[throwablePie]

I read ZH regularly for the nuggets of truth found nowhere else. They have changed a lot over the years. And, not for the better.

The comment section used to be an equal opportunity Fight Club with omnidirectional contempt for mainstream orthodoxy regardless of source. The U.S., Chinese, and occasionally the Russian governments met with distrust and ridicule. So balanced was ZH that ZH (and HN) used to be available in China without a VPN. But now both ZH and HN are blocked there.

But, over the past two years or so, ZH content has become much more partisan and white nationalist; and the comment section has morphed from Fight Club into Racist and Anti-Semitic Sewer nonpareil.

The racism free-for-all in the comment section could be laid at the feet of non-moderation if ZH's comments section were indeed a free-fire zone. But ZH manually approves all commenter accounts and it consistently violates its stated policy on racism by refusing to remove blatantly racist comments or commenters.

> Racism, to include any religious affiliation, will not be tolerated in ANY FORM on this site, including the disparagment of people in the comments section.

> To report any form of discrimination, please right click on the comment number, copy the link to the comment, and send the comment link to abuse [at] zerohedge.com.

> Any user found to be discriminating against ANY race, religion, or affiliation, will be banned immediately, and have their comments removed from the system. https://www.zerohedge.com/help/notice-racism

[qtplatypus]

I don't think being allowed in China without a VPN is a sign of being balanced.

[throwablePie]

It's a possible sign that the Chinese have not determined that the media outlet is being used for (semi-)automated astroturfing propaganda operations such as:

Earnest Voice: > Operation Earnest Voice is an astroturfing campaign by the Federal government of the United States.[1] The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking services based outside of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

and

JTRIG: > The scope of the JTRIG's mission includes using "dirty tricks" to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig... https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

I look for balance in my news sources and since many powerful governments employ online propaganda ops, I look for signals of relative neutrality or non-bias. ZeroHedge used to have those in abundance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propa...

[jevgeni]

ZH follows the narrative of RT and Sputnik so close, it’s scary.

[mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE]

Exactly. It's so obvious.

[alchemism]

“Anonymous” journalism is a great way to feed disinformation into the West, right and left fringes.

[blaser-waffle]

See also, QAnon, Steve Bannon, 4chan, etc.

[alchemism]

I run a diverse set of acquaintances. Whenever my far-left and far-right friends suddenly share their (identical) opinions I take that as a sign of something.

[cies]

In this case I wonder who follows who. I remember, when I still read ZH, they often broke news I only found on other outlets days later.

[Udik]

Do I understand correctly? So Google is demonetising a site because it considers it responsible for what the users post on its forums? Isn't that contrary to Google's (and all internet giant) own policy of not being responsible for what users post on through their platforms?

[dragonwriter]

No, because one is about private accountability and the other is about legal accountability. The bar to legal accountability was expressly adopted to enable private accountability measures without incurring legal consequences, so there is absolutely no inconsistency in applying private accountability measures while supporting the existing exemption from legal accountability.

[bigbizisverywyz]

Can't find it now, but there was an article (the guardian I think? follow the money) that stated that the owner of zerohedge was getting divorced and that was causing his financial details to become public. The journalist then started to receive threatening calls from the owner's father (from an eastern European country.. Bulgaria? Can't remember). But basically the details becoming public, or her testimony basically revealed that the change in tack by ZH was due to the fact that it paid better than simple financial blogging, now that the Financial crisis was over. So ZH now actively courted right wingers and possibly Russian financiers.

Really need to find that article again, it was a real eye-opener to the motives of people financing these sites.

I used to read ZH a bit during the FC, but recoiled in horror the last time I was there.

[lowkeynthorough]

https://newrepublic.com/article/156788/zero-hedge-russian-tr...