "woke", and straight up passing laws banning the teaching of certain topics in secondary and postsecondary school.
Weiss herself is a participant with UATX, a expressly right wing university that has fired people for not being sufficiently critical of DEI efforts.
Weiss also has a long history of efforts to stifle the public debate that the signatories claim to support. The first thing that got her notoriety was an effort to get various professors at Columbia fired for their speech.
I think you're really off base. A quick search about what Williams has said about censorship on the right seems to undermine your one non-weiss example [1]. There were more than a hundred signatories from across a fairly wide political spectrum (and the letter itself was anti-Trump). The handful of signatories that I follow have squarely denounced right wing censoriousness - I'm open to hearing that I'm seeing a non-representative sample, but you didn't provide any useful info on that front.
Notice how this article frames the entire thing as caused by the left and happily ignores the fact that what is happening under Trump is not new. Were the excesses of the left the cause of the Stop Woke Act in Florida? The right has been screaming about firing professors since God and Man at Yale was published. In my opinion, this is not anything resembling a serious accounting of the threats to speech from the right.
And you can compare this article against the entire book that he published about the left's flaws this year. On one hand we've got an article critical of the right that finds the need to smuggle criticisms of the left in constantly and on the other hand we have a complete manuscript. You tell me where Williams is focusing his attention.
In terms of the actual topic, I would be shocked if Williams approved of spiking the CECOT 60 mins story, if it is in fact politically motivated as many suspect. And I'm not particularly a "fan" of Williams or anything, though I've heard him on a couple of podcasts.
But you're also making this point about all signatories being hypocrites because you seemingly have a big bone to pick with the amount of blame Thomas Chatterton Williams portions to each side.
So, can we see him writing about how this was a bad thing?
Williams is a public intellectual. What goes on in his mind is of much less importance to public discourse than what he writes.
Let me be clear. I believe that Williams is a hypocrite and I believe that the large majority of the signatories on the harpers letter are hypocrites. I mention him specifically because he was one of the people who actually wrote a lot of its text rather than just signing it, which makes him of particular interest for this discussion.
You can't understand technology without understanding the people behind it. I always wonder about all these non-bot people who support her: is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick? Is there something else? I never quite get it.
A once-reasonable friend of mine genuinely thinks RJK is just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer. Crazy
>is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick?
It's both. That's one of the things that's difficult to suss out and therefore have a plan to engage. There's plausible deniability on both ends of that spectrum. Even in the high positions in the administration, there's a smattering of True Believers in amongst the grifters.
> just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer
As much as it would be comforting for all dudes who’re trying their best to pretend otherwise, the two are not mutually exclusive. (No opinion on whether RFK Jr is in the intersection—I’m not in the US and couldn’t affect his actions if I tried.)
Maybe not - ordinary people have been known to sabotage fascist regimes by making "mistakes". There's also the issue that incompetent people may be promoted well beyond their abilities due to them being "loyal".
Funny how this is timed with the Susie Wiles “I’m an insider trying to do good” nonsense in vanity fair. That coont has been instrumental in so much bad stuff since Reagan…
Looks to me like it’s all damage control/pressure valve release stuff designed to distract from any real change. Because SURELY we will get some real change finally, right?? /s
Corruption is not merely something someone in power enacts in their choices; it is a rot that eats out the society from the inside.
As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
More and more of the society enters the grip of this force and weakens until the truly valuable things—its resources, minds, institutions—are annihilated, stolen, and displaced by a hierarchy of criminals or warlords. This is how nations sink. It’s the story of many in Africa, South America, Russia—and now it is our own.
Corruption is not just the immoral acts of an elite few; it is a parasite that hollows out society from within.
When the mainstream realizes that sycophancy toward the autocrat is rewarded, some willingly sacrifice their principles for short-term benefits, burrowing into the system like worms in an apple.
Yet, parasites cannot survive without a compliant host. To kill the infestation, we must cut off the food source: our passiveness. This begins with everyday refusals—denying the petty bribe, rejecting the convenient lie, and defending the honest colleague. By maintaining high ethical standards in our own spheres of influence, we starve the corrupt hierarchy of the dead matter it needs to grow.
We must also make the terrain uninhabitable for them. These organisms thrive in the dark, protected by silence. Therefore, we must actively expose them: documenting abuses, funding media samaritans, and organizing locally to demand transparency. When integrity becomes the standard again, the host becomes hostile to the parasite, isolating the invaders rather than letting them multiply.
Without this resistance however, the society weakens until its greatest assets—its resources, minds, and institutions—are cannibalized by a regime of criminals. This is how nations collapse. We have seen this story in Africa, South America, and Russia. This plague is now upon us. But history is not destiny. We possess the power to stop it. We only need the will to use it.
> As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian. Now that this is no longer the case, the mindset of appeasing the leader is suddenly a problem.
The whole situation was preventable, but everyone was too high on ZIRP to notice. We could've used the good times to establish good cultural values, but we didn't. Freedom of speech and other foundations of democracy were already rotting long ago but nobody cared. We could've used the good times to allow better dialogue between different political fractions, but we didn't. At some point democrats honestly believed they would simply never lose power again, making it seem pointless to talk to republicans. Now that the money dried out, people suddenly start asking questions and talking about "muh big values".
I’m curious which specific problematic values do you think were being adhered to and preached in the past, that was comparable to what’s happening in CECOT, and wasn’t opposed?
> When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian.
It is a bit analogous to many of us worrying about Google and others getting so much power. The arguments were quickly dismissed with: "But these folks are responsible, don't be paranoid". The problem with this kind of thinking is, once the power balance changes, you find yourself in a situation you'd never put yourself now. You cannot make Google unlearn what they know about you. You cannot unsend the photos you privately shared on Messenger and force Meta to untrain their facial recognition models. Now all these things you considered a convenience given to you for free can be used against you, and the extend and direction of the abuse is correlated with who is in power.
If you had a corrupt state like that, one in which the bureaucracy, the media, and the institutions were controlled by a uniparty, what would it look like if they were challenged?
How thoroughly would they unite to destroy that challenger? Would you perhaps see apocalyptic and apoplectic stories published across the media, in sync with the press conferences of the political class?
Would they try to get people like you riled up and angry, and saying exactly the kind of things you’re saying here?
- deport or jail you without due process
- ignore the law in service of its own ends
- punish its enemies, pardon its allies
- ignore the constitution
- install loyalists in centers of power, oust dissenters
- suppress media which challenges its hold on power
- commit crimes
- enrich its friends
- declare its "plenary authority" to do the above
Brother, you are looking for the deep state under every rock and it is out in the sunshine, smiling at you.
They would start to pardon criminals that conducted acts they like and fire the people that investigated those crimes.
They would try to bring everybody to jail that oppose or upset them or have opposed them.
They win when challengers become too rare because others are afraid of the consequences to oppose.
What the Trump administration did regarding the Capitol storming on January 6th tells you everything you need to know. They strive for power and nothing else.
I believe you're trying to say the real oppressors were liberals and ideas like people having civil rights that were enforced were somehow oppressing others. Look at what Republicans are doing in reality right now that they're in charge in the us, they're doing all the things that you're worried about.
Ironically, this might end up being more widely watched now (Streisand). I’ve seen multiple people on my Facebook link to different sources hosting the video. People who never would’ve heard about the story are now watching it through the lens of Trump and CBS trying to kill the story.
I doubt it, around ten million people watch 60 minutes live every week. Maybe that many will hear about the cancellation, but I don't think most will then seek out the full segment online, even if it's easy to find.
This, and Larry Ellison buying all news outlets in America. Things should be happening quickly enough so that it's obvious where this is all going, right?
Whoever writes the next "Inglorious Basterds" should have a lot of fun parodying Larry...
> The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the men sent to El Salvador were overwhelmingly violent criminals; Pro Publica reported that the administration knew at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the United States, and six had been convicted of violent offenses.
Too bad the only people that will watch this are people who already understand the terror of what is happening. It might have helped a little if it had aired. My MAGA dad still watches 60 Minutes (no idea why, habit?) This might have penetrated his TDS-addled skull if it had aired. But the takeover of CBS by Trump and Ellison (and his 1980's-college-villain son) with Weiss is complete, and vile.
If you want to break this you have to know the person and ask key questions afterwards. Their distortion field is held together by beliefs and principles, not empirical analysis.
For instance, for my father, the question "how is this treating people responsibly? How can we expect the behavior of those guards to be held accountable?" would pierce this ... but really you have to know how the person doing motivated reasoning thinks.
His Dad will be smart enough to know these questions are trying to set him up. Maybe try having a real conversation and not trying to change his mind. After all, there is a good chance you will be that Dad in the future (no matter how hard you tell yourself you won't be). Tell me how I now.
I'm almost 50. I won't be. I have friends who are becoming grandparents now, still no interest.
I have half a century of talking with my father. If you think this is my first strategy as opposed to one that took years of therapy and personal struggle, I dunno what to tell you.
There's a wide body of social and psychological research on this stuff including multiple university departments (communication, psychology, sociology, management, teaching, etc) because "simply talking to people" doesn't actually work.
Thanks kristopolous. We have a very similar story (I'm a few years older). I think I'm at the "I've given up point" because his glee at others' suffering is just too painful to even address. So: he get's hellos at holidays and that's it.
I debated asking, but I talk to him only a few times a year and we both work really hard to avoid politics. I realize it is my responsibility if I want to see change, but I just lack the skills.
This parental situation is sadly repeated endlessly in the US. My dad is a wealthy retired tech executive whose mind was seemingly taken over by Fox News. He's kind of now in an anti democratic cult and he gets angry if he is even exposed to other news sources.
People in the US now have to use VPN’s to get access to domestic news from a foreign country. I think it’s fair to say that the wheels have come off democracy and things are badly broken.
Things are bad, but the worst part isn’t hidden/missing principled reporting, it’s that a significant number of people don’t care to attend to it where it exists, domestically or internationally. And a majority of US voters cast their ballot for this outcome, so in a sense it’s democracy working as intended, however horrifying any problems or outcomes.
Plurality of voters, narrowly, but still it's enough.
How many just vote Republican without thought as they have always done, how many are in the fox news cult? So many people just thought they didn't want a female president or Trump would lower inflation. It's hard for me to accept that Trump represents America, but he represents enough of it.
I found this quite interesting, but I don't understand how the articles claims we can see flesh.
And the author's Substack has 2 videos of Trump kissing and patting Bill Clinton's groin area (through pants). They are likely AI because I couldn't find anything online about how they're real besides the original photo. And if they were real, why is no one talking about it? He claims for one of the videos that it's real. So it kind of reduced the author's trustworthiness a bit.
It's worth noting that the founders of the Lemkin Institute have, between them, held multiple leadership roles in reputable academic departments devoted to the study of genocide, and have also both been on the ground during or shortly after genocides or other crimes against humanity as part of international teams tasked with figuring out what happened and how to hold perpetrators accountable. These are not some lightweight bloggers.
The US government, in particular Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio, are, by the logic of the legal power they themselves invoked, war criminals who rightly belong in the Hague.
I believe information wants to be free, and should be free, even when I don't unanimously agree with the information, so I will start by re-sharing the torrent magnet link for the video, which I am also seeding right now, and will continue to do so until at least a full month passes with zero activity:
That said, there seems to be lots of conspiracy-adjacent talk in here. Has anyone considered the impact of the previous Trump lawsuit against CBS over the Kamala Harris edits, or the Trump-BBC lawsuit, whereby CBS made a business risk decision to avoid a story that might have some individual aspects of questionable factual accuracy that could come back to bite CBS in a courtroom, like how BBC's selective edits of Trump came back to bite them? Paramount/CBS settled Trump's lawsuit over the Kamala Harris "60 Minutes" edit for $16 million in July. BBC is getting sued for $10 billion. It's not economically irrational for an organization that has already settled lawsuits for selective presentation of political information in the past to be more worried about $10b lawsuits than $16m lawsuits.
Resisting these economic threats, these lawsuits, is something that major media needs to do, otherwise they just get compromised step by step by the wealthy oligarchs.
I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title.
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..."
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
And I believe that the mods thinking that a16z was the least critical part of the headline such that it could be cut for space reasons is a huge concern. I'm glad that you changed your mind. But the fact that it was needed worries me and the fact that you can't understand why people were upset is worse.
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
I also got punished for calling it out. I'm rate-limited and can't submit new links. Guess Tom was being shifty by making it look like I "won" the arguement while being a dick behind the scenes with the moderation controls against my account.
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months.
The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
"political/ideological battle" is usually interpreted to include posting things that make YCombinator or its affiliates or the USA look bad. Making YC or its affiliates or the USA look bad is also against the intended purpose of HN.
Edit: interesting how after posting this, all of my most recent comments received one downvote, including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question.
We actively intervene to ensure posts that are negative towards YC companies are not affected by usual downweights, and give them extra prominence on the front page. That has happened multiple times this week, including yesterday. We've never considered that the policy should also apply to other investment firms.
My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.
I asked last year and was told 404 is the source of too many copycat low quality posts and they have a paywall. In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page and driven interesting discussions.
Just to clarify for anyone reading. 404 does not have a paywall. They have an account wall. Some articles require you to be signed into a free account to read.
As a noob here on HN, that's what I gathered from your previous comment:
> In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page
So, a year ago, before my time, 404 media was moderated in a way that seemed like a ban, but now it no longer appears to be shadowbanned, is that what I'm learning?
I get the irony, but its a bit meaningless since we can't compare the quantity of these (yet) uncensored posts with those that have been taken down, and thus aren't visible.
More importantly, other commentors here have already admitted to flagging this entry. The way flagging exists now rewards one-sideism and partisan behaviour - all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters. A counter-flag option would balance things.
> all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters.
That's not accurate, because if a story is interesting to the vast majority of users, it will get lots of upvotes—and lots of upvotes is enough to defeat a small number of flags. In that sense, we already have the counter-flag option you're arguing for.
I typically `flag` a dozen hn posts, daily, within the first five pages (12of150 ~8%). Usually it's because the linked article has nothing to do with hacking, like this one.
But for this thread, despite qualifying within that 8%, I have chosen to upvote. My reasoning is that this policy of deportation is heinous — representing a failed regime's last gasps for relevancy — which will affect USA's reputation, economy, safety, R&D, and technical innovation.
We absolutely need immigration reform, but not like this.
You should probably revisit the guidelines, as your flagging policy doesn’t align with HN guidelines:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I think people might be missing the hack here, because the front story is such an ongoing political (and moral) football.
The hack is in the leak, and the sudden availability, of the video segment, across international borders, against the Weiss will (and apparently against the Ellison and Trump will), rebounding back to us in the US via the good graces of https://archive.org and via some true journalistic (or political) chutzpah.
That's what drew me to this page, to learn more about how presumed underhanded corrupt billionaire-sanctioned censorship was defeated by an innocent premature distribution.
When we say "interesting" we mean intellectual interest, not all kinds of interest or curiosity. For example, there is social curiosity (the sort that powers celebrity gossip). There is political curiosity (wanting to know how one's side is doing against the other side). There is sexual curiosity (no comment needed). These things all have their place, but not here. On the other hand, there can also be overlap with intellectual curiosity, in which case it's fine, though the bar is higher in some cases than others.
The qualifier "most" is very important there. Certainly opinions can differ as to what should fall under "most" and what shouldn't. But citing that line to justify flagging a politics-related story isn't a good argument.
Yep - I totally got that from your original comment.
I did think to myself "I hope they're using the Richard Feynmann/MIT Model Railroad Club sense of the work "hacking" there, not the "dude in a hoodie in front of a green on black terminal" sense. HN, for me, for over a decade, has been a source of intellectual curiosity provoking links, not just software/computing related stuff.
My attendances at DEF-CON have been mostly grey-hat [0]. I don't really care about downvotes just here to spread knowledge on topics I find interesting.
Thanks for the sanity/perspective.
[0] I'm in the XX documentary, and have been on stage (as have many friends), but never as an official speaker. In a former digital life, I ran a lockpicking youtubey with millions of views.
Pretty sure HN has discussed porn, the porn industry, sex work, sex workers, etc tons.
For example you can find in my history on posts about how porn access is being restricted that the "They have more fraud" claim is likely false and claimed in bad faith, and in fact Pornhub has been so removed from the payments industry that they now seem to have grafted themselves onto the internet gambling industry to make money, which is just awful. They have not turned to crypto payments because they just don't work, which is interesting to discuss.
But you would never see any of those discussions if you banned from the front page anything that mentioned porn.
Do you see how that works? Interesting discussion is about who is discussing, not about what is being discussed.
IMO the topic guidelines are entirely the wrong way to ensure meaningful discussion. All they have done, as clearly evidenced by the time HN tried to outright ban politics, is provide ample fodder for people to shut down discussions they were never going to participate in and contribute to anyway, and force people to have less interesting discussions about "Does this belong here", despite the guidelines themselves saying "If it's here, it belongs here"
HN also bans a lot of meta discussion which is crap, as talking about the sneaky and intransparent parts of HN, like the Orange Nametag cohort, would be interesting to the constant influx of new accounts.
I for one would also find deep dives into moderation or site meta information to be very interesting. I deal with abuse prevention in my day job, so seeing how others experience that abuse and deal with it would be not just interesting to me, but downright educational.
Meanwhile, HN is full of "I slapped an LLM into someone else's open source code" as if that is interesting at all. The entire point of vibe coding and agents etc is that anyone else could do that just as easily. So it seems "being interesting to hackers" just isn't the actual desired content.
There's also some other relevance to tech here, given the role of the Ellisons in all this. It's quite possible the decision to pull the episode came from them. Paramount is trying steal Warner Bros out from under Netflix and is working the Trump admin hard to prevent the deal, even supposedly by telling Trump he can decide who gets hired/fired from CNN.
Andreessen was directly involved in the rise of Bari Weiss too.
It's almost assuredly paid actors, the kind who brigade every single comment section no matter how piddly the outlet anytime there's a peep of pro-Palestinian, pro-abortion or whatever the culture-war generals are focusing their troops on.
Tbh HN does a _lot_ better dealing with this than pretty much anywhere. Yes HN has the flagging feature so of course it will get abused but as evidenced by this article sitting now at the top of HN, it gets addressed by moderator intervention, regularly.
It's partisan hacks who are somewhere on the spectrum between full support of this barbarity, and finding all the other shit that's being done useful enough to them to be worth compromising their values.
The latter can be identified by 'Well I don't agree with everything this administration does, but I will throw my full support behind <one of the many wedges they are using to turn this country into a corrupt single-party autocracy>.'
(They won't push you onto the tracks because they hate you, they'll push you because it means they'll see a 0.7% drop in their expected tax rate. They are in most ways, worse than the former, because they can tell the difference between right and wrong, and still carry water for the latter, because they see personal benefit in it.)
>> I've been watching this 60min piece, and there's nothing wrong with is
It's not even that good of a story IMO; leading to full-on Streisand effect when it's easier than ever to find things on the interwebs, and double-impossible to suppress them. About all this has done is prevented the 60 minutes demo from viewing a story they would have immediately forgotten, and prompted a far more dangerous to the status quo & resourceful segment to go find & view a show they never watch.
There is a strong ideological lean on HN towards not necessarily the trump ethos, but more toward the technofeudalist ideal, which is currently broadly aligned with trump on many issues. It's also trumpisim in a more sophisticated hat, but it's adherents don't seem to think so.
Everyone here tries way too hard to emulate the Musks of the world as if their political beliefs were the reason those guys initially got so rich and successful.
It's even more craven and intellectually bankrupt than Trumpism, which at least has the simple honesty of "say good thing make good thing happen" and is broadly believed by people too stupid to know better.
Don't forget the very right wing fake "free speech" insistence, where speech you agree with is free and speech that criticizes your failures is "An attack".
Or the huge cohort who insist that Joe Rogan talking to another guy about how it's not that big a deal that the very existence of gay people is yet again under attack is "Two people having a calm debate of their difference in beliefs" despite that not being true.
There are tons of people on HN that would have done better to spend more time in English class learning about persuasive writing and the pillars of rhetoric and media literacy and all that "critical thinking" they claim school didn't teach them and are currently angry when people rightly call out their poorly supported arguments, and they don't actually seem to know what an "argument" even is.
It's so frustrating their faux "debate" beliefs. It's worse than a decade ago when they thought "debate" was screaming at your ideological opponents a hundred outright false claims that can't be countered in a reasonable time frame.
Nevermind that we HAD calm debate about most of this shit decades ago. But these people only believe a "debate" happened when their beliefs are validated. Otherwise it's "canceling" that thing they still scream about despite doing it all the time.
Also the idea that we should have "calm debate" about the government sending you to another country's prison without trial is insane when that was specifically one of the exact reasons the founding fathers decided to start shooting people over. Thomas Jefferson would not be calm in his rhetoric.
It only takes a few flags to be effective and there are definitely more than a few Trumpists on HN so theoretically yes. Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
Like it or not Hacker News has never been (and will never be) a platform for free and open debate. It's designed around aggressive curation for quality over quantity and that makes it very easy to brigade by design.
> Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
It could, but that'd be odd. We've seen oodles of structurally similar posts hang out on the front page unflagged before. There are even past examples of major posts criticizing the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes. Only once the material becomes critical of the regime does it become flagged.
Lets be more accurate: none of the powerful & rich are strong supporters OF trump; they support him strongLY because of the direct pay-offs they personally gain. I think it's important to differentiate between the Andreessens and your core MAGA supporter who I actually believe he is a god, because strategies for defeating them are very different.
The oligarchy is in full effect. This is exactly how it works, ie you scratch my back I scratch yours. Ellison kills this CBS report, he gets approval on buying WBS, or more to the point NetFlix doesn't. Same with Musk, Middle East dictators and all the others lining up for favors from Trump. Also he and his family is enriched in various ways by all the pardons he hands out.
It's nauseating, but this is where Republicans live these days. The midterms can't come soon enough.
The answer to this question is always that enough people find it interesting. If you don't find it interesting, then please refrain from posting questions like that.
Because this is a very public example of the high level attempted censorship of us news media by people who support the current government. Disastrously, most of the major us media outlets have been bought by wealthy oligarchs who are politically aligned with the president and there's an active process of censorship.
It's actually true that at CBS News Bari Weiss was installed as a political minder to make sure that reporters don't do anything conservatives don't like.
This is also relevant because plenty of these would be censors are wealthy silicon valley conservatives.
Don't expect anyone to care about that angle. Let them virtue signal like somehow human right concerns of violent criminals is more important then the safety of the entire population of el salvador. Safely insulated from the consequences of their misplaced humanity of course. To be clear i saw a documentary of CECOT and it looks terribly oppressive, but i see no evidence of human rights abuses, even though most of the inmates there have forfeited theirs through their actions imo.
It is a total propaganda both ways and if you don’t see that, you’re not looking clearly. Of course it’s absolutely unacceptable to be sending nonviolent illegal immigrants to a terrorist detention center. But then you watch the episode and of course 60 minutes decides to spoil it and not do real reporting by having an immigration lawyer say they are all nonviolent criminals, which is obviously also total bullshit
Reasonable? They ALL boil down to "we need to get official comments, rationale and explanations from the administration". They refused to comment on the story, so you wait because if they CHOOSE not to participate you don't get to publish? That's never been how reporting works. Her comments about a lack of detail regarding the criminal records & charges? The administration is the party that refuses to share this! They are not even forthcoming with WHO EXACTLY has been deported.
Bari Weiss bending over backwards to accomodate an administration that has never shown any sort of honesty or humanity is exactly why she was rewarded so handsomely. "They seem reasonable" is not even remotely close, when comparing "evidence-based truth" reporting with the president's "I speak the truth".
If you wait for the administration to comment on a story before you publish it you’re effectively giving them the right to veto it. You ask, give them a deadline. If they don’t respond or say no comment (as they did in this case) then you publish.
> The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories in the past
You’re going to need to elaborate on that. If it were true why wouldn’t Weiss just fire them?
The arguments are nonsense. A summary is Weiss wants to make a case for the administration, which already has the largest platform in the world. If the administration wants to make a case for itself, it has (and has had) ample time to do so. As it stands, there is already a lengthy paper trail of arguments the administration has made in court. These arguments should take precedence over throwaway statements an admin rep might make to a news program.
Briefly, on a couple of them:
- "We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?" In the US, those people are known as "innocent," whether or not Weiss likes that fact.
- Holding a story until the administration is willing to go on record is exactly the same as giving the administration a veto over a story. We would not have adversarial journalism under these circumstances.
- "The admin has argued in court that detainees are due "judicial review" —and we should explain this" These men were sent for indefinite detention to a concentration camp outside the US borders, and then the administration argued in court that it could not affect any change in their status. This argument from Weiss is transparently false.
Bari Weiss is not a stupid person. She knows she can’t just openly say “I killed this because it’s critical to Trump”; she has to come up with some plausible fig leaf, which is what you’re posting here.
Much is being made of the revelations of the segment. I didn't see any.
Footage of CECOT is widely available as are interviews with former inmates. They allege effectively the same thing as what was claimed here by the accused TdA member. The Salvadoran administration is proud of CECOT and gleefully shows it off, including (as was shown in the segment) the solitary confinement cells.
There were no secrets revealed, nothing particularly new, and most importantly, nothing novel about the case of the accused TdA member. HN is acting like this segment revealed particularly damaging facts and therefore will be urgently scrubbed, but I'm not seeing anything new at all. I think the sentiment that the segment will be censored and we all have to run out and seed it is a bit hyperbolic. You can't try to hide CECOT's conditions when the people who run the prison happily give tours and show off what one might think they'd hide (punishment cells, for example).
There is no smoking gun, but more importantly there's nothing new in the segment that you can't already see in segments on Youtube. In fact, 60 Minutes used other people's footage of CECOT, not their own. Seed this all you want, but I don't think there's going to be a big push to make it go away. It reveals nothing that hasn't already been widely seen.
The difference is the show's audience and its perceived weight and impact. I, a millennial, will watch stuff on youtube and already know about what's happening. That's not relevant. This is about the boomer generation who watches sixy minutes and what they see and perceive.
Larry Ellison is using his bags to purchase lies and silence.
No economy can be in true equilibrium when the consumers send profits to be spent in unforeseen and unrelated ways like this. Every purchase carries potentially immense future costs that are almost completely opaque.
Free market maximalists need to confront this fact before praying at the altar of complete deregulation, and every consumer should pay more attention to who they are buying from.
What's free market about total state regulatory capture, calling the President when your bids get rejected, or setting up wars and domestic police actions to enrich yourself with contracts using taxpayer funds?
There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.
The Trump administration is absolutely not pro free market. They're putting fingers on the scale all over the place, taking Federal positions in private companies, taking literal bribes for regulatory favors, influencing the selection of executives and board members, and using the power of the state to attack privately owned companies for platforming speech they don't like (like this 60 Minutes segment, made by a private company). Trump/MAGA looks a lot more like the CCP than anything else.
Of course if you pay attention to the discourse, MAGA and national conservatism are an explicit repudiation of Reagan/Clinton "neoliberalism" and "libertarian conservatism." They explicitly support a large administrative state that centrally plans the economy and culture, just one they run and use to push right wing and nationalist agendas.
I remember saying back during the Bush years: if the right is forced to choose between liberty and cultural conservatism, they will throw out liberty. The right only supports the freedom to do what they think people should be doing. (Yes, there are similar attitudes in some parts of the left too. There are not many principled defenders of individual liberty.)
Edit: I'm really just arguing that we should call things what they are. Calling MAGA's CCP-like state capitalism a free market is like calling Bernie Sanders or Mamdani communism (they're socialists, not communists, these are not the same) or calling old school conservative republicans fascists. Words mean things.
The tariffs are at least partially about crony capitalism if you look how they have repeatedly played out. Announce big, broad, sweeping industry & country level tariffs. Talk to Big Tech execs, quietly delay/rescind specific sub-components or even companies from said tariffs. Rinse & repeat.
The companies left fully paying tariffs are the ones that aren't big enough to have the orange mans ear / "donate" to the ballroom construction.
Tariffs are not free market. A true free market would have zero tariffs.
And it would quickly be destroyed by competing governments that don’t believe in free markets and actively subsidize their industries to capture market share.
The US has been largely tariff free since the 1900s and it's the largest economy in the world.
Trump forced the UAE to buy $2 billion of his stable coin in order to avoid tariffs. He is making $80 million a year farming yields off that. The tariff nonsense was 100% just a backdoor for corruption.
Edit: and I forgot he pardoned the binance guy for facilitating this corruption too. Trumps pardons are the most corrupt in american history but MAGA is still yelling about the hunter biden pardon even though Joe was absolutely right that trump would maliciously prosecute him
It’s actually a lot of small to midsize manufacturers importing subcomponents that are getting hurt in the heartland. They can’t lobby for exemptions & don’t have the supplier negotiating power of the megacaps.
I've said this before, but Trump's form of tariffs are basically a firewall and paying tribute opens specific ports and addresses.
The recent defense bill is evidence of this. Who has access to these contracts and massive spending increases? Is it any random startup that is building a good product? Nope. It’s the incumbent companies that are big donors and the various defense tech companies from the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale ecosystem, who are ideologically aligned to the administration and support them vocally. Same with the new ICE and border agency funding. They’re tripling these agencies budgets. Who’s getting contracts to hire thousands of new agents or to build software profiling the millions they want to deport in 2026? Their friends like Palantir probably.
> There are legitimate criticisms of a pure free market, but this is "state capitalism" not a free market.
Yeah, that's what OP said. I hate these sort of comments where the poster acts like they vehemently disagree with what was said, but then just restate what was said in a slightly different way.
This should be higher, absolutely right
I think you're missing the implied cause and effect here. Lighthanded regulations allow for ridiculous amounts of wealth to be acquired in the U.S. Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, etc. are so unfathomably rich (and therefore powerful), they can now trivially bend government to their will.
Isn’t the cause that people just happened to elect someone who doesn’t care? Are you implying money decided the election? How do you reconcile this with the fact that trump was outspent?
I don't entirely disagree, but also note that the extreme wealth of both these guys is at least partly a result of state spending not pure private market forces.
Oracle has always had a huge presence in government. Large companies too, but Federal use has really helped keep them afloat as open source and competing products that are far cheaper have eaten their lunch.
For Musk the case is even more extreme. Tesla's early growth was bankrolled by EV credits and carbon offsets, which were state programs, and SpaceX is a result of both Federal funding and direct R&D transfer from NASA to SpaceX. The latter was mostly uncompensated. NASA just handed over decades of publicly funded R&D.
These two would probably be rich without the state, but would they be this rich?
The same was true back in the original Gilded Age. The "robber barons" were built by railroad and other infrastructure subsidies.
However I do agree that private wealth beyond a certain point begins to pose a risk to democracy and the rule of law. It's a major weakness in libertarian schemes that call for a "separation of economy and state." That's a much, much harder wall to maintain than separation of church and state. Enough money can buy politicians and elections.
As much as I don’t like Musk and think Tesla is overvalued meme stock and the cars suck compared to other EVs (I have driven a lot of EVs during the year that we went without a car on purpose - long story), SpaceX did something that the government couldn’t do - have a lot of failures before it had a success. Politics wouldn’t let it happen.
Let’s remember: Musk bought Tesla. He was already ridiculously wealthy in order to get himself into this position of basically robbing the U.S. government.
This is true but he was nowhere near as wealthy as he is now, not even close.
Of course. That was also my point, as I think it is yours. There is an event horizon after which an individual can corrupt government and really accelerate their wealth accumulation even faster.
Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests? This is usually handwaved away by socalists in the sense that everything is handled by "independent commissions" that can totally not be corrupted.
The solution is really to keep the scope of government small so that any corruption isn't detrimental to the populace, and they can handle it in the next election.
> Peel it back even more: how does any State not fall victim to monied interests?
Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate), or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
Edit: if the above are too extreme, another approach would be firm and consistent application of anti-competitive laws, resurrecting the fairness doctrine, and stop pretending that artificial constructs have human rights.
> or the CCP route (clip the wings of the Icaruses who fly too high).
This seems like a great way for the monied interests from WITHIN the party to just take full control.
> Go with either the FDR route (94% tax rate)
The reason why this worked is because FDR oversaw the US during a period of incredible change and after the Great Depression. It's not like the tax rate was responsible for his successes.
That's no solution, since once someone has corrupted said small government, the obvious next step is to use the influence to increase its size and power.
But theres a balance to be struck there — keep the government too small and weak and it is susceptible to corruptive forces from domestic and foreign enemies alike.
So imho it isn’t enough to simply keep government ‘small’ —it is also important to keep it the size proportionate to other potential threats.
It’s also important to keep in mind that size is but one dimension and is only being used as a proxy for power which is the ultimate factor that matters — a government of one person with control of WMDs can be much more of a threat than a large government without WMDs.
That's a solution. Another would be to enshrine in law independent watchdog agencies whose goal is to win trophies for rooting out corruption, reducing waste, preventing or breaking up harmful monopolies, etc.
> win trophies for rooting out corruption
Many a corrupt government has touted their anti-corruption activities that inexplicably seem to snare almost exclusively their political opponents.
How valuable are those trophies compared to bribes, or the tacit bribes of cushy "consultancy" roles? How do you stop lobbyists from gutting those regulators - what use is a fiercely independent regulator that has no resources?
Good governance is hard.
Small government leads to big capitalism which is its own kind of tyranny. Our current problems are not because government is too big.
Powerful regulation which answers to the people is the answer.
> The solution is really to keep the scope of government small
Of course. Politically active billionaires are always famously lobbying for large government and more regulations.
That's not a solution, that just removes an opponent of monied interests from the table entirely, it's exactly what they want. The only thing these people want more than a government they can capture is a government so small they can replace it entirely.
Which countries on the planet do you think are the least corrupt? What does their system of government look like?
There's a lot of these lists, but it's interesting the differences in who tops the list:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/least-cor...
Sorry what regulation in particular are you thinking about here? There’s no logical anti-trust angle I can think of.
I mean of course I think the outcome here is bad, but I’m struggling to think of a kind of regulation that could have prevented it that isn’t completely insane.
Edit: Listen everyone, it sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem. Adding more regulations is not going to suddenly make the FTC act right; we have thousands of regulations already on the books and if they wanted to do something, they could.
The whole point of granting limited liability is that it enables things that benefit society.
So if something doesn't benefit society, don't extend that grant to it.
Your prior seems to be that the Trump administration is operating in good faith and that they would naturally be predisposed to allow the merger, being free market republicans and all.
That's not the accusation at hand. The contention is that the Trump administration is threatening to block the merger (corruptly, in opposition to their republican proclivities) unless the news arm of the merged company is operated in a partisan way.
And the evidence for that is that Ellison walked in, threw out CBS News's pre-existing leadership, and brought in a reasonably-well-known-but-still-not-celebrity-enough-to-be-independent partisan republican voice to run it. And now that she's there, she's clearly operating the news room in a partisan way.
Seems like a pretty convincing theory to me.
In July 2025, the Ellisons bought CBS (Paramount) through Skydance. This was approved by Trump's FTC.
The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation. They aren't doing their job.
Were you saying the same thing in 2014 and 2015 too?
According to data from Thomson Reuters, 2015 is set to be the biggest year ever (once the planned deals close) in worldwide dealmaking, with $4.7 trillion in announced mergers and acquisitions—up 42 percent from 2014, and beating the previous record of $4.4 trillion in 2007.
The year stands out, not just for the total value of the deals but for the number of so-called mega-deals, which refers to any deal that exceeds $5 billion. Just in the last three months, notable mega-deals include AB Inbev’s acquisition of SABMiller, creating a $104 billion beverage company; Pfizer and Allergan’s announced a $160 billion merger; and the chemical companies DuPont and Dow Chemical Company’s plans to unite as a $130 billion company. Thomson Reuters counted 137 mega-deals last year, which accounted for 52 percent of the year’s overall M&A value.
whataboutism
Agreed. Let's also not forget that a large part of the reason that the Skydance/Paramount merger likely went through in the first place was because Paramount paid off Trump to the tune of 16 million USD by settling a lawsuit in which he alleged deliberate deception during his Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-p...
What existing regulation are you accusing the FTC of not enforcing? Is it illegal for a rich person to buy a company? It's not like he's cornering TV news or something. He's a minority player by any measurement (revenue, viewers, etc..).
Not a fan of Trump, Ellison, or obviously this expose being buried, but I am just trying to understand what the FTC did wrong.
> The FTC is responsible for enforcing regulations that would prevent mergers that negatively impact the quality of services and innovation.
I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US.
But whatever, it just seems like what you want is not more regulation (Trump is adding lots of regulation on solar and wind, that's good right?), but different regulators.
It sucks, but there's no "one weird trick" where you can have a congress, judiciary, and executive branch dominated by Republicans, that then makes them governs like Democrats. This isn't a "regulation" problem. It's a "roughly half the country wanted this" problem.
> I don't think this is the best summary of either the FTC's mandate from congress nor the antitrust laws in the US.
Okay well I basically copy/pasted from ftc.gov:
The FTC’s Bureau of Competition enforces the nation's antitrust laws, which form the foundation of our free market economy. The antitrust laws promote the interests of consumers; they support unfettered markets and result in lower prices and more choices.
https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-competi...
The Bureau of Competition is committed to preventing mergers and acquisitions that are likely to reduce competition and lead to higher prices, lower quality goods or services, or less innovation
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review
Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story:
Hi all,
I’m writing with specific guidance on what I’d like for us to do to advance the CECOT story. I know you’d all like to see this run as soon as possible; I feel the same way. But if we run the piece as is, we’d be doing our viewers a disservice.
Last month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed the horrific conditions at CECOT. Our story presents more of these powerful testimonies—and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable in and of itself. But if we’re going to run another story about a topic that has by now been much-covered we need to advance it. Among the ways to do so: does anyone in the administration or anyone prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured at CECOT? That’s a question I’d like to see asked and answered.
- At present, we do not present the administration’s argument for why it sent 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. What we have is Karoline Leavitt’s soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn’t there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing? Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don’t tend to be shy. I realize we’ve emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record.
- The data we present paints an incongruent picture. Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this. We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged? My point is that we should include as much as we can possibly know and understand about these individuals.
- Secretary Noem’s trip to CECOT. We report that she took pictures and video there with MS-13 gang members, not TdA members, with no comment from her or her staff about what her goal on that trip was, or what she saw there, or if she had or has concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?
- We need to do a better job of explaining the legal rationale by which the administration detained and deported these 252 Venezuelans to CECOT. It’s not as simple as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able to deport them immediately. And that isn’t the administration’s argument. The admin has argued in court that detainees are due “judicial review”—and we should explain this, with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding his authority under the relevant statute, and another arguing that he’s operating within the bounds of his authority. There’s a genuine debate here. If we cut down Kristi Noem analysis we’d have the time.
My general view here is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.
I am eager and available to help. I tracked down cell numbers for Homan and Miller and sent those along. Please let me know how I can support you.
Yours,
Bari
The whole thing is poorly-conceived and obviously false but I just have to call this out-
> Of the 252 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, we say nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a beat explaining this.
The story isn't that people found guilty of crimes went to jail, the story is that half weren't even charged with crimes! That's the whole point of the story! We should not be aiming for a balanced diet of criminals and not-criminals in our government-sponsored foreign death camps!
The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.
> We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?
What about charged? What does charged with a crime have to do with anything? Why bring that up at all? Do we send people to prison because they were charged with a crime? Is Bari Weiss a newborn baby who has never heard about the presumption of innocence?
I feel sick.
It’s not just that, it’s that the administration knew they weren’t guilty of any crimes and sent them to be tortured anyway.
If you can stomach it, propublica has been covering stories like this since the summer [1].
Meanwhile, the MS13 has been cutting sweetheart deals with Bukele [2] and we have been releasing actual gang members for the privilege of sending innocent people to the torture facilities [3, 4], even in the face of reports of USAID being diverted to the gang for a money-for-votes scheme for Bukele [5].
[1]https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-inte...
[2]https://www.propublica.org/article/ambassador-ronald-johnson...
[3]https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/ran...
[4]https://www.npr.org/2025/10/21/nx-s1-5580555/why-the-state-d...
[5]https://www.propublica.org/article/bukele-trump-el-salvador-...
And Bukele joked about it on TV, even as he knew these innocent men were being beaten, raped, and tortured.
Even the people who were convicted of crimes don't deserve this. There's this sick belief in parts of society that criminals (which becomes a permanent state of being) are valid targets for unlimited suffering.
People should not be sent to torture camps where they have no hope of every leaving for the rest of their lives for committing crimes.
I would ask you if you know the case El Salvador in enough detail.
If Bukele had not reached power, innocents would still be killed and dying in the streets.
They gangs were extorting business systematically, if you sold outside of your place they would kill you. You had to ask for permission to enter and leave your colonia to the gangs.
If a gang pointed at your sister and said "at 18:00 at my place" she'd better go or you do not know what would happen next, including revenge to relatives. I mean, yes, raping, and yes, killing.
None of these things I said are made up. There are lots of cases.
It is very easy to talk in the abstract but there is a reason why Bukele gets massively voted.
Nothing is perfect but before the exception state the gangs killed almost 80 people in a weekend to show Bukele who they were. Random innocent people.
No, El Salvador, unfortunately, did not have an option.
It will take one generation to make it a permanently safe place at least. In 30 years almost 80,000 people were killed in the streets.
It was a real horror. That is why Salvadoreans support Bukele. I think it os easy to complain from far but one must be there to really understand it.
I understand your argument, but the problem with Bukele is that he is a bad human being, too. A gang leader with slightly less proclivity for torture and rape than the other gangs.
He knows that he has many innocent people locked up in those jails. He knows that his deal with Trump is immoral and unnecessary for the safety of El Salvador, but does it anyway. His social media savvy relishes in his authoritarianism, rather than explains it.
Unfortunately, the dire situation you describe is how Authoritarians gain power: desperate populations struggling for multiple years with widespread societal problems that government has seemed too inept or corrupt to fix. 1930s Germany, 2020s Trump, El Salvador.
Her own excuse is either a complete lie or betrays the fact that she doesn’t understand the story. I invite her apologists here to choose which interpretation they prefer.
I’m into the full meal deal theory. Her own excuse is a complete lie, she doesn’t understand the story and somehow doesn’t even understand journalism. In this case, 60 Minutes asked the White House for comment and they refused. If a party to a story can kill the story by not being involved, that’s not journalism it’s PR.
We do unfortunately send people to long times in jail (sometimes over a decade) before their cases come to trial in the USA. And jails in the USA generally have vastly worse conditions than prisons (as they are "short term" facilities).
CECOT is a whole different beast altogether, though :(
You have to waive your right to a speedy trial. You cannot be held for years without trial
I was a jurist on a murder trial. The defendant had spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting his trial. Then went back to jail after the hung jury did not deliver a verdict.
Yes, but it does happen a lot. The case of Kalief Browder was one of the reasons for all the reforms around bail. [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalief_Browder
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/kalief-browder-c...
Sure, that's true. Let's say you file a motion, though. Say the cops beat a false confession out of you. You file a motion to suppress. Now you've stopped the speedy trial clock for a year, maybe two, while the motion is responded to, witnesses and discovery are sought, hearings are had, etc. You're stuck in jail that whole time.
Just like in theory the cops can't steal your stuff. But in reality there are more than enough ways around such little restrictions unless you are backed up by an expensive and powerful legal team.
Just fyi, this is from 2021, not could, but did, some up until the day they were pardoned never had a trial.
https://www.newsweek.com/accused-capitol-rioters-could-spend...
Or, does this not count for ideological reasons? There are at least some people out there that may be consistent despite tribalism, I suppose.
Well said, absolutely ridiculous framing keeps happening and you kept it grounded.
It's worth highlighting that continually driving focus onto a few spectacular examples of criminal histories is exactly how this regime has been justifying its actions.
> The fact that they exist at all is an affront to humanity, but to say "it's OK because a slim majority deserve it"- I just don't know what to say.
I think you don't understand MAGA mentality. Honestly, that's probably a good thing, but understanding MAGA would help understanding this whole situation.
This is an embarrassing response.
You don’t hold a story because you want to push the government harder to respond, especially when you have the executive’s official spokesperson giving a reason on the record already.
And what does she mean that we should spend a beat explaining that half do have criminal histories? She wants them to give a cookie for that? And why is being charged relevant? You don’t send someone to prison for life for being charged.
Lastly she misstates the administrations legal justification for deportation. She doesn’t appear to be an unbiased actor here.
The fact she sent that out publicly is a good indication of how prejudiced she will be with editorial content.
You had a good run 60 Minutes.
> Here's why Bari Weiss delayed the story:
That is not accurate. It's her excuse for spiking the story.
Basically saying that because the administration isn't cooperating with judicial reviews or even bothering to comment (let alone display a difference in opinions), the story should be shelved. So as long as the government is united in its desire to commit horrible acts and stall justice, I guess we shouldn't bother reporting them? Not sure where the logic is there. And I guess since it's possible some bad apples exist, then we should just take the word of the government that everyone there is a gang member? I wouldn't ever call 60 Minutes cutting edge journalism, it's quality for sure but they are never the first on the scene. Who cares if other media companies have covered CECOT? 60 Minutes got first hand interviews with detainees that have good backgrounds. That's important, it lets viewers empathize with "good" immigrants just trying to create a better life for their families. This letter is weak.
Having watched the documentary yesterday, the questions Bari raises are suitable for a follow-up. There is nothing wrong with the piece as it stands.
> The pictures are alarming; we should include them. But what does the analysis add?
The analysis shows another way in which the government is trying to be secretive about how it's treating people that were within its borders and subject to its laws and protections. I can only hope someone pointed this out because the question suggests a baffling level of ignorance despite the message overall sounding like some reasonable feedback on the story, despite coming far too late in the process to be considered reasonable.
A CYA letter full of illogical rationalization.
This isn’t the real “why”. Holding the release back is a political decision. Why hold the story specially? Why not just issue any corrections later? It’s already gone through the same approval process other stories would. The choice to do something different here and treat Trump-damaging stories differently is by definition, biased.
To me, Bari’s response is a manufactured cover up. I’ve followed Bari for years and seen the progression from someone who was a balanced moderate to someone who is slowly developing a strong bias and letting the mask off a little bit at a time. The recent Turning Point townhall was the first big revelation of her bias to the public. But as someone who subscribed to her for years, I’ve seen the progression over time. And the language in here feels less like her usual journalism and more like something carefully put together to deflect.
Here are the excuses Bari Weiss gave to bury the story.
The reporters reached out to the govt for comment. They chose not to respond. If you insist on holding off publishing until you have a comment you’ve just given the government the ability to block the story by endlessly delaying comment.
More broadly the problem here is simply that Weiss has no legitimate authority to make calls like this. She’s never worked as a reporter. The 60 Minutes staff have decades of reporting experience. The only reason she has the job is because a billionaire who is trying to curry favor with the administration installed her there. That context hangs over every decision she makes.
This seems dishonest, she couldn’t possibly think the administration is going to share more useful information here, and if they did it would have no value. These people were illegally sent to life in prison at a brutal torture camp with no charges or trial, at the expense of US taxpayers. There is no possible excuse or rationale that would make it anything but extremely illegal and unethical, and a betrayal of all of the values our country purports to stand for. It doesn’t matter what crimes someone is accused of or not.
That explanation is days late, though. It's attested that she didn't even take a call from the episode producer before killing it. I mean, sure, if you put a bunch of people in a room and ask them to retcon a reasonable-sounding explanation for why you did something embarassing, you can do it! The world is a complicated place.
It's abundantly clear why she spiked it. I know it. You know it. We all know it. She was brought in as a clearly partisan voice to put exactly this finger on exactly these levers at CBS. We all saw it when she was hired and we all warned about this. And she did.
I mean, why bother stenographising the excuse? No one is fooled. "Partisan hack does partisan hackery" is like the least surprising line in this story.
Thanks for posting.
For those not familiar: there were five screenings in the prior week that journalists attended to discuss it. She was aware of those and did not attend.
When she did look at it, her feedback was minor, and they made adjustments.
Then she killed it a day after her delayed feedback, on the weekend it was to air.
That context, combined with the response above, is telling.
She is at absolute best, entirely unfit and amateur for this role combined with dangerous arrogance.
More likely, she is the malevolent puppet of a billionaire ally of the current corrupt administration.
See also: Gleichschaltung.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung
Honestly, the argument that CBS buried the piece to protect Trump is difficult to accept because, well, watching brown people being treated like shit or even tortured is MAGA porn. Innocence or guilt is meaningless - Dear Leader said they're all enemies!
All the MAGAs I know on Facebook are posting about how the video is great ("It's about time someone does something!"), so I would think Trump would want the piece to air.
TLDR:
Bari thinks the government should be able to quash any story it wants by simply refusing to "present the administration's argument."
Exactly. You give people a reasonable chance to comment, but you can't let them veto your story if they decline. That would be a naive way to be fair and balanced.
Bari wisely points out that if the deportees are being tortured, then there must be a secretly good reason why if they dig a little deeper. Suggests asking Stephen Miller.
The timing of this might lead one to believe Paramount’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers Discovery is a consideration in their editorial decisions. They and their competitor (Netflix) need regulatory approval for such a merger and the administration has already inserted itself into the deal.
It goes deeper. The Ellisons want to replace Murdoch as the state media for Republican administrations.
Hard to imagine that's the a core part of it, and pretty naturally in America the clear ongoing and unprecedented (in modern times anyway) corruption on that front is the focus. But it probably doesn't hurt that she appears to just be a really big fan of that particular dictator and torture prison specifically. Earlier this year her site "the Free Press" was all over them [0]:
>"The hottest campaign stop is this Salvadoran supermax: House Republican Riley Moore went to the super maximum security prison in El Salvador to take some photos in front of the inmates. “I just toured the CECOT prison in El Salvador,” he writes, with pictures of him giving a thumbs-up, shirtless inmates standing at attention behind him. Moore gave a double thumbs-up in front of the men, densely packed in their cold metal bunk. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took the same tour recently, posting a fun video in front of caged, tatted men."
>"After Bukele left the White House, he thirstily tweeted, “I miss you already, President T.” Trump returned the favor, learning to say MAGA in Spanish: “¡America grande, otra vez!”"
Etc. And she's been very positive on Bukele personally as well. Might be multiple reasons she'd gleefully want to spike such a story even if the commands of her owners take precedent.
Edit: whew, this one sure triggered the technofeudalists and Baristans! From 3 to -3 for her own publication's and her statements.
----
0: https://archive.md/dcPkJ
I'm not sure how you can read that and think it is speaking favorably about the prison.
Here are some parts you left out:
> The El Salvador supermax prison is becoming the new Ohio Diner. It’s the new Iowa State Fair. It’s the new Jeffrey Epstein jet: It’s where every political leader needs to visit, the place to see and be seen if you’re ambitious and in politics today.
> They agreed that there was nothing to be done about the mistakenly deported Maryland man, now in Salvadoran custody. Two leaders of two great countries simply cannot find that one random wrongly deported man, and everyone should move along (I’m assuming that means he’s dead, right?).
Bryan Cantrill, "Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728
The specific lines about Ellison and a lawnmower start at 38:28 in the linked video; the entire Oracle rant starts at about 34:00.
We shouldn’t anthropomorphize any billionaires. They’re not even people at that point, just destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time.
We need confiscatory taxation for a better future.
Don't tell that to Paul Graham.
Whilst true, it’s important to focus on the worst ones first, as with everything there is a scale.
It's kind of saying we should only focus on the #1 mass-murdering dictator in the world, so while many of them are actively slaying people, lets just focus on #1 for now.
No, we can have many targets. People who hoard money for the benefit of themselves with the detriment of society and the population at large are all "destructive aliens who undemocratically ruin everyone’s good time" to borrow the words of parent commentator. If just 10% were slightly less evil and egoistic, it would lead to huge improvements, and only a slight reduction to their own lifestyles. That they don't, is a stain on the legacy of humanity.
The Ellison Cabal represent the primary enemies of freedom all over this earth. It's imperative to defeat them.
I have a feeling this will get DMCA-ed off of Internet Archive in an attempt to suppress it. Here's the infohash of the archive.org torrent download for future reference, this should allow the file to be retrieved in any torrent client as long as someone in the world is seeding it still.
8105370ed7dba50dc7ec659fd67550569b4dd8a0
here it is, in magnet link form:
(exported from my currently-seeding torrent client, then pasted into a separate torrent client, to verify that it works correctly)I left the high seas many years ago, but I'm down to seed for a cause.
What's the best torrent client nowadays?
Qbittorrent, Transmission etc. The Transmission daemon can be installed headless with negligible system load on a vast number of devices, from Raspberry Pi-like and smaller SBCs to Linux/BSD NASes, then operated from remote through the web interface or a phone app.
qbittorrent is still regarded as independent and safe, I think.
https://www.qbittorrent.org/
I’m still using it happily on windows/linux.
Don’t forget your vpn!
That brings me to the next thing: Taking VPN suggestions. What's the best? I like secure.
Edited to remove being a moron.
I pay for proton. It works. I’m not as security conscious as I should be but it’s pretty much a set and forget thing aside from changing ports.
Mullvad. The only VPN company I actually trust.
It's important though that Mullvad doesn't do port forwarding; you won't be able to seed effectively
Then you probably don't want a free service that costs money to run where they can only make money by converting most users to paid or monetizing your information in a country where you are unlikely to have an attorney whilst operating what amounts to a honeypot for every government on earth.
That said protonvpn seems reputable
That's a fair point that I arrived at once I put half a second of thought into what I was actually asking.
Mullvad
proton
qBittorrent
I’m of the opinion that would be mullvad.
RTings recently updated their reviews and seems to agree:
https://www.rtings.com/vpn/reviews/best/privacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i_BB2uFYYA
Hey there seed buddy... I'm about to become the fourth web seed.
We're not going anywhere.
—Hydra
It's ridiculous that this has to be done.
I'm honestly speechless. But thanks for the magnet link.
Senator Corey Booker’s YouTube channel posted the archived video about 9am EST. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiehEMlNiCI
It will be a second dose of Streisand if they do.
r/DataHoarder is already on it
Yup, reddit subreddit sure seems like a good place for "anti-american" discussions.
Where are the independent and non-VC fueled discussion forums when you need them?
Seeding :3
Direct Download link if anyone needs it is https://archive.org/download/insidececot/60minutesCECOTsegme...
Fascinating how this got leaked. A TV station in Canada accidentally ran the original episode version, implying that this was pulled super late and the episode was completely in the can.
It was completely finished. There's an article out today that says the main reporter on the story complained that the censor Bari Weiss had not bothered to appear at the previous five earlier screenings and reviews by the editorial team.
Was it an accident?
Probably as accidental as the people doing the censorship of the latest Epstein files released today that had "accidents" about how they censured stuff.
Narrator: It wasn’t
I recommend everyone bookmark the archive.org link or download via the magnet link since HN is disappearing these.
Also, any recommendations for a news site that doesn't suppress news? Asking for a friend.
It looks like mods manually removed flags for this one (it was flagged).
It's still already low on the front-page, when usually posts with that amount of upvotes would stay at the top for multiple days in a row.
> Also, any recommendations for a news site that does suppress news? Asking for a friend.
HN?
HN regularly suppresses news, including this news.
It doesn't feel like it's suppressing the news. Can you give examples of suppression? I'd say hacker news is very open to contrary ideas and disagreements.
If it's political, there's a good chance it gets flagged. The problem is pretty much everything is political when you have a government that sticks it's grubby little fingers where it shouldn't.
Have you actually ever browsed the secret “active” page where you can see what people are actually voting for without the mods putting their thumbs on the scale? It’s constantly filled with dead posts because someone said something that was vaguely unflattering towards Israel, venture capital, capitalism in general, the United States or Apple. Literally happens dozens of times every single day.
It's hardly secret—it's on the /lists page which is referenced in the footer of every page on HN.
It simply isn't the frontpage, for reasons that ought to be obvious to anyone who has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. How you guys turn this into sinister suppression continues to escape me.
Edit: perhaps this will help:
HN is designed to downweight sensational-indignant stories, internet dramas, and riler-uppers, for the obvious reason that if we didn't, then they would dominate HN's frontpage like they dominate the rest of the internet. Anyone who spends time here (or has read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) knows that this is not what the site is for. The vast majority of HN readers like HN for just this reason. It is not some arbitrary switch that we could just flip, if only we would stop being censoriously sinister. It's essential to the operation of the site.
(copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46366656)
The level of discrepancy between the rules as they are written and how things work in reality is miles apart. Every day.
That's inevitable, because consistency is impossible: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... How to interpret the inconsistency is a different question, of course. I'm curious what you see that seems most discrepant to you?
The closest I can give to an account of "how things work in reality" is the 80,000+ moderation comments I've posted over the last 10+ years: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang&type=comment&dateRange.... You're free to decide it's all lies, of course, but if you (or anyone) randomly scroll back through that feed, I doubt you'll find much that's miles apart from the rules as they are written. As a matter of fact I'd be surprised if you found anything that could be fairly be described that way, because trying to apply the rules as they are written is a matter of integrity for us. If it weren't, we'd change the rules until it were.
I had never really looked at the /lists page, which one is the one that you were thinking is secret actives page, best or probably active?
> Also, any recommendations for a news site that doesn't suppress news
No such thing.
Lemmy.zip
>Here is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her ‘60 Minutes’ colleagues in full:
https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2002943084322287815
Some more details:
https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2003109023705387478
https://x.com/grynbaum/status/2003209942057255073
For those of us without Twitter accounts:
https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2002943084322287815
https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2003109023705387478
https://xcancel.com/grynbaum/status/2003209942057255073
This is why we need archive.org.
Just wish it was distributed instead of such a US-centric organization. For survival, I hope they're thinking about how to make it more decentralized, because eventually the arm of the law is gonna come after them (again), and probably with less mercy this time.
Still a proud supporter of archive.org for many, many years. Their work is invaluable and I hope it stays around forever.
<https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-60-minutes-cecot...>
This is disgraceful [0], whatever your opinion on illegal immigration.
[0] deporting non-citizens to 3rd-party countries/prisons
Even calling it "deportation" is far too charitable towards what they've done. Deportation involves sending them back to their home countries or, if that's unsafe, to another country. These people were rendered to a prison where they're meant to spend the rest of their lives, without any of the due process even a foreigner who had committed a crime would normally be accorded in the United States under our constitution.
Great point and I'll add, by "would normally be accorded" you of course mean "is legally entitled to by our nation's foundational document."
Just to clarify - a prison without due process is more accurately called a "concentration camp".
"Prison" is for people convicted of crimes.
> [0] deporting non-citizens to 3rd-party countries/prisons
See perhaps United States Declaration of Independence:
> "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...
In this case there wasn't even any trial, here or abroad. Just sent to the torture gulag with zero process whatsoever. So its even worse than that.
Ah, but you see, they're not us. They're them.
Here's the magnet URL to the torrent, can't hurt:
I'm reminded of the Letter on Justice and Open Debate[1] that Bari Weiss signed only a few years ago, now she's spiking stories like this one on CECOT for showing the current administration in a negative light.
I also wonder if this story will get the type of leeway to stay on HN to collect the 200+ upvotes and 300+ comments of that previous example or if it will be flagged off the front page within minutes like so many other similar stories.
EDIT: No idea how long this post actually lasted, but checking in an hour later to see this has been flagged completely off the first 10 pages of HN despite getting close to that 200 point total.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283
Weiss got her start screaming about how various college professors should be fired. There has never once been a moment in her career where she seriously cared about open debate.
Indeed. Weiss came up as conservative troll and engagement farmer, and was hired as such by Ellison.
Or journalistic principles.
She was hired following the acquisition of Paramount to do things exactly like this. She's not a journalist.
Literally not a journalist. She went from the opinion pages to writing opinion on substack. And for "some reason" was put in charge of a news organization.
She has worked as a staff editor in newsrooms, most notably at Tablet. It’s not accurate to say her career has solely been in the opinion section.
Also, it’s not unheard of for people working on the op-ed side of the house to become editors in chief. Most notable example I can think of would be Katharine Viner at the Guardian. And in the reverse, James Bennet went from being editor in chief at the Atlantic to running the op-ed page at the NYT.
She's never been a reporter, and even in the kindest interpretation of her actions, it's starting to show.
Ok, so with charity she's a marginally qualified 150 million dollar aquihire? In journalism?
I wouldn't exactly use James Bennet as a successful example here.
Are you actually arguing that she was a qualified choice for this role at CBS?
You’d have to know the qualifying criteria to know for sure.
I suspect she was hired at least in part because she would be willing to take the heat for stuff like this,
Her upward trajectory has been facilitated mainly through pleasing select silicon valley billionaires by echoing their views back to them in her ironically named The Free Press outlet, which they also helped found.
This really is the future of journalism. Just make content that a few deranged billionaires like and rise up and up and up and up. CBS doesn't have to care whether ordinary people like it. What matters is the asshole with billions of dollars.
> most notably at Tablet
She is more or less an Israeli propaganda agent. She was hired at CBS because, after purchasing CBS from Zionist Shari Redstone, Zionist Larry Ellison and his son needed a reliable Zionist editor in chief. Weiss’ primary qualifications are her extremely pro Israeli career path.
Larry Ellison needed a woman like Weiss because he’s invested in Israel’s success. He’s both a close personal friend of Netanyahu and the number one private donor to the IDF. Netanyahu has declared US public perception of Israel as the 8th front of their war, and Ellison (with the help of Trump) is doing his part stateside.
Why we have so many powerful “Americans” exercising their power on behalf of a foreign country is the real discussion here.
Hundreds of comments and the only one speaking the truth is downvoted. Bari Weiss is unqualified and the only reason she was put into this position is to be a useful idiot for Israel.
A similar post with comments linking to this thread just got marked as a duplicate, taking it off the front page.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361571
Everyone who signed that letter was either a dupe or a fraud.
You gotta give us more than that
The signatories have spent years attacking free expression. A particularly acute case is when it comes to things like advocating for the end of israeli occupation in palestine, but there are many others. Whining about BLM is a particularly common approach for Thomas Chatterton Williams.
The signatories have generally continued to complain about censoriousness from the left even while the right wing is detaining people for their speech, insisting that media personalities be fired for their speech, insisting that people (including naturalized citizens) be deported for their speech, cancelling grants because they are too "woke", and straight up passing laws banning the teaching of certain topics in secondary and postsecondary school.
Weiss herself is a participant with UATX, a expressly right wing university that has fired people for not being sufficiently critical of DEI efforts.
Weiss also has a long history of efforts to stifle the public debate that the signatories claim to support. The first thing that got her notoriety was an effort to get various professors at Columbia fired for their speech.
I think you're really off base. A quick search about what Williams has said about censorship on the right seems to undermine your one non-weiss example [1]. There were more than a hundred signatories from across a fairly wide political spectrum (and the letter itself was anti-Trump). The handful of signatories that I follow have squarely denounced right wing censoriousness - I'm open to hearing that I'm seeing a non-representative sample, but you didn't provide any useful info on that front.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right...
Notice how this article frames the entire thing as caused by the left and happily ignores the fact that what is happening under Trump is not new. Were the excesses of the left the cause of the Stop Woke Act in Florida? The right has been screaming about firing professors since God and Man at Yale was published. In my opinion, this is not anything resembling a serious accounting of the threats to speech from the right.
And you can compare this article against the entire book that he published about the left's flaws this year. On one hand we've got an article critical of the right that finds the need to smuggle criticisms of the left in constantly and on the other hand we have a complete manuscript. You tell me where Williams is focusing his attention.
In terms of the actual topic, I would be shocked if Williams approved of spiking the CECOT 60 mins story, if it is in fact politically motivated as many suspect. And I'm not particularly a "fan" of Williams or anything, though I've heard him on a couple of podcasts.
But you're also making this point about all signatories being hypocrites because you seemingly have a big bone to pick with the amount of blame Thomas Chatterton Williams portions to each side.
So, can we see him writing about how this was a bad thing?
Williams is a public intellectual. What goes on in his mind is of much less importance to public discourse than what he writes.
Let me be clear. I believe that Williams is a hypocrite and I believe that the large majority of the signatories on the harpers letter are hypocrites. I mention him specifically because he was one of the people who actually wrote a lot of its text rather than just signing it, which makes him of particular interest for this discussion.
You can't understand technology without understanding the people behind it. I always wonder about all these non-bot people who support her: is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick? Is there something else? I never quite get it.
A once-reasonable friend of mine genuinely thinks RJK is just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer. Crazy
>is it that they're in on the grift and everyone understands that she's just there as a wink-wink-totaly-not state censor, or do they genuinely fall for her schtick?
It's both. That's one of the things that's difficult to suss out and therefore have a plan to engage. There's plausible deniability on both ends of that spectrum. Even in the high positions in the administration, there's a smattering of True Believers in amongst the grifters.
> just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer
As much as it would be comforting for all dudes who’re trying their best to pretend otherwise, the two are not mutually exclusive. (No opinion on whether RFK Jr is in the intersection—I’m not in the US and couldn’t affect his actions if I tried.)
Funny how it leaked out by sending it off to their Canadian distributor
Sadly, that's the kind of mistake that only happens once.
They’re going to increase intern pay? Surely you’re joking.
What, me worry? Plenty more creative mistakes still to be made…
Maybe not - ordinary people have been known to sabotage fascist regimes by making "mistakes". There's also the issue that incompetent people may be promoted well beyond their abilities due to them being "loyal".
Just another data point in the 'fascists are incompetent' trend. It's pretty lucky that one bug in the human firmware is moderated by another.
Funny how this is timed with the Susie Wiles “I’m an insider trying to do good” nonsense in vanity fair. That coont has been instrumental in so much bad stuff since Reagan…
Looks to me like it’s all damage control/pressure valve release stuff designed to distract from any real change. Because SURELY we will get some real change finally, right?? /s
Using the torrent, you should be able to pull it down in a few minutes.
everybody involved is evil.
Corruption is not merely something someone in power enacts in their choices; it is a rot that eats out the society from the inside.
As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
More and more of the society enters the grip of this force and weakens until the truly valuable things—its resources, minds, institutions—are annihilated, stolen, and displaced by a hierarchy of criminals or warlords. This is how nations sink. It’s the story of many in Africa, South America, Russia—and now it is our own.
Expanded and unbleakified:
Corruption is not just the immoral acts of an elite few; it is a parasite that hollows out society from within.
When the mainstream realizes that sycophancy toward the autocrat is rewarded, some willingly sacrifice their principles for short-term benefits, burrowing into the system like worms in an apple.
Yet, parasites cannot survive without a compliant host. To kill the infestation, we must cut off the food source: our passiveness. This begins with everyday refusals—denying the petty bribe, rejecting the convenient lie, and defending the honest colleague. By maintaining high ethical standards in our own spheres of influence, we starve the corrupt hierarchy of the dead matter it needs to grow.
We must also make the terrain uninhabitable for them. These organisms thrive in the dark, protected by silence. Therefore, we must actively expose them: documenting abuses, funding media samaritans, and organizing locally to demand transparency. When integrity becomes the standard again, the host becomes hostile to the parasite, isolating the invaders rather than letting them multiply.
Without this resistance however, the society weakens until its greatest assets—its resources, minds, and institutions—are cannibalized by a regime of criminals. This is how nations collapse. We have seen this story in Africa, South America, and Russia. This plague is now upon us. But history is not destiny. We possess the power to stop it. We only need the will to use it.
Well said.
America isn’t used to corruption. It hasn’t seen societal level rot that corruption can bring since at least WW2.
It’s a deeply damaging phenomenon.
> As individuals realize that nakedly appeasing the autocrat wins favor, they voluntarily corrupt themselves and others in hopes of advantage.
When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian. Now that this is no longer the case, the mindset of appeasing the leader is suddenly a problem.
The whole situation was preventable, but everyone was too high on ZIRP to notice. We could've used the good times to establish good cultural values, but we didn't. Freedom of speech and other foundations of democracy were already rotting long ago but nobody cared. We could've used the good times to allow better dialogue between different political fractions, but we didn't. At some point democrats honestly believed they would simply never lose power again, making it seem pointless to talk to republicans. Now that the money dried out, people suddenly start asking questions and talking about "muh big values".
I have zero empathy.
I’m curious which specific problematic values do you think were being adhered to and preached in the past, that was comparable to what’s happening in CECOT, and wasn’t opposed?
> When I pointed out that this is the work culture in most American corporations, I was told that is a feature, not a bug, because US government and most big tech at the time preached values in line with average white middle-class Californian.
It is a bit analogous to many of us worrying about Google and others getting so much power. The arguments were quickly dismissed with: "But these folks are responsible, don't be paranoid". The problem with this kind of thinking is, once the power balance changes, you find yourself in a situation you'd never put yourself now. You cannot make Google unlearn what they know about you. You cannot unsend the photos you privately shared on Messenger and force Meta to untrain their facial recognition models. Now all these things you considered a convenience given to you for free can be used against you, and the extend and direction of the abuse is correlated with who is in power.
If you had a corrupt state like that, one in which the bureaucracy, the media, and the institutions were controlled by a uniparty, what would it look like if they were challenged?
How thoroughly would they unite to destroy that challenger? Would you perhaps see apocalyptic and apoplectic stories published across the media, in sync with the press conferences of the political class?
Would they try to get people like you riled up and angry, and saying exactly the kind of things you’re saying here?
An all-powerful uniparty can do things like this:
Brother, you are looking for the deep state under every rock and it is out in the sunshine, smiling at you.Yeah, just look at Hungary or Slovakia how that can happen.
They would start to pardon criminals that conducted acts they like and fire the people that investigated those crimes. They would try to bring everybody to jail that oppose or upset them or have opposed them.
They win when challengers become too rare because others are afraid of the consequences to oppose.
What the Trump administration did regarding the Capitol storming on January 6th tells you everything you need to know. They strive for power and nothing else.
I believe you're trying to say the real oppressors were liberals and ideas like people having civil rights that were enforced were somehow oppressing others. Look at what Republicans are doing in reality right now that they're in charge in the us, they're doing all the things that you're worried about.
Ironically, this might end up being more widely watched now (Streisand). I’ve seen multiple people on my Facebook link to different sources hosting the video. People who never would’ve heard about the story are now watching it through the lens of Trump and CBS trying to kill the story.
I didn't even know 60 Minutes is still on the air, but you better believe I watched the shit out of this segment.
I doubt it, around ten million people watch 60 minutes live every week. Maybe that many will hear about the cancellation, but I don't think most will then seek out the full segment online, even if it's easy to find.
But who will believe it? Or just mass report it off the platform?
This, and Larry Ellison buying all news outlets in America. Things should be happening quickly enough so that it's obvious where this is all going, right?
Whoever writes the next "Inglorious Basterds" should have a lot of fun parodying Larry...
As a companion piece, here is ProPublica's recent report trying to determine who exactly was sent to this torture camp: https://projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-immigrants-trump-...
Another good piece from right-leaning Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salva...
Additional context:
> The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the men sent to El Salvador were overwhelmingly violent criminals; Pro Publica reported that the administration knew at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the United States, and six had been convicted of violent offenses.
https://www.404media.co/archivists-posted-the-60-minutes-cec...
This should NOT be flagged.
Too bad the only people that will watch this are people who already understand the terror of what is happening. It might have helped a little if it had aired. My MAGA dad still watches 60 Minutes (no idea why, habit?) This might have penetrated his TDS-addled skull if it had aired. But the takeover of CBS by Trump and Ellison (and his 1980's-college-villain son) with Weiss is complete, and vile.
In any media, people only see what they want. There's a psychological term for this, Motivated Reasoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
If you want to break this you have to know the person and ask key questions afterwards. Their distortion field is held together by beliefs and principles, not empirical analysis.
For instance, for my father, the question "how is this treating people responsibly? How can we expect the behavior of those guards to be held accountable?" would pierce this ... but really you have to know how the person doing motivated reasoning thinks.
His Dad will be smart enough to know these questions are trying to set him up. Maybe try having a real conversation and not trying to change his mind. After all, there is a good chance you will be that Dad in the future (no matter how hard you tell yourself you won't be). Tell me how I now.
I'm almost 50. I won't be. I have friends who are becoming grandparents now, still no interest.
I have half a century of talking with my father. If you think this is my first strategy as opposed to one that took years of therapy and personal struggle, I dunno what to tell you.
There's a wide body of social and psychological research on this stuff including multiple university departments (communication, psychology, sociology, management, teaching, etc) because "simply talking to people" doesn't actually work.
Thanks kristopolous. We have a very similar story (I'm a few years older). I think I'm at the "I've given up point" because his glee at others' suffering is just too painful to even address. So: he get's hellos at holidays and that's it.
Real conversations cannot involve one or more persons trying to change another's mind?
So does this apply to every single person all the time?
Nothing does.
It's about successful communication of authorial intent.
60 Minutes is not trying to say "Justice Served!" and shake pom-poms here. But, someone could read it that way, and it would be unintended.
I wasn’t aware that CBS’s Ellison is Oracle Ellison’s son.
TIL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ellison
Maybe suggest he watch? Maybe he's interested in what CBS's leadership refused to tell him.
Streisand Effect and all.
I debated asking, but I talk to him only a few times a year and we both work really hard to avoid politics. I realize it is my responsibility if I want to see change, but I just lack the skills.
Your (positive) relationship with him is way more important than trying to change his mind politically.
This parental situation is sadly repeated endlessly in the US. My dad is a wealthy retired tech executive whose mind was seemingly taken over by Fox News. He's kind of now in an anti democratic cult and he gets angry if he is even exposed to other news sources.
People in the US now have to use VPN’s to get access to domestic news from a foreign country. I think it’s fair to say that the wheels have come off democracy and things are badly broken.
There was a PBS doc about it too, CBS is just comprised
Frontline: https://youtu.be/Lku5h9xjrqc
PBS funding has been cancelled.
Federal funding has been canceled for now. PBS still lives on and who knows what will happen with the next administration.
Things are bad, but the worst part isn’t hidden/missing principled reporting, it’s that a significant number of people don’t care to attend to it where it exists, domestically or internationally. And a majority of US voters cast their ballot for this outcome, so in a sense it’s democracy working as intended, however horrifying any problems or outcomes.
Plurality of voters, narrowly, but still it's enough.
How many just vote Republican without thought as they have always done, how many are in the fox news cult? So many people just thought they didn't want a female president or Trump would lower inflation. It's hard for me to accept that Trump represents America, but he represents enough of it.
It's fair to say that, but first please verify your age to access these sites if you're located in the UK
Something I hadn't heard yet about CECOT: https://www.lemkininstitute.com/single-post/mass-grave-compl...
I found this quite interesting, but I don't understand how the articles claims we can see flesh.
And the author's Substack has 2 videos of Trump kissing and patting Bill Clinton's groin area (through pants). They are likely AI because I couldn't find anything online about how they're real besides the original photo. And if they were real, why is no one talking about it? He claims for one of the videos that it's real. So it kind of reduced the author's trustworthiness a bit.
It's worth noting that the founders of the Lemkin Institute have, between them, held multiple leadership roles in reputable academic departments devoted to the study of genocide, and have also both been on the ground during or shortly after genocides or other crimes against humanity as part of international teams tasked with figuring out what happened and how to hold perpetrators accountable. These are not some lightweight bloggers.
The US government, in particular Kristi Noem, Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio, are, by the logic of the legal power they themselves invoked, war criminals who rightly belong in the Hague.
For context, this report was suppressed by CBS News' new leadership, most likely to appease the US government.
A little more context if needed (free link):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...
Archive links are all good in the comments, but let's make the submission url one of the story links with context:
CBS defends pulling 60 Minutes segment about Trump deportations
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrnv3keeneo
or
‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...
The story is exactly that you can watch it on archive.org, most people already heard that it was pulled
I believe information wants to be free, and should be free, even when I don't unanimously agree with the information, so I will start by re-sharing the torrent magnet link for the video, which I am also seeding right now, and will continue to do so until at least a full month passes with zero activity:
That said, there seems to be lots of conspiracy-adjacent talk in here. Has anyone considered the impact of the previous Trump lawsuit against CBS over the Kamala Harris edits, or the Trump-BBC lawsuit, whereby CBS made a business risk decision to avoid a story that might have some individual aspects of questionable factual accuracy that could come back to bite CBS in a courtroom, like how BBC's selective edits of Trump came back to bite them? Paramount/CBS settled Trump's lawsuit over the Kamala Harris "60 Minutes" edit for $16 million in July. BBC is getting sued for $10 billion. It's not economically irrational for an organization that has already settled lawsuits for selective presentation of political information in the past to be more worried about $10b lawsuits than $16m lawsuits.Resisting these economic threats, these lawsuits, is something that major media needs to do, otherwise they just get compromised step by step by the wealthy oligarchs.
There are other links here as well: https://www.404media.co/archivists-posted-the-60-minutes-cec...
404media is shadowbanned from HN for nebulous reasons. The mods should really revisit this policy: they've been doing some great reporting recently.
A16z-backed Doublespeed hacked, revealing what its AI-generated accounts promote (404media.co)
so some slip through.But: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=404media.co sure has a lot of [dead]
I believe they all start out dead, and enough people have to vouch to make the article visible and commentable.
Don't forget that the mods tried to remove the reference to a16z from the title on that one.
I tried to make the title fit the guidelines and the character limit, then changed it when the community explained why it was important for A16Z to be in the title.
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
To answer your literal question of "why do people think..."
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
And I believe that the mods thinking that a16z was the least critical part of the headline such that it could be cut for space reasons is a huge concern. I'm glad that you changed your mind. But the fact that it was needed worries me and the fact that you can't understand why people were upset is worse.
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
> Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
I also got punished for calling it out. I'm rate-limited and can't submit new links. Guess Tom was being shifty by making it look like I "won" the arguement while being a dick behind the scenes with the moderation controls against my account.
This is false. Nothing was done to your account at that time, whereas rate-limiting was active on your account at least two weeks ago. Rate limiting is applied to accounts that do things like use HN for political/ideological battle, or post too many low-quality comments, both of which you've been doing. Here are some of the worst of the comments you've been posting in recent months.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460
The A16Z title issue was no great scandal. It was bog standard moderation, with attention and responsiveness to community sentiment and feedback. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Meanwhile, you post too many comments that break the guidelines and use HN against its intended purpose. HN is only a place people want participate because others make an effort to keep the standards up rather than dragging them down. Please do your part to make HN better not worse if you want to participate here.
"political/ideological battle" is usually interpreted to include posting things that make YCombinator or its affiliates or the USA look bad. Making YC or its affiliates or the USA look bad is also against the intended purpose of HN.
Edit: interesting how after posting this, all of my most recent comments received one downvote, including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question.
We actively intervene to ensure posts that are negative towards YC companies are not affected by usual downweights, and give them extra prominence on the front page. That has happened multiple times this week, including yesterday. We've never considered that the policy should also apply to other investment firms.
My own experience is that they've been solid throughout. Certainly better than many other options, at a time when the technical press has been generally disappointing.
Has there been any mention of reasoning behind it?
I asked last year and was told 404 is the source of too many copycat low quality posts and they have a paywall. In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page and driven interesting discussions.
Just to clarify for anyone reading. 404 does not have a paywall. They have an account wall. Some articles require you to be signed into a free account to read.
For comparison, the Wall Street Journal does have a paywall but is not a banned site.
And 404 is also not banned, right?
As a noob here on HN, that's what I gathered from your previous comment:
> In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page
So, a year ago, before my time, 404 media was moderated in a way that seemed like a ban, but now it no longer appears to be shadowbanned, is that what I'm learning?
Don't forget that complaining about paywalls is actually against the rules. So how did the site get that ban in the first place?
Because they've literally been creating stories about A16Z.
I've posted about some and they just get instaflagged or hidden.
There's nothing nebulous; there's no workaround for 404media's articles.
Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 - Sept 2015 (160 comments)
It seems to work for me? https://archive.ph/sr0sd
Maybe that's new? Either way, great to know.
Thanks for sharing. The way things are here, this will soon be censored - sorry, I meant flagged - here as well.
Attentive readers will note how often the "this will be censored" comments appear in threads that spend many hours on HN's frontpage.
I get the irony, but its a bit meaningless since we can't compare the quantity of these (yet) uncensored posts with those that have been taken down, and thus aren't visible.
More importantly, other commentors here have already admitted to flagging this entry. The way flagging exists now rewards one-sideism and partisan behaviour - all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters. A counter-flag option would balance things.
> all it takes is a relatively small group of discontented people to take down a story that is otherwise interesting to the vast majority of posters.
That's not accurate, because if a story is interesting to the vast majority of users, it will get lots of upvotes—and lots of upvotes is enough to defeat a small number of flags. In that sense, we already have the counter-flag option you're arguing for.
What was the ratio of upvotes to flags when this was taken down last night?
How long before Hackernews takes this one down?
It's wiped from the front page already
And it's back.
I typically `flag` a dozen hn posts, daily, within the first five pages (12of150 ~8%). Usually it's because the linked article has nothing to do with hacking, like this one.
But for this thread, despite qualifying within that 8%, I have chosen to upvote. My reasoning is that this policy of deportation is heinous — representing a failed regime's last gasps for relevancy — which will affect USA's reputation, economy, safety, R&D, and technical innovation.
We absolutely need immigration reform, but not like this.
—Shamefully Embarassed American
You should probably revisit the guidelines, as your flagging policy doesn’t align with HN guidelines:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[flagged]
Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how wrong another comment is or you feel it is.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The story here isn't about immigration, it's about government censorship pressure on US media companies. Which I think fits that guideline.
> unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon
See the funny part about those guidelines is the part where it says "If it's on the news, it probably is off topic"
Which is funny, see, because this video wasn't on the news! How nice of CBS to ensure it didn't hit the news so we could talk about it here.
I think people might be missing the hack here, because the front story is such an ongoing political (and moral) football.
The hack is in the leak, and the sudden availability, of the video segment, across international borders, against the Weiss will (and apparently against the Ellison and Trump will), rebounding back to us in the US via the good graces of https://archive.org and via some true journalistic (or political) chutzpah.
That's what drew me to this page, to learn more about how presumed underhanded corrupt billionaire-sanctioned censorship was defeated by an innocent premature distribution.
Stand with me as I rise to sing O Canada!
State-controlled media in the US is a new phenomenon
Did I miss sarcasm here? I honestly can’t tell.
Thank you for those guidelines.
>anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity
So, porn, then? Surely there must be limits.
----
From those same guidelines:
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime
> So, porn, then? Surely there must be limits.
Believe it or not, this mod comment from 5 years ago addresses just that:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087737 (May 2020)
The, er, money quote would be this:
When we say "interesting" we mean intellectual interest, not all kinds of interest or curiosity. For example, there is social curiosity (the sort that powers celebrity gossip). There is political curiosity (wanting to know how one's side is doing against the other side). There is sexual curiosity (no comment needed). These things all have their place, but not here. On the other hand, there can also be overlap with intellectual curiosity, in which case it's fine, though the bar is higher in some cases than others.
There's a lot from @dang about how the site goal is optimizing for curiosity and what that means in practice.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
The qualifier "most" is very important there. Certainly opinions can differ as to what should fall under "most" and what shouldn't. But citing that line to justify flagging a politics-related story isn't a good argument.
To be clear: I have not flagged this post
Yep - I totally got that from your original comment.
I did think to myself "I hope they're using the Richard Feynmann/MIT Model Railroad Club sense of the work "hacking" there, not the "dude in a hoodie in front of a green on black terminal" sense. HN, for me, for over a decade, has been a source of intellectual curiosity provoking links, not just software/computing related stuff.
¿Porque no los dos?
My attendances at DEF-CON have been mostly grey-hat [0]. I don't really care about downvotes just here to spread knowledge on topics I find interesting.
Thanks for the sanity/perspective.
[0] I'm in the XX documentary, and have been on stage (as have many friends), but never as an official speaker. In a former digital life, I ran a lockpicking youtubey with millions of views.
>So, porn, then? Surely there must be limits.
Pretty sure HN has discussed porn, the porn industry, sex work, sex workers, etc tons.
For example you can find in my history on posts about how porn access is being restricted that the "They have more fraud" claim is likely false and claimed in bad faith, and in fact Pornhub has been so removed from the payments industry that they now seem to have grafted themselves onto the internet gambling industry to make money, which is just awful. They have not turned to crypto payments because they just don't work, which is interesting to discuss.
But you would never see any of those discussions if you banned from the front page anything that mentioned porn.
Do you see how that works? Interesting discussion is about who is discussing, not about what is being discussed.
IMO the topic guidelines are entirely the wrong way to ensure meaningful discussion. All they have done, as clearly evidenced by the time HN tried to outright ban politics, is provide ample fodder for people to shut down discussions they were never going to participate in and contribute to anyway, and force people to have less interesting discussions about "Does this belong here", despite the guidelines themselves saying "If it's here, it belongs here"
HN also bans a lot of meta discussion which is crap, as talking about the sneaky and intransparent parts of HN, like the Orange Nametag cohort, would be interesting to the constant influx of new accounts.
I for one would also find deep dives into moderation or site meta information to be very interesting. I deal with abuse prevention in my day job, so seeing how others experience that abuse and deal with it would be not just interesting to me, but downright educational.
Meanwhile, HN is full of "I slapped an LLM into someone else's open source code" as if that is interesting at all. The entire point of vibe coding and agents etc is that anyone else could do that just as easily. So it seems "being interesting to hackers" just isn't the actual desired content.
There's also some other relevance to tech here, given the role of the Ellisons in all this. It's quite possible the decision to pull the episode came from them. Paramount is trying steal Warner Bros out from under Netflix and is working the Trump admin hard to prevent the deal, even supposedly by telling Trump he can decide who gets hired/fired from CNN.
Andreessen was directly involved in the rise of Bari Weiss too.
* * *
Why all those articles on HN are "flagged"? And by WHOM?
I've been watching this 60min piece, and there's nothing wrong with is. It's journalism well done.
Do Trumpist minions have their ways on HN?
It's almost assuredly paid actors, the kind who brigade every single comment section no matter how piddly the outlet anytime there's a peep of pro-Palestinian, pro-abortion or whatever the culture-war generals are focusing their troops on.
Tbh HN does a _lot_ better dealing with this than pretty much anywhere. Yes HN has the flagging feature so of course it will get abused but as evidenced by this article sitting now at the top of HN, it gets addressed by moderator intervention, regularly.
Why do you think "paid"? These people are acting on their honestly-held ideological beliefs. Don't give them the out.
It's not paid actors.
It's partisan hacks who are somewhere on the spectrum between full support of this barbarity, and finding all the other shit that's being done useful enough to them to be worth compromising their values.
The latter can be identified by 'Well I don't agree with everything this administration does, but I will throw my full support behind <one of the many wedges they are using to turn this country into a corrupt single-party autocracy>.'
(They won't push you onto the tracks because they hate you, they'll push you because it means they'll see a 0.7% drop in their expected tax rate. They are in most ways, worse than the former, because they can tell the difference between right and wrong, and still carry water for the latter, because they see personal benefit in it.)
>> I've been watching this 60min piece, and there's nothing wrong with is
It's not even that good of a story IMO; leading to full-on Streisand effect when it's easier than ever to find things on the interwebs, and double-impossible to suppress them. About all this has done is prevented the 60 minutes demo from viewing a story they would have immediately forgotten, and prompted a far more dangerous to the status quo & resourceful segment to go find & view a show they never watch.
There is a strong ideological lean on HN towards not necessarily the trump ethos, but more toward the technofeudalist ideal, which is currently broadly aligned with trump on many issues. It's also trumpisim in a more sophisticated hat, but it's adherents don't seem to think so.
Everyone here tries way too hard to emulate the Musks of the world as if their political beliefs were the reason those guys initially got so rich and successful.
It's even more craven and intellectually bankrupt than Trumpism, which at least has the simple honesty of "say good thing make good thing happen" and is broadly believed by people too stupid to know better.
Don't forget the very right wing fake "free speech" insistence, where speech you agree with is free and speech that criticizes your failures is "An attack".
Or the huge cohort who insist that Joe Rogan talking to another guy about how it's not that big a deal that the very existence of gay people is yet again under attack is "Two people having a calm debate of their difference in beliefs" despite that not being true.
There are tons of people on HN that would have done better to spend more time in English class learning about persuasive writing and the pillars of rhetoric and media literacy and all that "critical thinking" they claim school didn't teach them and are currently angry when people rightly call out their poorly supported arguments, and they don't actually seem to know what an "argument" even is.
It's so frustrating their faux "debate" beliefs. It's worse than a decade ago when they thought "debate" was screaming at your ideological opponents a hundred outright false claims that can't be countered in a reasonable time frame.
Nevermind that we HAD calm debate about most of this shit decades ago. But these people only believe a "debate" happened when their beliefs are validated. Otherwise it's "canceling" that thing they still scream about despite doing it all the time.
Also the idea that we should have "calm debate" about the government sending you to another country's prison without trial is insane when that was specifically one of the exact reasons the founding fathers decided to start shooting people over. Thomas Jefferson would not be calm in his rhetoric.
and unsurprisingly, this is getting downvoted, despite being extremely accurate
It only takes a few flags to be effective and there are definitely more than a few Trumpists on HN so theoretically yes. Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
Like it or not Hacker News has never been (and will never be) a platform for free and open debate. It's designed around aggressive curation for quality over quantity and that makes it very easy to brigade by design.
> Could also be the likely much larger contingent of people who flag all "political" and "non-technical" content by default.
It could, but that'd be odd. We've seen oodles of structurally similar posts hang out on the front page unflagged before. There are even past examples of major posts criticizing the journalistic integrity of 60 Minutes. Only once the material becomes critical of the regime does it become flagged.
I upvoted the story itself, but the endless comments discussing flags on HN are a bigger nuisance than the occasional community-flagged story.
I am tempted to go over each such complaint on this page (there must be a couple dozen so far) and reply "Quiet, please! People are reading."
Marc Andreessen is a strong supporter of Trump.
Shut up or they will send you there ( by mistake for a year or two )
Lets be more accurate: none of the powerful & rich are strong supporters OF trump; they support him strongLY because of the direct pay-offs they personally gain. I think it's important to differentiate between the Andreessens and your core MAGA supporter who I actually believe he is a god, because strategies for defeating them are very different.
> none of the powerful & rich are strong supporters OF trump; they support him strongLY because of the direct pay-offs they personally gain.
A distinction without a difference.
"I stabbed you in the back because I wanted to steal your watch, not because I disliked you personally."
Nah, I genuinely believe that Andreessen believes much of what Trump believes.
The oligarchy is in full effect. This is exactly how it works, ie you scratch my back I scratch yours. Ellison kills this CBS report, he gets approval on buying WBS, or more to the point NetFlix doesn't. Same with Musk, Middle East dictators and all the others lining up for favors from Trump. Also he and his family is enriched in various ways by all the pardons he hands out.
It's nauseating, but this is where Republicans live these days. The midterms can't come soon enough.
why is this on HN ?
The answer to this question is always that enough people find it interesting. If you don't find it interesting, then please refrain from posting questions like that.
Because this is a very public example of the high level attempted censorship of us news media by people who support the current government. Disastrously, most of the major us media outlets have been bought by wealthy oligarchs who are politically aligned with the president and there's an active process of censorship.
It's actually true that at CBS News Bari Weiss was installed as a political minder to make sure that reporters don't do anything conservatives don't like.
This is also relevant because plenty of these would be censors are wealthy silicon valley conservatives.
It’s saved so over 15,000 lives and protected the human rights of millions of Salvadorans. Truly a great accomplishment.
I’m excited to see what positive coverage CBS has of this great development in human rights in El Salvador.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Don't expect anyone to care about that angle. Let them virtue signal like somehow human right concerns of violent criminals is more important then the safety of the entire population of el salvador. Safely insulated from the consequences of their misplaced humanity of course. To be clear i saw a documentary of CECOT and it looks terribly oppressive, but i see no evidence of human rights abuses, even though most of the inmates there have forfeited theirs through their actions imo.
It is a total propaganda both ways and if you don’t see that, you’re not looking clearly. Of course it’s absolutely unacceptable to be sending nonviolent illegal immigrants to a terrorist detention center. But then you watch the episode and of course 60 minutes decides to spoil it and not do real reporting by having an immigration lawyer say they are all nonviolent criminals, which is obviously also total bullshit
The report did not say they were all non-violent criminals. It explicitly said some of them were violent criminals.
“propaganda both ways”
Yuuuuuuup sure is no reason this is happening on archive.org and torrent.
Nooooooo reason the story was Epstein Filed.
No reason at all…
Why don't we round up every single person in America then? Many are violent criminals afterall! /s
The lack of due process is what's at issue here.
Bari Weiss had editorial comments that forced a delay. If you want to read her comments, look for them:
https://x.com/thesimonetti/status/2003142908854313225
They seem reasonable. The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories in the past, which make her concern more relevant.
Reasonable? They ALL boil down to "we need to get official comments, rationale and explanations from the administration". They refused to comment on the story, so you wait because if they CHOOSE not to participate you don't get to publish? That's never been how reporting works. Her comments about a lack of detail regarding the criminal records & charges? The administration is the party that refuses to share this! They are not even forthcoming with WHO EXACTLY has been deported.
Bari Weiss bending over backwards to accomodate an administration that has never shown any sort of honesty or humanity is exactly why she was rewarded so handsomely. "They seem reasonable" is not even remotely close, when comparing "evidence-based truth" reporting with the president's "I speak the truth".
They aren’t reasonable.
If you wait for the administration to comment on a story before you publish it you’re effectively giving them the right to veto it. You ask, give them a deadline. If they don’t respond or say no comment (as they did in this case) then you publish.
> The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories in the past
You’re going to need to elaborate on that. If it were true why wouldn’t Weiss just fire them?
The arguments are nonsense. A summary is Weiss wants to make a case for the administration, which already has the largest platform in the world. If the administration wants to make a case for itself, it has (and has had) ample time to do so. As it stands, there is already a lengthy paper trail of arguments the administration has made in court. These arguments should take precedence over throwaway statements an admin rep might make to a news program.
Briefly, on a couple of them:
- "We then say that only 8 of the 252 have been sentenced in America for violent offenses. But what about charged?" In the US, those people are known as "innocent," whether or not Weiss likes that fact.
- Holding a story until the administration is willing to go on record is exactly the same as giving the administration a veto over a story. We would not have adversarial journalism under these circumstances.
- "The admin has argued in court that detainees are due "judicial review" —and we should explain this" These men were sent for indefinite detention to a concentration camp outside the US borders, and then the administration argued in court that it could not affect any change in their status. This argument from Weiss is transparently false.
> The person doing this 60 minute segment has also pushed false stories
[citation needed]
Bari Weiss is not a stupid person. She knows she can’t just openly say “I killed this because it’s critical to Trump”; she has to come up with some plausible fig leaf, which is what you’re posting here.
Much is being made of the revelations of the segment. I didn't see any.
Footage of CECOT is widely available as are interviews with former inmates. They allege effectively the same thing as what was claimed here by the accused TdA member. The Salvadoran administration is proud of CECOT and gleefully shows it off, including (as was shown in the segment) the solitary confinement cells.
There were no secrets revealed, nothing particularly new, and most importantly, nothing novel about the case of the accused TdA member. HN is acting like this segment revealed particularly damaging facts and therefore will be urgently scrubbed, but I'm not seeing anything new at all. I think the sentiment that the segment will be censored and we all have to run out and seed it is a bit hyperbolic. You can't try to hide CECOT's conditions when the people who run the prison happily give tours and show off what one might think they'd hide (punishment cells, for example).
There is no smoking gun, but more importantly there's nothing new in the segment that you can't already see in segments on Youtube. In fact, 60 Minutes used other people's footage of CECOT, not their own. Seed this all you want, but I don't think there's going to be a big push to make it go away. It reveals nothing that hasn't already been widely seen.
The difference is the show's audience and its perceived weight and impact. I, a millennial, will watch stuff on youtube and already know about what's happening. That's not relevant. This is about the boomer generation who watches sixy minutes and what they see and perceive.