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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

No. Nope. Not true. Mostly, anyway.

Follow https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar, look at some of the links from Twitter and click around a bit and you'll find plenty of IS sympathisers.

However, Twitter is fairly active in shutting them down nowdays. What most do is keep a Tumblr with a link to their Twitter account, and link their Tumblr from Twitter. Then when one shuts down they can reestablish from the other.

I'd be surprised if IS aren't using Telegram though. They are pretty active on every other social platform.

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While I really do understand the logic and reasoning for censoring hate, vitriol and those sympathizing with such movements; overall I do not think this is taking humanity down a good path.

Consider that the US and Israeli Governments are responsible for far more loss of innocent lives per year than any of these terrorist groups. Except here it's framed in the fight against evil, protect the people, spread democracy form which I guess makes it okay?

When it comes down to it if we accept that our platforms for discussion of the world around us are to be limited to the good forms (someone will decide for you which forms are good) than the terrible world has already won, and to me personally it makes no difference whether the innocent are dying by military sanction of some general's order or due to the influence of some crazy preacher.

there is no good path. it is the will to power

> Consider that the US and Israeli Governments are responsible for far more loss of innocent lives per year than any of these terrorist groups.

That might possibly be true of the US government, given it's at war in plenty of places, but AFAIK israel is only in one theater, and the death toll among palestinians in 2014 (the highest number in recent times) was reportedly 2300[0]. Citation needed?

ISIS is reported to have killed a lot more people.

Also, israel mostly states "we will defend ourselves", and so does the US. As much as that might be BS, it's not as bad as ISIS explicitly stating it wants to erase other cultures.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/27/israel-kills-mo...

Yep the entire Arab-Israeli conflict with all of it's wars cost less lives (on both sides) during the past 70 years than one year of the Syrian civil war. When it comes to loss of lives the Arab-Israeli including the conflict with the Palestinians is pretty much a non-issue compared to other conflicts that happen all the time in the world.

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

The problem like always is media focus and over-reporting, I've met actual people that believed that Israel killed millions of Arabs, I've have gotten figures that were higher than 10M from some people and they even quoted "sources".

Same goes for the war on terror people said that the US killed more people than the German in WW2 and some of them actually believed it.

And this is a big issue it's hard to discuss a conflict that people think costing millions of lives where in actuality only about 24,000 people (both sides) died in since 1948, and once you've settled in your own little world of millions of deaths it's hard to take in numbers that are less than a football game.

Yeah it's cool, let's ignore pan Arabic imperialism and Islam mass murdering people so we can paint Israel bad.... In a thread about the group of people that sold and raped 6 year old Yazidis...

I agree the first and third of your paragraphs. The second I'm ignoring.

I think in the future you could be well-advised to consider what point you are trying to make. In this case, your (quite sensible) point about censorship of social platforms was overshadowed by a (unnecessary in that context) point about the actions of other powers.

You should note that's the only thing that's being discussed, and (as usual) no conclusion is going to be reached.

If you are happy with that, fine. But I think your other point was much more worthy of attention.

BBC has lost a lot of credibility lately with the British public. All because of stunts like this: inaccurate, opportunistic reporting. They chose to downplay Corbyn's rise to prominence (he's our equivalent to Bernie Sanders), over represented right-wing figures and have chosen not to cover key issues the masses are talking about -- not too dissimilar to how the mainstream US press hasnt been covering the millionmanmarch this weekend.

The irony is that in Conservative circles, the BBC is criticised for devoting too much airtime to Corbyn and his band of swampies, who are woefully unpopular outside the vegetarian dreadlocked middle-class Islington set. Seems like the BBC can't do anything right.

Key point being "Conservative circles" , which lets face it arent very big. The conservatives were dreadfukly movked and ridiculed when the arrived in Manchester last week. Most of the working class cant stand them.

Well, except that most of England voted for the Conservatives in the election just a few months ago. They are hugely, yet quietly, supported and popular in any area of Britain that isn't deprived.

Manchester, Bradford, Luton and their ilk are all bastions of welfare recipients so it's hardly surprising that the Conservatives aren't popular there.

> except that most of England voted for the Conservatives

They got a 36% share of the vote, on a 66% turnout.

Let's face it - in this year's election eleven million people decided they could stand them which is why there's a Tory government. How is a group of protesters outside a party conference evidence for your point?

I'd be inclined to say that if everyone is complaining about the other side getting too much coverage, the BBC are getting things about right.

Stoking a political flame war isn't a smart idea on HN.

It's worth remembering that comments are fixed and non-editable after only a little time and that such comments will come to be permanently associated with you even if you only meant them in a very conversationally temporal way.

Definitely want citations...

BBC credibility is high, much higher than almost any other media outlet (its main rival ITV runs late night shopping channel and studio roulette games - it's embarrassing)

It is true that most if not all mainstream media outlets are run by, edited by, well educated, well informed, London bound media types - it's amazing that they do report anything people care about.

However I would still prefer editors with 20 years cynicism and experience over the HN algorithm - I use it to look around but if I wanted to follow everything HN recommended I would be blind.

(Actually an interesting idea - is a daily digest of most commented / upvoted stories going to represent the editorial power of HN?)

The BBC definitely lost some credibility with "Yes" voters in last years Scottish Independence referendum - they seemed pretty strongly biased in favour of the status quo which, of course, supported a "No" vote.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13420666.BBC_criticised_o...

NB I've been a huge fan of the BBC for pretty much my whole life, particularly Radio 4, so I was actually fairly shocked by the coverage in the last couple of weeks or so before the poll. It does rather raise the "well, if they are biased on this what else are they biased about" question.

But where is the evidence - for example does the Beeb supply their subtitling, can we use sentiment analysis on their entire output? Surely some media studies centre in a university does this?

Watch till end: http://youtu.be/XHGDDMAP5qU

Note: this is one example of many

Yeah, ok. A middle class interviewer makes a mistake informed by her own perceptions - it is corrected (on air?) - and again, where is the complete record of their complete output?

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