Could we stop propagating them? There is no 'state', it is just part of desert with bandits in pickups. And BBC should not give hints where to find latest propaganda. It is like reporting 'piratebay.com' domain is down, use 'piratebay.xyz'
I'm not sure if the article been updated since you had a look, but the first line of the article refers to the Jihadist group as the "so-called Islamic State".
Also I think there is a public interest in knowing that Daesh is apparently switching communication platforms. If there's been an effort to reduce/remove Daesh from Twitter, why couldn't there be a similar strategy with Telegram?
You seem to be advocating the security-by-obscurity line, in regards to propaganda. It's out there, and if people want to find it, they don't need to look far.
youre not going to destroy Daesh by forcing them to move communications medium to their tenuous followers.
They currently have excellent source or arms, money, people and land. The only way to stop them is to deprive them of resources, just like any other war.
There is nothing different about daesh. They live, breath, fight and bleed just like any other. They only real difference is that the western media appear to be hell bent on giving them as much airtime as possible.
In the Falklands war, the BBC broadcast that the Argentine air force were setting their bomb fuses wrong and their bombs weren't exploding when they hit British ships, and also pre-announced the attack on Goose Green. They're well known for playing both sides against the middle.
I have read that the Goose Green incident was actually caused by a MoD official releasing something too early - they were just passing on the message.
The thing about the bomb fuses was a horrendous mistake “six better fuses and we would have lost” - particularly as there was nothing wrong with the fuses and the Argentinians could have easily fixed this by a simple adjustment.
I dont like that Islamic radicals are referred to as a 'state'. Usually it takes long time for area to be recognized as 'state', and its first step towards official recognition by other governments.
But it isn't. If it were, the UK could then remove the citizenship of current UK citizens who become ISIS admirers avowing violence against Britons and Britain. Currently they have difficulty with that because it's not possible to make someone stateless.
Raqqah (Raqqa) is (or was) over 250,000 people. Mosul is 1.5 million. That's hardly desert, bandits and pickups (no matter how much we may wish that was true).
According to the article they are planning to use Telegram channels (which is more like a broadcast list in whatsapp), and not group chat. Doesn't seem like it's meant for internal communication, so I guess that security isn't a top priority for this purpose.
A: Telegram has no intentional back doors. Any malice on the part of Obama has absolutely no relevance here whatsoever. If you want to disprove me feel free to audit the source[1]. Nobody would have ever been able to ask for keys in the first place, hence, the reason it was purportedly chosen by IS.
B: That's pure conjecture and is a conspiracy theory.
This isnt about Telegram. It's about BBCs decision to report on IS and what theyre doing. Youre clearly not familiar with IS history. IS was armed and supported by the US (do your research) and the BBC is well known as a US mouth piece. Looking at this as a purely tech debate, one of conjecture or a conspiracy theory is incredibly naive.
Yes it is: the article is about Telegram and you yourself bought up cryptography keys. You implied that Telegram had some unsubstantiated correlation to the Obama administration (regardless of what previous administrations have done). You're veering wildly off-topic into a typical flamewar topic with no evidence, as well as asserting without justification that I am clueless about IS.
> [1]: Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
That is to say, it's probably best to be done here.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
If this isn't proof that Twitter's business model is doomed then I don't know what is. It would be like the Taliban announcing they'll no longer use Toyotas.
"Telegram itself suggests it will take down illegal material"
What does illegal material mean? I guess Germany has lesser free speech than the US, but still it's a messaging service after all.
I wonder were Twitter draw the line. They outright welcome many state actors that rival IS if not in scale at least in means. Maybe the line is drawn for them by some friends from the state department?
51 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadAlso I think there is a public interest in knowing that Daesh is apparently switching communication platforms. If there's been an effort to reduce/remove Daesh from Twitter, why couldn't there be a similar strategy with Telegram?
You seem to be advocating the security-by-obscurity line, in regards to propaganda. It's out there, and if people want to find it, they don't need to look far.
They currently have excellent source or arms, money, people and land. The only way to stop them is to deprive them of resources, just like any other war.
There is nothing different about daesh. They live, breath, fight and bleed just like any other. They only real difference is that the western media appear to be hell bent on giving them as much airtime as possible.
Compare IS with 'Kurdistan'. It is a 'state' somehow similar to IS, but it gets completely different treatment.
And they gave step by step manual: Go to app store, install Telegram, search IS channel.
The thing about the bomb fuses was a horrendous mistake “six better fuses and we would have lost” - particularly as there was nothing wrong with the fuses and the Argentinians could have easily fixed this by a simple adjustment.
If you don't like reading about ISIS, then don't. It's as easy as that.
And it'll make you look a lot less pretentious than you are right now.
Islamic State has existed since about 2006.
However you could say the same for electricity, GPS, phones, guns etc.
B: That's pure conjecture and is a conspiracy theory.
[1]: https://telegram.org/source
> This isnt about Telegram.
Yes it is: the article is about Telegram and you yourself bought up cryptography keys. You implied that Telegram had some unsubstantiated correlation to the Obama administration (regardless of what previous administrations have done). You're veering wildly off-topic into a typical flamewar topic with no evidence, as well as asserting without justification that I am clueless about IS.
> [1]: Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
That is to say, it's probably best to be done here.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
Manchester, Bradford, Luton and their ilk are all bastions of welfare recipients so it's hardly surprising that the Conservatives aren't popular there.
They got a 36% share of the vote, on a 66% turnout.
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.
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?)
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.
Note: this is one example of many
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.
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...
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.
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.
What does illegal material mean? I guess Germany has lesser free speech than the US, but still it's a messaging service after all.
I wonder were Twitter draw the line. They outright welcome many state actors that rival IS if not in scale at least in means. Maybe the line is drawn for them by some friends from the state department?
It also begs the question of how will the scan for "illegal material"?
all this is mostly fear mongering
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXe4gy_ABf8