news
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
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To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
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Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
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Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
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Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
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Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
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Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
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Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
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American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
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Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
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AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
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it's mostly a researcher and analyst problem, but part of the administrative state is supplying data and metrics for downstream data consumers. this can be state government agencies, university research teams, advocacy-oriented non profits / community groups, and all those "private sector" for-profit groups that replicate public sector work while charging suckers for access to their digests.
i've been around public data consumption for a while, and people get complacent about access to basic government data like national weather service records, soil surveys, historic labor/economic data, whatever. the last years have seen hiccups where something was moved / just plain missing, or the data request system was broken for a while, but for the most part the disruptions are understood to be temporary.
but this year is when its become a hypernormalizing phenomenon that some basic shit is just gone, and it's unknown if it was purposely removed (as is the case with this BS, likely) or just lost because key personnel got DOGE'd and/or took the early payout and orphaned some critical process.
it's also unclear if it projects can be recovered in the forseeable future assuming the restoration of political will. you've got units that used to be dozens of people reduced to 2-3, sometimes those being the least senior people who were still being trained, then they went unpaid for 6 weeks all the while uncertain if or when another huge shuffle would happen.