2022-11-24 - Zachary Fishman of NewsGuard: Press inquiry: NewsGuard review of KiwiFarms.net

[I hate children?]

Zachary Fishman has no intention of being neutral or truthfully reporting about Kiwi Farms. His passive-aggressive questions, annoyance with user anonymity, and employment with NewsGuard is a dead giveaway about what he is really up to.

Fishman works for an entity in a partnership with the Department of State and that was paid $750,000 by the Pentagon in exchange for access to NewsGuard's 'Misinformation Fingerprints' project. This project is essentially a database of news sites NewsGuard has arbitrarily decided is spreading misinformation,but there is an established pattern of bias against sites they rate negatively. They continue to face criticism because their claim to be an independent, unbiased fact-checking source is blatantly false in light of government funding and obvious bias.

I do find it amusing that this guy and NewsGuard consider Kiwi Farms a news source.

 

[whatever I feel like]

As a pro-choice activist I take offense at this scumbag trying to remove agency from Chloe, Julie and byuu, hands off their bodies, sir.

 

[Unique User Name]

I'm going to start posting press contact I receive.

Please do, though you'll probably get more journo inquiries than subpoenas, then you'll have to rename this place: Teach My Retarded Ass About the God Damn Internet.

I am increasingly convinced that "journalism" has just become a way for the upper class to shepherd their failures off into a containment profession where they'll still get paid ok but can't do real damage.

This is so fucking true it hurts, they are all the same fucking person. Still an NPC but more like the NPC in Sim City 2000 that keeps screaming "YOU'LL REGRET THIS" at you.

3. Can we add a NewsGuard certification to individual users?

When users are no longer Fresh Meat it should change to NewsGuard Certified Meat.

 

[MuuMuu Bunnylips]

ALSO, my avatar pic is from World War One, and I’m a Polish American. Don’t you dare call me a Nazi.

That makes sense: only a Polack would bring a spear to a gun fight...

 

[SpergioLeonne]

That makes sense: only a Polack would bring a spear to a gun fight...

You should read up on it. A lot of armies issued hollow steel lances to cavalry units.

I got interested in it because one of the Battlefield games had them in it

 

[AnOminous]

You should read up on it. A lot of armies issued hollow steel lances to cavalry units.

I got interested in it because one of the Battlefield games had them in it

Also I'm pretty sure that specific one is actually German.

They had them early on in World War I but they probably weren't very effective so they mostly stopped using them.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Also I'm pretty sure that specific one is actually German.

They had them early on in World War I but they probably weren't very effective so they mostly stopped using them.

Lances were still efffective against regular, non motorized infantry up to ww2, when most machine guns were installed in prepared positions (behind sandbags, etc).

The point of them in ye olden times was to break formations, and around the time of this pic, it was modified into being a thing to flank infantry and force them to leave cover. Still pretty effective at that small role, it just became impractical as tanks flourished and didn’t give a fuck about horses trampling 60 tons of steel

 

[AnOminous]

Still pretty effective at that small role, it just became impractical as tanks flourished and didn’t give a fuck about horses trampling 60 tons of steel

Not much use when WWI basically devolved into endless trench warfare where even poking your head out into view usually resulted it in getting blown off immediately.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Not much use when WWI basically devolved into endless trench warfare where even poking your head out into view usually resulted it in getting blown off immediately.

The eastern front was an absolute meat grinder

 

[Miss Tommie Jayne Wasserberg]

Zack Fishman hasn't replied to either of my inquiries yet.

 

[Pedophobe]

Zack Fishman hasn't replied to either of my inquiries yet.

I don't think he intends to, but did you email him or just reply here?

 

[Miss Tommie Jayne Wasserberg]

I don't think he intends to, but did you email him or just reply here?

i think he's going to need to or I'll approach his editor. i emailed him and messaged him at facebook.

 

[JamusActimus]

i think he's going to need to or I'll approach his editor. i emailed him and messaged him at facebook.

I believe in you Tom, you're my favourite pedophile after Michael Jackson.

 

[McSneaks]

guys help I was on google earlier and I couldnt find any pictures of mr google holding fat stacks of money in the logo, how would this affect the Armenian genocide? can i sue?

 

[keytar]

you have to consider that what we’re doing here is having personal discussions. Kiwi Farms has never presented itself as an authority on anything or a source of news. We’re not signing affidavits; we’re chatting.

This is something people seem to forget. You wouldn't hear 2 randos talking politics in a bar and assume they were trying to preach some kind of gospel*, so why do it for random comments online?

*I would hope, but maybe I'm thinking too kindly on the intelligence of journos.

 

[AnOminous]

i think he's going to need to or I'll approach his editor. i emailed him and messaged him at facebook.

Get fucked Tom.

 

[make_it_so]

Who the fuck considers KF news??? Jersh, call them retards again.

During the 2020 Summer of Love, KF was unironically the most reliable source of info on what was actually happening in the streets.

 

[AirdropShitposts]

So they asked him to write a report about this site, presumably because it was mentioned in the news and all the "disinformation" faggots were talking about it, not realizing it's just a random forum and then in his amazing sleuthing to pick out three whole forum posts with something supposedly wrong he still failed to realize it's just a random internet forum? Then when he gets a reply, rather than try to win you over to actually answer the questions, which at least that one other journalist you replied "all journalists are scum" to actually half-heartedly tried, he responds with some pointless passive aggressive snark? He knew how this would go and he did it to show his other journalist buddies didn't he?

How did this man manage to get an undergrad degree in engineering physics from a decent university yet can't do a basic Internet search of his investigative target?

Imagine buying a journalism degree for $70,000+ and all it gets you is a laptop job where you are tasked with putting the Chris Chan forum on a naughty list. 419 scamming is a more dignified profession.

Look at what his "Engineering Physics" degree actually is in: science journalism. And he didn't just buy a journalism degree, he bought a journalism masters. And he's one of those guys that puts his GPA on his linkedin, including for his graduate degree, one of the warning signs of extreme faggotry:

I hope he at least took a seminar class in "Reporting on Internet Forums" at Northwestern.

 

[Conan O'Barbarian]

God I hope he publishes Null's responses and is questioned about how their own site only discloses ownership through a copyright mark at the bottom of the page. Journalists are absolutely the slimy dregs of the scum-laden bottom of the bucket of human intelligence. Has he even seen the website he works for?

 

[A huge plate of beans]

What an incredibly damning couple of emails for him to send.

You would expect, given the nature of the company, that the assignment and cataloguing of misinformation spreading sites would be a standardised process that is applied fairly and evenly to every site/company they analyse. A refined set of statements/variables/measurements that they can use to produce some scoring value which allows them to provide an objective result that stacks up alongside every other result they provide.

There should be absolutely no room involved for the 'nature' of the content in terms of taste and offense - these are completely irrelevant to mis/disinformation. Unless I'm wrong and NewsGuard exists to tell me what might hurt my feelings or not.



Things I would do as a "transparent" and "accountable" trust ratings provider for websites:

• Apply a set of standard measurements to the site via analysis (hard work) and produce a report without requiring any interaction with the owners,
• Ask the owners of said sites for a copy of any existing policies regarding disinformation, information accuracy, fact checking etc,
• Provide said report to the owner before publishing, giving a reasonable timeframe for comment,
• Show the workings and rationale when displaying said score.

Things I would absolutely not do as a "transparent" and "accountable" trust ratings provider for websites:

• Send a bunch of non-standard, disorganised questions that have no flow (so are clearly not part of a standard analysis),
• Ask very specific questions regarding recent news events that have no bearing on the dissemination of misinformation,
• Point to specific 'disinformation' and then argue the toss about it via email,
• Make absolute claims that are poorly evidenced in available documentation (suicides), then ask for opinion/retort as if they are facts,
• Note that all communications are not confidential (thus destroying any trust immediately).

Total omnishambles, and I'm glad this has been made public because it shows that NewsGuard shouldn't garner any trust from anyone if this is the standard of 'analyst' and approach they use to produce their work. I (meaning corporations, individuals and other clients requiring a service of this kind) can't have any faith that this clearly biased methodology won't one day be levelled against me. And if I can't trust for that to not happen, how can I possibly trust any other data they provide?


EDIT - this deserves all autisms