Can we have a policy here of not rewriting/making up titles? I’m not interested on personal takes before reaching the comments section.
i kinda agree with /u/u_tamtam, it’s standard practice to not change titles when posting articles to link aggregators, so most users (reasonably so) operate off of the assumption that the titles aren’t altered
this gets esp confusing, when ppl change the headlines only slightly
The only way people would get confused is if they didn’t bother actually looking at the article, at which point I don’t think they can meaningful contribute to any discussion of the article.
do you think there’s no value in not misleading ppl who don’t engage w/ the post? 🤷♀️
Nobody said anything about misleading people. If people disagree with the framing then they can add their view and have a discussion about it in the thread. That’s literally the point of having a forum is it not?
not misleading per se (more like confusing), bc ppl may choose read the article and engage with the post depending on the title of the article, which they expect to come from the publisher, not the user posting the link to the article (but that’s just my opinion 🤷♀️)
I guess we have a different understanding of the purpose of having forums like Lemmy. If I just wanted a news feed, then I’d use RSS for that. To me the point is precisely for people to provide their own views on the topics in the submissions, and explain in their words why they thought a story was worth sharing. This is what makes it a social media site.
I also don’t really see how keeping the title the same has impact on whether people choose to engage with the post. Seems to me that would be based on whether they thought the title in the submission was interesting or not.
Did you even read the article? With the information released it very well could still be a spy balloon - highlighted by then saying their efforts to stop it were partly to thank, that had to have been stopping something
I love how people keep clinging to the idea that it still could be a spy balloon in face of all logic.
The titles in the articles are themselves editorialized and sometimes even misrepresent the content. I think the post title should reflect what was interesting about the article. You are of course free to make your own community with whatever rules you like.
The titles in the articles are themselves editorialized and sometimes even misrepresent the content.
How is that a defense for letting anyone rewrite titles? Silly idea, if the source is that bad, how about just not using it?
There’s nothing to defend here. The reason there’s a free form field for the title is precisely allow people to write titles for their submissions. Meanwhile, content of the article can be fine even when there’s a clickbaity headline, or sometimes it’s useful to link an article as an illustration or a commentary without endorsing it.
The only way people would get confused is if they didn’t bother actually looking at the article, at which point they don’t have anything meaningful to contribute to the discussion. So, not really sure what problem you’re trying to solve to be honest.
I’m not understanding the contradiction here. They’re saying it was a spy balloon for spying but that it failed at its task. Not sure how true that is, no way for me to tell but there’s no inherent paradox here.
US already admitted earlier that this is in fact a weather balloon, and this is further proof that it was not any sort of a spy balloon. The whole drama was completely made up, and the highest US authorities continue to spread lies months after.
Umm, source on an official US statement calling it a weather balloon and denying it was a spy balloon? China’s alleged failure to collect data due to mitigations and countermeasures doesn’t mean it’s a weather balloon.
You have no facts to backup “US spreading lies”. No evidence whatsoever. You have the US’ story, China’s story, and millions of photos of a absurdly large apparatus floating across the US that looks nothing like a weather balloon.
The context for the discussion is US admitting that the balloon did not collect information. 🤡
It did not “collect” information
@zephyreks …but it wasn’t from lack of trying… the countermeasures the US used kept it from collecting any sensitive intelligence. That’s the part you propagandists keep leaving out.
It did not collect information. You’re hallucinating statements that don’t exist and you’re also hallucinating propagandists that don’t exist.
I’d ask you to get it checked out, but I’m afraid that you’d hallucinate a doctor that doesn’t exist.
😂
@yogthos laugh if you want. But you’re an idiot if you think otherwise.
“But it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over flying the United States".
He said the efforts the US took to mitigate any intelligence gathering “contributed” to the balloon’s failure to gather sensitive information.”😂
That part of the story seems yet to be cited. Going by the article accompanying the post title, there’s no such admission. Manufacturing international incidents for political reasons is not a new thing and not new to the US either , but purely on grounds of reading comprehension alone there’s no contradiction here and no admission of anything either, as a matter of fact the claim the US is making is supposed to bolster their position by claiming the balloon was unable to spy on them despite best efforts. The veracity of the claim is another matter.
Thing is that the whole story does not stand up to scrutiny. US admitted that they tracked the balloon from the start and that it’s most likely been blown off course:
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked the Chinese spy balloon from its launch in China and watched as it may have been inadvertently blown into U.S. airspace, a U.S. official has confirmed to ABC News.
This latest revelation differs significantly from the previous narrative related by the White House and U.S. military officials over recent days, which has changed repeatedly since the balloon’s existence became public when it was spotted over Montana on Feb. 1.
The above paragraph basically says that US officials intentionally lied from the start. All the further evidence that’s come out continues to support the idea that this wasn’t any sort of a spy balloon. The real story here is why does US is trying to escalate tensions with China.
Thanks. You should post that article too, seems fuller and links to a Washington Post article with a little more detail as well. Frankly I’d largely forgotten about the whole balloon incident as the whole thing at the time was a confusing mess of misinformation and internal and external posturing from Washing and Beijing as well that made whatever publicly available truth that could be gleaned so warped that most of the nuance was lost in my mind and I just mentally filed it under “what the fuck?”
I would maintain though that you seem to trying to put together a “gotcha!” narrative about the US perspective on the matter using source material that doesn’t really paint that picture. The shifting and changing story wrapped up in geopolitical intrigue has a whiff to it for sure but no one seems to be “admitting” anything in the any of what you linked. The weird thing about the idea that anyone is admitting something, is that all of the “admissions” are part of a set of claims that the US would want to promulgate and indeed are.
They are seeking maximum political advantage from this balloon incident, so they say it was a spy balloon, because they want China to appear to be doing wrong by spying, this necessarily means saying they somehow allowed a spy balloon that everybody could see with the naked eye and which was apparently very dangerous to national security to just drift unchecked in to their airspace and see all manner of sensitive things, so they say they tracked it from that start because they’re too compotent to let something like this pass them by, oh and also it didn’t really manage to spy on them because they “took steps” and therefore it didn’t transmit any intelligence. The story seems iffy but to believe it would be to buy in to the official preferred narrative offered by Washington, not a bunch of leaked admissions they were hoping to keep on the down-low
The idea of it drifting accidentally from an originally more limited but still surveillance related mission is an interesting twist to the story, I guess either because it’s what really seems to have happened or maybe because it provides a kind of a safety valve for them to ratchet up tensions whilst still kind of not directly accusing Beijing in case things start to get a little too hot in the diplomatic realm and they need to cool things down. This helps them get out of a tangle but still paint China as incompetent spies who accidentally sent the balloon on a more obvious course where it would be seen and intercepted, but who essentially didn’t mean to be quite so bold and had only more limited intentions.
I’d argue that western media uses misleading phrasing to create a reasonable doubt, but when you look at the actual facts it’s pretty clear that US is just playing games here and created a story out of whole cloth here. The fact that they can’t even get their story straight is pretty damning all of itself in my opinion. US has also never actually explained what sort of intelligence such a balloon could possibly intercept that a satellite couldn’t.
What I understand from the context is that it was a spying device but they jammed the hell out of it while flying over the US then took it down.
That’s my point. The original poster is trying to draw a line between statements that the balloon was a spying device and later statements that it did not collect intelligence while it transited over US territory as evidence that it wasn’t a spying device and that the former of those statements is therefore inherently a lie. My take, without assessing the truthfulness of the claims, is that the linked articles do not support such a conclusion. One can claim the device was for spying and that it also didn’t collect intelligence without contradiction because the claim is that it failed to collect intelligence, not that it did not intend to do so in the first place.
And The Guardian referred to it as a spy balloon right in this very article.
Incidentally, the Pentagon said it did not collect information over the US. Perhaps it was intended to collect information elsewhere.
Or the most logical explanation that it’s a weather balloon that blew off course and that US regime has been cynically lying about.
There have been multiple incidents of Chinese balloons that “flew off course” and ended up over sovereign airspace.
If China doesn’t want its balloons destroyed, it will have to do a better job controlling its “research instruments”.
Balloons that follow air currents have blown of course more than once, wow that’s sinister. The fact that US reacted in an absolutely deranged fashion to a weather balloon being blown off course is the real story here. It shows the whole world that US is run by a dangerous and unstable regime. The fact that such unhinged lunatics have the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world should worry everyone.
But real weather balloons do not follow air currents. They ascend and descend over the same point, so that they can be easily recovered by real scientists. Real weather balloons are also far smaller. Various scientists, not just Americans, said that the Chinese balloons did not resemble the instruments they use.
Of course they do, there are global air currents that high altitude weather balloons follow. Maybe stop making shit up already?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/14/world/spy-balloon-science-weather-uses-scn/index.html
I’m afraid you are the one making things up. The article doesn’t say anything about balloons following air currents, quite the opposite:
That’s because balloons still offer unique advantages: They don’t disturb their surrounding environment, they’re very gentle on scientific instruments, they can hover in one place for extended periods of time
Normal weather balloons are far smaller and incapable of crossing an ocean. The Chinese balloon was not a normal weather balloon.
This is going to blow your mind, but there are different kinds of balloons for different purposes. Also, the word can has a different meaning from the world must. Perhaps work on your reading comprehension?
Can’t say I believe that one bit. With how small transmitters can be these days, why wouldn’t it have one? Sounds to me like damage control. Not a whole lot of details in the article anyway.
Jesus Christ you people are just lusting for war.
I don’t want a war with China, that would be awful. I’m just trying to be realistic about it. Seems silly to go through the trouble to make a surveillance craft like that and it not even have the capability to beam back any data.
Data was obviously transmitted. Weather data, going by recent cyber attacks, there are a plethora of ways where it’s easier to get data.
I’m just gonna be open minded about it and not jump to conclusions. I could see the US gov making it into a big deal for reasons and I could see it being a balloon to take pics of bases, etc on the ground. Both seem like logical outcomes. I mean it could be a weather balloon but I sorta doubt it based on what I know about weather balloons (I’m an amateur weather nerd). But I could be wrong! I’ll admit that. Gotta keep an open mind.
You do realize China has satellites?
Of course. And you realize balloons can have an advantage over satellites in certain situations?
If balloons were a good way to spy on countries we’d see US balloons canvas the globe by now.
