this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
91 points (91.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

39656 readers
885 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

My husband doesn’t belong to 50501 and he is skeptical of the news being censored, can anone help me show him otherwise.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Look at the NYTs coverage of the genocide in gaza ("boohoo poor israel, self defense") and general media coverage Bernie Sanders (doesnt exist until he has no chance of winning something, pretending hes more outspoken now even though he's been saying the same thing for the last 60 years)

[–] tourist@lemmy.world 41 points 2 days ago (7 children)

The IDF will bomb a hospital and kill 200 people

NYT article will say something like "200 Dead after bombs drop near a place, according to the Hamas-run health ministry."

They phrase everything so carefully.
Like the bombs were some sort of natural disaster and not an intentional military strike on civilians.

They always append "Hamas run health ministry", to imply the information can't be reliable, because it's from a US-designated terrorist organisation

The Israeli media will say "We killed 300 Palestinians"

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 2 days ago

I think you might be tackling this the wrong way.

You can't really provide hard evidence that "the news is censored" to someone who doesn't want to believe that, because the term "censored" is subjective.

As in, reasonable evidence would be a peer reviewed study of media bias, of which there are many, but a "skeptic" can reject that evidence on the grounds that it doesn't meet their definition of censorship.

A more meaningful conversation would be to ask whether news sources have bias, and which are more biased than others and in which way.

The term "censorship" implies a big secret not being told, which isn't my impression of what's happening. Rather, there's a constant conservative spin on everything that happens.

Sadly, I suspect you might be about to discover that you can't change your partner's political alignment. I'm in my 40s, and in my age group you're either lucky enough to share political views with your partner, or you ignore the issues you disagree on, or you separate.

[–] Cupcake@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Use a VPN. On the American side try to find any signs of bad past news on Trump. Now do it from another country on the VPN. See the difference before your very eyes. You can also do this on TikTok and probably get similar results.

[–] ManixT@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're going to have to be more specific. There is no network-level filtering of content at the network delivery layer in the US and US can access any international hosts if the host permits it.

Search engines do have regional awareness (that can basically always be changed as a setting) to deliver more local results. I suspect this on social media platforms is what you're referring to. It's not exactly censorship, but they definitely promote with an agenda.

Don't get me wrong, Trump and Republicans are fascists who deserve the worst fate and would gladly setup this kind of system, but it's not like there's a network component to censorship like you see in China and some other dictatorships (yet).

Source: I'm always traveling and on VPNs from all regions of the Earth

[–] 4am@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

So far most of the American censorship happens at Layer 7 (or Layer 8 - the meat layer), not Layer 3.

[–] GuardYaGrill@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Use a VPN.

Do not recommend people to use random free VPN’s. You should pick your VPN provider carefully as all your traffic will flow through their servers.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I second this.

Proton is alright as well but mullvad seems to be stuck at #1.

[–] pelicans_plight@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not sure if something like this will do, but it is really concerning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Great suggestion.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 15 points 2 days ago

There was an article out there about how protests this year have been consistently twice as many as in 2017. Show him that and then ask him if he's seen it covered in the news.

[–] twistypencil@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Appears also recently a lemmy instance appeared for it. 50501.chat or something like that.

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

checks OP’s name

You don’t say?

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

lol I am dumb

[–] DrainKikoLake@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago

Maybe look for coverage of a topic or event from a few major US media sites/papers, and then at the same event from somewhere outside the US.

https://www.cbc.ca/news

https://www.bbc.com/news

Etc.

[–] yesman@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

E.S. Herman and Noam Chomsky's book Manufacturing Consent is a great place to start. You can skip most of the book honestly, (it's out of date), but the "5 Filters" part is like a decoder ring for American Legacy Media.

[–] Today@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

It's free to read online

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Amazing how many subjects Chomsky wrote about. I think his review of BF Skinner's Behaviourism might be his best work because it is so devastatingly well argued.

[–] belastend@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately, his UG work in the field of linguistics turned out to be really bad.

Universal Grammar states that all of the knowledge about languages is already in your brain when you're born. The only thing that happens in language aquisition is figuring out which parameters are in what state: If your mothertongue is German, then the parameter "has case system" is switched to "yes" and the parameter "has tone system" is switched to "no".

The idea is that there is some parameter that is set to yes in ALL languages. But everytime such a parameter is put forward, we find that it isnt the case actually.

The next problem is its eurocentrism. Languages, through the lens of UG, all have to have similar parameters as Indo-European languages. Whenever languages do not fit that model, the first instinct in UG is to press it into that model, which leads to stuff like invisible affixes, invisible words and even invisible subjects.

Instead of analyzing a language on its own, forming new categories to understand the mechanics of the language, UG tries its hardest to computerize and systematize languages.

[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 10 points 2 days ago

Step 1: Make a new account on Reddit or Twitter...

[–] Grappling7155@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (3 children)

One of the easiest ways might be to have him take a look at an app like GroundNews, which displays biases of publications and shows blindspots in the media according to political lean. The biases and differences in headlines, presentation, language used, and what stories get reported at all by any given publication become very apparent.

[–] MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Words to watch out for are things like "attacked", "bashed" or "slammed" instead of "criticised"; "forced" instead of "chose", eg "company forced to cut jobs"; "muzzled" or "gagged" instead of perhaps "censored". The implied violence charges the story emotionally, it's the most common form of news manipulation. They're trying to make you feel - usually fear or anger - rather than think.

[–] FartGremlin@lemm.ee 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m so sick of seeing “slammed” in news.

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Damn, OP BLASTED the news outlets!

My only complaint about Ground News (and most media bias meters in general) is that factual papers will almost always be listed as left-leaning. Because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right that cold hard facts presented exactly as they happened with zero spin now has a left-wing bias.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

The problem, though, is that depending on how deep his conspiratorial beliefs go, she might have to argue with a crazy person. It then doesn't matter what facts and real actual research she shows, it will just be brushed aside as if it were mere dust.

Some people will hold their breath even when their body is telling them that they are about to suffocate, just because their brainwash outlet told them that oxygen is poisonous, what can you do?

[–] Battle_Masker@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

ask him if he's heard about the latest CEO shooting, and point out how it ISN"T Brian Thompson's cathartic death

[–] RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I haven't even heard this one

[–] Battle_Masker@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] tuck182@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

On the off chance that you're like me and would prefer to know, the phrase is typically "case in point".

[–] 60d@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

I should of looked at that before I wrote "should of".

[–] just_ducky_in_NH@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do you mean Chip Terhune, CEO of SAIF?

[–] peregrin5@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Shit I live near this incident and heard nothing about it.

Seems kind of different though. This is a state run non-profit for workers comp?

[–] Iceman@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes, but he has to read a book. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

[–] timuchan@lemm.ee 6 points 2 days ago

Maybe teach him about passive voice, and then show examples of it in news media?

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

If he's into documentaries, see if he might like the Adam Curtis documentary HyperNormalisation.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

What exactly do you mean by "news is censored"? Are you saying that certain stories aren't getting the kinds of traction you think they should be getting? Or, are you saying that major events are not being covered at all because the government is threatening news organizations that cover them?

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

I wonder if he’s open minded enough to accept information he wasn’t expecting, or one of those people for whom no proof will ever be good enough.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 3 points 2 days ago

Perhaps a graphic depicting the extreme consolidation of news would help?

[–] steeznson@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Regardless of whether the news is censored, you might just find that your husband has a different political perspective to you. Some people find that a dealbreaker but personally I enjoy having different opinions to my partner. It means that our beliefs get challenged (in a good natured way) and that one or both of us get the opportunity to change our minds from an initial knee-jerk take on any given issue.

load more comments
view more: next ›