I think he was being sarcastic.
List of poor quality/trash outlets on PLA matters
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
If you're referring to the part of my reply to the post about myself and Deino, obviously they were not serious, but it does raise a point about why having a whitelist overall isn't desirable, which it was a good opportunity to discuss.
What about twz?
I completely disagree with including 伏尔戈星图 in this list.
While his analysis may not always be correct, he typically provides references and explains his reasoning. Even if his conclusions are wrong, they can still offer insights and allow others to identify where the errors lie.
I think this is a very flawed way of distinguishing between sources. We should not use the correctness or incorrectness of a conclusion as the basis for classification—no one is always right. As an OSINT, one should first assume that all conclusions are unreliable and verify every conclusion through one’s own logical reasoning. What is truly worthless are those sources that provide no information sources or analytical logic, leaving you with no choice but to treat them like a religion—to either “believe” or “not believe.”
I agree with the spirit, but this is a bit of a luxury because not everyone has their brain fully on at all times, and if the goal is to draw a line to straight up rule out certain outlets for their signal to noise ratio being far too low, we will have to choose somewhere to go with.
As far as information sources that ask us to "believe" or "not believe" --- in theory I agree they are of lower value, but we also base our leading impressions by what certain individuals with track records say from the PRC side. Inevitably we will take what they say more seriously than outlets or individuals without track records, though always ideally with some application of critical thinking (which does tend to be applied to be fair).
So, there's a reason I chose to specifically limit this to be about websites that are considered on a blacklist rather than a general discussion about the relative credibility or value of varying outlets, sites or individuals.
So while this is somewhat amusing, limiting it to identifying very low signal-to-noise websites should be the goal
Where is our distinguished analyst from the Plan, Xavier?
H.I. Sutton, specifically on PLA matters (i.e. I'm not talking about his technical knowledge on sub related things), should not be given a free pass for his 2023 peddling of Guo Wengui's nonsense that an 093 sank in the Taiwan Strait
I still read and watch his content but on PLA matters, he is likely somewhere between "Poor analytical ability" and "Highly biased" (closer towards the latter imo).
We are not here to identify individuals or accounts, but rather outlets that are of poor quality.
Naval News ultimately is an outlet whose signal to noise ratio is high enough that I think most people would not call it poor quality, and if anything has been able to produce some leading stories and imagery due to access to providers.
I didn't create this thread for people to air grievances and complain about individuals, accounts or poor takes in the past -- but rather to identify blatantly poor quality outlets and websites that people should be highly cautious around if they wanted to post anything from them on this forum.
Having poor analytical ability and being highly biased doesn't mean that an outlet is of "poor quality/trash" in nature. Ultimately HI Sutton and some websites that he has written for has also produced some information related to the PLA of use which other outlets have not, therefore I think few would argue that his content is "poor quality/trash".