List of poor quality/trash outlets on PLA matters

[Puss in Boots]

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I think this account is fairly trustworthy, although it inevitably contains some personal biases, but I don't think they're a big deal.

 

[Neurosmith]

I'm not sure why I've never thought of doing this before, but I think we should have a running list of poor quality outlets and websites which have an established record of posting large quantities of poor quality information on the PLA.
Such outlets are either they are outright misleading, or they are phrased in a way to exaggerate, or they do not do due diligence in the care of their reporting.

Which is to say -- these are outlets which are a significant "net negative" to the PLA watching discourse, by virtue of when they talk about the PLA.

I will edit this first post on a running list as people offer contributions, and I encourage members to refer to this list if they see an article from any of them and think "this is an article worth posting about".
In fact, I insist on it, really it might save us a lot of time and thread space.

19 FortyFive
Bulgarian Military
Business Insider
DefenceBlog
DefensePost
Defense Security Asia
Eurasian Times
Interesting Engineering
Military Watch Magazine
National Security Journal
South China Morning Post
The National Interest
Warrior Maven

Virtually all news sites of Indian origin
Virtually all news sites of Taiwan origin

(Above list not exhaustive)


I welcome people to post worthy contributions, which I will add to the list above over time.

To simplify this, here's a ranked list of the most credible PLA watching sources:

1. Deino (A. Rupprecht) / Blitzo (R. Joe)
2. Nothing else is relevant.

 

[SanWenYu]

That would be a very short list:
SDF (with about 40% of posters on the ignore list)
CDF (no idea, I haven't been there in a long time)
???

Yeah it's going to be only a few to begin with. Perhaps in addition to good and bad, there needs to be a third class in between that require vetting.

 

[Blitzo]

Blitzo already mentioned some factors to consider, like "posting large quantities of poor-quality information" and being a "significant net negative". It's not exactly the same as the water-missile story, though one can argue that it has contributed significantly in a negative way.

Anyway, I would suggest this channel: roywalker or 落英行者

It's especially bad because their content is very detailed and seemingly convincing, so inexperienced viewers would have an extremely hard time understanding why it is actually a bad source.

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I deliberately held off from Youtube and other social media channels partly because the list would get a bit too unwieldy.
Same goes for social media handles like Twitter (for now).

Instead of blacklisting the bad guys, it's probably better and easier to whitelist the good ones.

I don't think that would be useful -- we want to remain open minded to new individuals and outlets that are credible if they demonstrate their capability.
This list is more for us (and newcomers) to easily identify outlets which are very categorically rubbish based on their consistent

伏尔戈星图: Reads many papers but lacks analytical skills.

lyman2003: Clickbait plagiarist; look at the materials he copied, not his analysis.

琴石2022: Same as lyman2003.

西葛西: Can make CG but his analysis is terrible.

兰墨飞花: Same as 西葛西, or even worse; his CG sometimes contains conjecture and exaggeration.

Could be useful to include some PRC side accounts on this in future, but at this stage I think focusing on English language outlets is a good start.

To simplify this, here's a ranked list of the most credible PLA watching sources:

1. Deino (A. Rupprecht) / Blitzo (R. Joe)
2. Nothing else is relevant.

So, I'm not a fan of a white-list so I don't want to list specific names, but there are definitely more than a few other accounts out there.
In terms of handles, a few others on twitter, some on Reddit.

And there are some thinktanks and news outlets which also do some decent work in terms of imagery provision and giving us updates that we wouldn't always have.

Oh, and of course the established PRC language grapevine sources.

 

[wuguanhui]

I'm not sure that PRC accounts would appreciate being named.

 

[SanWenYu]

I don't think that would be useful -- we want to remain open minded to new individuals and outlets that are credible if they demonstrate their capability.
This list is more for us (and newcomers) to easily identify outlets which are very categorically rubbish based on their consistent

Yeah I changed my mind suggesting to have three classes: good, bad and in between that will require vetting. But that can add some serious extra load to the mods. Perhaps just the blacklist for starters.

 

[BoraTas]

Are the following sites relevant to be added or tangential?

Ridiculous military rankings :

GlobalFirepower.com:

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(reason: quantitative without qualitative assessment + Russia ahead of China in 2026 is a joke)

WDMMA.org:

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(reason: pro-US bias + IAF over PLAAF is a joke)

A bit off-topic but NAFOs were saying years ago that the GFP was funded by the Russians and some Middle Eastern countries to make them look powerful. Their methodology is opaque and even the part they release is ridiculous (such as we don't count nukes but nuclear armed countries get a bonus). It is likely that they are making things up to rank their donors up.

 

[ACuriousPLAFan]

I'm not sure that PRC accounts would appreciate being named.

I'd say that for the Chinese side, we should name the bad and horrible ones, but not the good and reliable ones. This should serve as the "Pillar of Shame/Board of Shame" for those group of people.

 

[Moonscape]

To simplify this, here's a ranked list of the most credible PLA watching sources:

1. Deino (A. Rupprecht) / Blitzo (R. Joe)
2. Nothing else is relevant.

that "I Hate Y8" guy should be on there

 

[siegecrossbow]

I'm not sure why I've never thought of doing this before, but I think we should have a running list of poor quality outlets and websites which have an established record of posting large quantities of poor quality information on the PLA.
Such outlets are either they are outright misleading, or they are phrased in a way to exaggerate, or they do not do due diligence in the care of their reporting.

Which is to say -- these are outlets which are a significant "net negative" to the PLA watching discourse, by virtue of when they talk about the PLA.

I will edit this first post on a running list as people offer contributions, and I encourage members to refer to this list if they see an article from any of them and think "this is an article worth posting about".
In fact, I insist on it, really it might save us a lot of time and thread space.



19 FortyFive
Bulgarian Military
Business Insider
DefenceBlog
DefensePost
Defense Security Asia
Eurasian Times
GlobalFirepower.com
Interesting Engineering
Military Watch Magazine
National Security Journal
South China Morning Post
The National Interest
Warrior Maven
WDMMA.org

Virtually all news sites of Indian origin
Virtually all news sites of Taiwan origin

(Above list not exhaustive)


I welcome people to post worthy contributions, which I will add to the list above over time.

I’m glad that you included dubious sources with both positive and negative biases against the PLA.