OjitroC wrote: I'm at a loss here because everything you say about the video is totally at odds with what I have seen from watching it twice now - are we talking about the same video? The one posted by UnrealGecko?
I'm not going to go through it in detail but the commenator's overall conclusion is that whilst there are valid concerns about Epic's GameStore (poor privacy policy potentially not complying with EU law, lack of features as admitted by Tim Swinney, the exclusivity deals, etc, etc - many of the points echoed on this forum by, inter alia, shrimp), there is no evidence to support the accusations of the launcher being spyware or of collusion with the Chinese government (he refers in passing to the point made by Jim Sterling that Tencent have a stake in a number of other US game companies without drawing the same ire). All this seems to me to be a reasonable and balanced conclusion - the video is far from "being more nefarious and damaging than the first" video. You seem to overlook the fact (referred to in my previous post) that the commentator deals at length with the authoritative rebuttal by matt (on Facepunch, not Reddit) of the original 'spyware' scare - this alone is surely enough to distinguish this video from the one made by the two uninformed guys based on the 'blurry graphic'.
Yes, we're watching the same video but I think you're missing my larger point. You think that "You seem to overlook the fact (referred to in my previous post) that the commentator deals at length with the authoritative rebuttal by matt" but that is my point exactly.
The conclusion he ends up with is indeed supportive of the truth as discovered by others, but again, it's how he got there that is the problem for me. He did no research of his own; he simply aggregated available information from other sites and monetized it for his own gain. You say that he references Jim Sterling (the guy who dresses up like a clown/vampire on YouTube) and ".matt" at the Facepunch forum (just a forum poster) and that proves my point: what we call "journalism" now takes us in a circle with YouTubers referencing YouTube and user forums. Even major news organizations have exhibited to this laziness in recent history, falling victim to their own faith in the face validity of false news and they paid with their credibility. The hungry snake eats its' own tail.
In what way is Jim Sterling a reliable source'? Jim Sterling is trying to make money, first and foremost, hence all of the gimmicks and distracting nonsense. I've seen his videos before and even where I agree with him, I'm not fooled into thinking he has any more credibility than you might. There are a few things going on here that give us the impression that Jim is an authority: he's popular, he's got a media platform and he makes witty, though often unfounded commentary in a manner that seems to imply understanding. Googling Jim shows us that he has no journalistic credential aside from being a game critic at The Escapist (which only shows that he has wit and can write).
How is .matt's post "authoritative"? Because it's long and complex? Because other posters praise him and the work? Because it's on "Facepunch"? I will admit that he seems far more reliable than Jim and appears to know what he's doing more than the original redditor (though "_xor_", the first respondent on the reddit thread was essentially correct the day after the initial post too, and he was just speaking anecdotally) but how can one completely overlook the fact that he is essentially an anonymous forum user?
So, back to the video in question: we see that all of his 'references' are questionable and again, like Jim, while he draws a conclusion that we agree with, he's still unreliable. Where was this guy when the story broke a month ago? Where is his self-produced research? He sat around until he felt that he had a conclusion that was 'right' and then dove in.
My point was and is that these places we go for 'news' now are suspect and while they may have face validity, they are in reality just regular people with suspect motivations. Yes, I have very high standards of research and yes, I am on a very strict self-imposed media diet and have a very healthy dose of cynicism regarding information media these days, but all of this is well-founded and while extreme, not irrational or unreasonable in light of the current status of information validity, truth and sourcing. I can substantiate my claims and attitudes easily, while on the other end of the argument, one has little to fall back on. More importantly, I question my own thoughts, am careful about what I choose to experience and am critical of my own conclusions. It's not going through life blind or self-doubting, but quite the opposite: what I end up believing I can have complete faith in it being sound.
These days, we call opinion 'news' and call other's opinions about that opinion 'research' and then wonder why we are all misinformed and dumb in the modern era. We have 'reaction' videos now: we watch other people watching things (I would argue they are essentially telling people how to feel about particular things, 'influencers', without any credibility, which illustrates the state of my attitude towards people's lack of critical thought and how susceptible people are, but I'm getting ahead of myself) and this is no different. We don't think about sources nor motivations carefully enough and are influenced and biased very easily. While we all may see Leo as an extremist in many of his views, they are in fact grounded in truth and well-evidenced at this point in time. And that's what it takes: time. Time is the great sieve through which all will pass and that alone dictates what is real and what is not and I depend on it for truth, which has a habit of sticking around while lies, deception and misinformation simply fall away in the end. I tend not to 'believe' much anymore. I listen and think and allow my intuitions to rise, but I wait before 'believing' anything. Remember the Bloomberg story about Super Micro having spy chips on their boards? Gone. It's clear I'm not alone in this time dependence either: the second video creator does this also but the difference is that I don't try to make money from it nor claim the conclusion as my own in any way.
I will never turn to Jim Sterling or .matt for reliable truth; they potentially provide input - which I value - but it's only healthy to not consider them to be authoritative nor reliable.
To conclude this:
Tim Sweeney addressed this issue directly 3 months ago but nobody cared: they chose to believe that a major company CEO would come out and lie in writing about something that could and would be easily looked into very carefully. So, they dismiss Tim but buy into a random redditor: what does this tell us? On one side, people can see Tim as a defensive, lying CEO and that 'the common man' is by definition more trustworthy or on the other side, an individual with great stakes in the outcome of this accusation and is thus highly motivated to tell the truth vs. a random person with nothing to lose except the public trust of his anonymous pseudonym on reddit. This is the state of critical thinking. While I too didn't take Tim at his word, I did see the difference between what he was saying and why against what some internet guy was saying and why. People are sheep, being led to and fro by anyone who appears to have answers that fit their own thoughts yet paradoxically also hold that they are fully informed free-thinkers making rational decisions. For anyone who wants to take the first step toward waking up to themselves, read
this paper.(.pdf) and
this paper(.pdf)