I've neglected paying for Wired, even though they are doing incredible reporting work. I finally clicked on the link today, and it is only $24 for a year with a 30 day free trial. That's a great value and I'm proud to support them. Please consider doing that as well.
This kind of thing is happening across the government. I think it's become prudent to regard government information outlets as untrustworthy and to ignore them. They're stuffed with outright misinformation and/or have been memory-holing actual information.
OK, federal government. Either way, I don't see how paying attention to the credibility of the various data and information sources is letting anybody "win". I'm just trying to ensure that I have the most accurate information possible.
Because we have elections that affect the government. Very broadly speaking, we do that by electing republicans or democrats. Republicans consistently do things like censor government agencies and attempt to alter history. Democrats do not.
Blaming "the government" becomes a way to shield criticism of the actual people doing it which means people are ever so slightly less likely to take appropriate corrective actions.
(Saying republicans instead of specific republicans is a bit the same, but there's a certain freedom of association there, if you're currently a republican it means that all of these republican actions are, at minimum, acceptable to you)
History (including recent history) says the leanings of political party of the administration in charge are unrelated to how truthful the government communication is. All politicians, and the groups they control/communicate with, can't be easily trusted, since all have very strong personal and group motivations to deceive.
Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because it's an issue of holding/maintaining power.
> Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because it's an issue of holding/maintaining power.
And maybe it's because by and large Democrats are completely incompetent when it comes to holding/maintaining power but I cannot remember a time when Democrats were purging information from government websites like we are currently seeing. Saying it's a "bipartisan issue" does not hold water. I'm sure there are instances where Democrats have done something like this (I should make it clear I am not a fan of them, I just find them the lesser of two evils) but nothing on the scale we are currently seeing.
Everyone else has already jumped on this post but I cannot stress enough how toxic the mentality "everyone does it" is.
Not everyone does it, and people certainly don't do it to the same degree, and when we vote we can actually choose better people. Not perfect. Just better.
> All politicians, and the groups they control/communicate with, can't be easily trusted
This is bullshit. The American bureaucracy has been ridiculously reliable as an information source until tight around now. (Same as the British imperial services’ were.)
This baseless cynicism is a driver around why we’re losing that. (More specifically, the blog posts being disappeared aren’t impartial data. They’re the historic opinions of the previous FTC chair.)
> History (including recent history) says the leanings of political party of the administration in charge are unrelated to how truthful the government communication is.
If anything, recent history says the exact opposite: truthfulness has absolutely varied historically based on the person in charge. The current person in charge has a record of untruthfulness unrivaled in magnitude by any of his historical predecessors. It isn't even close.
This is not a government issue. It is a Republican government issue.
Democrat governments don't seem to purge information. Republicans are so infantile that they literally display a picture of an Autopen instead of Biden as President in the historical presidents wall.
Republicans are so infantile as to want to erase the reality of slavery.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase evolution from textbooks.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase the Jan 6 coup from memory.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase real jobs data from BLS site.
I could go on. But this is a Republican problem. No both-sides here.
Dunno if the concern is that "you can't find a copy of the blog post" so much as "why is this admin removing this stuff and/or making it harder to find". This seems bad to me and I don't think their headline is wrong.
I've neglected paying for Wired, even though they are doing incredible reporting work. I finally clicked on the link today, and it is only $24 for a year with a 30 day free trial. That's a great value and I'm proud to support them. Please consider doing that as well.
https://archive.ph/2025.10.20-102309/https://www.wired.com/s...
This kind of thing is happening across the government. I think it's become prudent to regard government information outlets as untrustworthy and to ignore them. They're stuffed with outright misinformation and/or have been memory-holing actual information.
If you generalize this to "government" then you've let them win.
OK, federal government. Either way, I don't see how paying attention to the credibility of the various data and information sources is letting anybody "win". I'm just trying to ensure that I have the most accurate information possible.
Because we have elections that affect the government. Very broadly speaking, we do that by electing republicans or democrats. Republicans consistently do things like censor government agencies and attempt to alter history. Democrats do not.
Blaming "the government" becomes a way to shield criticism of the actual people doing it which means people are ever so slightly less likely to take appropriate corrective actions.
(Saying republicans instead of specific republicans is a bit the same, but there's a certain freedom of association there, if you're currently a republican it means that all of these republican actions are, at minimum, acceptable to you)
You're not thinking along the right axis. Government sources are fine if the government hasn't been compromised by a fascist coup.
History (including recent history) says the leanings of political party of the administration in charge are unrelated to how truthful the government communication is. All politicians, and the groups they control/communicate with, can't be easily trusted, since all have very strong personal and group motivations to deceive.
Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because it's an issue of holding/maintaining power.
> Deception of the public is a bipartisan issue because it's an issue of holding/maintaining power.
And maybe it's because by and large Democrats are completely incompetent when it comes to holding/maintaining power but I cannot remember a time when Democrats were purging information from government websites like we are currently seeing. Saying it's a "bipartisan issue" does not hold water. I'm sure there are instances where Democrats have done something like this (I should make it clear I am not a fan of them, I just find them the lesser of two evils) but nothing on the scale we are currently seeing.
Everyone else has already jumped on this post but I cannot stress enough how toxic the mentality "everyone does it" is.
Not everyone does it, and people certainly don't do it to the same degree, and when we vote we can actually choose better people. Not perfect. Just better.
This can’t be generalized beyond the US government, though. I live in Switzerland and have a lot of faith in the Swiss government.
> All politicians, and the groups they control/communicate with, can't be easily trusted
This is bullshit. The American bureaucracy has been ridiculously reliable as an information source until tight around now. (Same as the British imperial services’ were.)
This baseless cynicism is a driver around why we’re losing that. (More specifically, the blog posts being disappeared aren’t impartial data. They’re the historic opinions of the previous FTC chair.)
> History (including recent history) says the leanings of political party of the administration in charge are unrelated to how truthful the government communication is.
If anything, recent history says the exact opposite: truthfulness has absolutely varied historically based on the person in charge. The current person in charge has a record of untruthfulness unrivaled in magnitude by any of his historical predecessors. It isn't even close.
This is not a government issue. It is a Republican government issue.
Democrat governments don't seem to purge information. Republicans are so infantile that they literally display a picture of an Autopen instead of Biden as President in the historical presidents wall.
Republicans are so infantile as to want to erase the reality of slavery.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase evolution from textbooks.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase the Jan 6 coup from memory.
Republicans are so infantile that they want to erase real jobs data from BLS site.
I could go on. But this is a Republican problem. No both-sides here.
Dunno if I need the whole 404media-esque ragebait article. Blog posts removed? Just give us the list of wayback links to them all
https://web.archive.org/web/20250701192515/https://www.ftc.g...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250713060942/https://www.ftc.g...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250713014422/https://www.ftc.g...
Dunno if the concern is that "you can't find a copy of the blog post" so much as "why is this admin removing this stuff and/or making it harder to find". This seems bad to me and I don't think their headline is wrong.