neeneko wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 4:51 pm
Hrm.
So a problem I have been countering is that since I've been watching videos and consuming stories about Ukraine, the algorithm (all praise the algorithm) is feeing me stories from all sorts of news sources I have never heard of and struggle to evaluate how balanced or accurate they are. Some seem to be great as they are bringing in perspectives of small producers that are in the region (or expat), others feel like they might be propaganda/sensationalism/tabloid. Anyone else struggling with this?
For instance, today I am trying to sort out the story with the UK and sending ships to the black sea. Some places are talking about it like they are doing it, or planning to do it, or drawing up plans on how they would do it, or getting ready to attack Russia directly with their warships.. and pretty much none of them are touching on how they would get through Turkish waters and the restrictions those have right now.
Others have posted Twitter lists they follow for information about Russia/Ukraine. Here's a link to the list I'm using:
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1521334656687386625
Most of the sources there are reputable. Igor Sushko has broken a lot of good news that other outlets have taken a while to get to, but he has also posted some stuff that was obviously wrong from the get-go. He got the (accurate) info about the Moskva missile attack before almost anyone, but he also inaccurately reported that several other large Russian ships were sunk. I use him as a valuable early indicator, but I don't believe everything. That's the thing about doing this kind of work: sometimes you want sources that are less than 100%, but then you have to learn when to discount what they're saying and when to go with it.
Since I'm now spending a lot more time doing geopolitical analysis for work than ever before, I spend a lot of time trying to assess the quality of various sources. In the fog of war, even a lot of reputable outlets will get it wrong.
Regarding YouTube, I'd suggest checking sources out in print first and then watching the YouTube version of their work. If they're only on YouTube, that's a red flag.
I'm spending a lot of time worrying about the knock-on effects of Russian sanctions and what it means for Chinese economic strategy and their intentions regarding an imminent invasion of Taiwan. One hypothesis is that China's economy would be devastated by American sanctions coming on top of their about-to-collapse property bubble (70% of domestic wealth is in real estate, which is massively over-leveraged), the massive zero-COVID lockdowns (and you thought Donald Trump has the monopoly on ineffective ideas for dealing with COVID) against the backdrop of a population declining sooner and more sharply than anyone anticipated.
BTW, I highly recommend Peter Zeihan on YouTube. He's underestimating the effects of the Belt and Road Initiative as a successful strategy (it's not successful long-term but it may stave off some aspects of their decline over the short term), but he gets a lot of other stuff right. I'd strongly recommend watching anything he's put out in the last 3-4 months.
But now that I'm starting to watch a lot of "decline of China" stuff, I'm getting a large number of propaganda channels ultimately driven by the Falun Gong cult. I almost fell for the first two I saw, watching them for quite a while before the hair on the back of my neck started to stand up. They are slick and professional, and many of them feature articulate white guys that look like newscasters. It's only when you get into them for a while that things start to get just a little strange. I now google any YouTube channel relating to China before I click on it to assess their provenance, and I click on "don't recommend anything from this channel" as often as I can, and I'm taking another lap through my other sources where I might have been a little slack in my diligence.
This doesn't mean that I am shutting out stuff that I disagree with; I'm just making sure there are no propaganda outlets that I haven't assessed properly. I'll still watch propaganda because it might tell me what the people putting it out are afraid of, but if I know what it is, I can discount it appropriately.
Absolutely none of the sources I'm following (even suspect ones) are talking about British naval mobilization to support Ukraine with direct military intervention or to attack Russia. I suspect this is Russian disinformation designed to appeal to the nativist UK population that backed Brexit. UK is the major naval power in Europe, especially with two real aircraft carriers slowly coming on line (though they are still massively limited compared to the US), so Russia is clearly afraid of their ability to influence European military action.