Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by edabobojr 1429 days ago
I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?
3 comments

I can't speak to the author's views, but it would to me. There's something very disconcerting about the ability of digital media to be "memory holed", and the Streisand effect is no longer a sure thing, in the age of big tech censorship infrastructure built by popular (media) demand.
At least with TV shows this isn't a problem. Everything is dumped on day 0 so the original releases are preserved. It wouldn't surprise me if there are hundreds of thousands of copies of the original releases floating out there due to torrents.

It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.

> You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips.

There is the "Silver screen edition" of Star Wars (first of the first, even before it got the "Episode IV"), but it only happened due to enormous efforts of fans who got an original print that should have been destroyed, digitized it with a homebrew machine, and painstakingly restored it frame by frame. That's a really fascinating story.

Journalists have been doing this the last few years without using a disclaimer. Personally, I think it's completely different as film and music is art. If this was done with music it would be especially damaging. Imagine your favourite songs being remastered and arranged for the worst. Artists could rework unsuccessful albums, which is weird.
Kanye has done this. Multiple times I believe, but notably with different versions of "The Life of Pablo" on music streaming services.
Earlier versions of the article can still be found on the Wayback Machine. [1]

The original article called the alleged removal of that scene, "wimpish laziness."

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220727142524/https://www.gq-ma...