[lvspiff]

I used the CIA factbook so much in college in the early 2000's when looking at so many things. When researching countries to support and travel to it made sense to vreview it beforehand. Its insane that this as a resource would be taken down.

[anigbrowl]

It gets cited a lot in immigration litigation as well (eg in asylum arguments) because it's an unimpeachable factual source that the government's lawyers can't reasonably dispute.

[pesus]

Now that you mention it, I'm pretty convinced this is the reason they took it down. If you can't dispute the facts, get rid of them, I guess.

[Noumenon72]

And that's not necessarily anti-intellectual or in opposition to truth. When "seeing like a state", a government doesn't have a view of most actual facts, like "was this person actually in danger" or "is this person repeating the exact same story as the ten people before them". It only knows facts legitimated by its own systems. When those facts force it to take actions that are harmful and dumb, the government is wise to stop defining those as facts.

For example, if the army keeps launching raids that kill civilians because the government can only track progress through body counts, it is not "facts are the enemy" to stop counting the bodies. (Obviously it would be wiser to stop using the counts as the deciding factor, but if the generals have different values than the government, as immigration courts do, then stopping the count is the only way to stop the bleeding.)

[red-iron-pine]

that is almost certainly the point

[foobarchu]

In what ways would you use it like that? Honest question, I'm not at all familiar with what was in it.

[anigbrowl]

(eg in asylum arguments)

If you were applying for asylum because the conditions in your country were so oppressive to you as a political actor or member of a disfavored ethnic group, you could support your application with relevant data from the CIA world factbook describing general conditions in that country. As a publication of the US government, those factual claims would not be lightly dismissable or disputable the way third party opinions might.

[strangattractor]

It was a great resource for basic facts about countries. Providing it to the public was genius in addition to being useful.

[phyzome]

I was in middle school in the 90s and I had that URL memorized. Used it a lot as a reference for class projects.