We need to stop and take a moment to recognize the #PegasusProject consortium as a historic thing in itself, separate from its chilling findings. It's an unprecedented alliance of media and watchdog entities spread across the globe. First coordinated pushback against fascists.
Fascists have come to power across the world in the past decade by using social media to demonize the "newsroom, editorial meetings, fact checking" type media entities. This is the first global alliance to push back.
Cos substack and podcasts are nice and all, but something like this.... This requires teams. Big teams. Resources. Standards. Coordination. Forensic analysis. Multiple confirmations and triangulations. This takes a village. Hundreds of people make investigative journalism happen.
We've all grown up in a world with investigative journalism defining our times. So we tend to forget what a relatively new thing it is. The concept of a neutral newspaper, one that aims to pursue truth objectively, is actually a very young precious creation of our species.
Until about WW2, newspapers and magazines didn't even pretend to be neutral, objective, truth-seeking, etc etc. It was a given that every publication has an agenda. Every party, every movement, had its own mouthpiece. There were no generally accepted neutral arbiters of truth.
The history of "muckrakers", which is actually a compliment and a positive adjective for journalists if you read history, is a lot shorter than we think. In terms of overall human existence, investigative journalism is not that much older than you and me.
I'm trying to dig up this excellent longform from a few months ago detailing how the relationship between "mainstream" media and "big tech" has deteriorated in this century. Until a decade or so ago, media and tech loved each other. It was a lovely symbiotic relationship.
When tech wasn't as big, so roughly until the smartphone became ubiquitous, media loved tech as spunky underdogs creating empires out of nothing, and tech basked in it. There were no conflicts cos tech was still in its teens when IBM was Sauron and Jobs, Gates were the fellowship
But as big tech went from millions to billions to hundreds of billions to now a trillion, it was inevitable that investigative journalism would start looking into tech as well. And out tumbled many many skeletons from the valley and elsewhere. Tech didn't like it.
The old alliance was media and tech on one side and governments on another side. The bigger tech grew, the more it made sense for them to side with governments instead. Especially govts who brought social media armies and engagement numbers.
The only thing making tech begrudgingly put in place whatever standards they have put in place is the residual clout mainstream media still carries in the US and Europe. But the average unicorn CEO would much rather get in bed with authoritarians than fact checkers.
As much as Twitter and Facebook have reshaped global politics, the biggest events in US politics tend to start with an investigative deep dive by a "mainstream" newspaper or a magazine. Even the eventually pointless Hillary emails story only took off when be NYT wrote.
Everything from Watergate to Pentagon papers to abu ghraib to Mueller investigation to even something as out there as UFOs became a thing in US Congress only after NYT/WaPo/New Yorker/etc turned their investigative spotlights on.
These #PegasusSnoopgate findings are so clear cut and objectively damning that the only thing fascists and those in tech who are fascist-adjacent can do is continue their campaign to malign media and suggest non-existent conspiracies. The fascist is too dumb to do otherwise.
For example, Indian politicians saying that this globally coordinated story was timed for release with India's.... *checks notes*.... Monsoon session of Parliament. It's so absurd that even the guy saying it knows it's absurd. But the fascist has no other card left to play.
It takes a special kind of WhatsApp University First Class First type of addled mind to think that there is some global conspiracy to malign India, when Modi has swiftly reduced India from an aspiring global socioeconomic powerhouse to pitiable irrelevance.

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More from @gauravsabnis

20 Jul
As a non-fascist Indian, it is surreal how many huge objective fuck-ups get shamelessly defended. Demonetization, objective fail. Covid handling, objective fail. Pegasus findings, objectively horrifying.

But there's barely a murmur among BJP voters. Cos Muslims bad?
Really, to the silent BJP voters among my followers who are still silent. If you stand for nothing, what will you fall for? What will it take for you to speak up?
The most bizarre myth they cling on to is that "Modiji has raised India's profile abroad" because it's the exact opposite. I've been living in the US for 15 years. The first 8, when Manmohan was PM, is when this so called profile was high and ever growing. Then 2014 came.
Read 9 tweets
20 Jul
For the actual work, it's very reasonable and can even go up to $100/he. But I'm not comfortable with a doctoral dissertation being edited and rewritten on that scale in the first place. Papers, books, etc, yes. Dissertations, just proof reading is kosher IMHO.
Unless it's a dissertation essay or study being turned into a paper to submit to a journal. That's cool. But the dissertation officially defended, printed, bound, put in the library etc... That, just in my personal doctoral training philosophy, should not be copy edited.
I should stress again that this is my personal subjective policy, and not all academics feel this way. It's the way I was trained and the way I train. I'll happily pay top dollar for copy edits of papers I submit with my students. But their dissertations, have to be all them.
Read 4 tweets
19 Jul
Yash Chopra "romantic" movies don't age well in the #metoo era.
Lamhe - Rich scion wants to get with an older woman, who is not into him, loves someone else. He tries hard, but fails. So then grooms and marries her daughter who looks exactly like her. 🤢🤢
Chandni - Rich scion hooks up with a woman, but then throws her under the bus to please his patriarchal parents. She moves on, meets a nice guy. But rich scion is like, nah, she is mine for life, no matter how much I abused her, cos I'm awesome.
Read 16 tweets
19 Jul
I see a spiritual upheaval in that shark's future
The greatest single moment in cinematic history for a fan of HBO's The Wire is Stringer Bell and Jimmy McNulty sealioning together.
Read 4 tweets
19 Jul
I'm way more affected by these trees dying from the storm last night than I thought I'd be. Trees are peak evolution for me. We are still figuring out how to turn sunlight into cheap energy and they've been turning it into food while growing way taller than us, peacefully.
Their only predator is us. No other creature on earth thinks, nice tree, I'd like to decapitate it and turn it into a chair or Amazon boxes.
Parasites do kill trees but they don't set out to do it. We are the only ones.
Read 5 tweets
19 Jul
I don't think indians fully understand what a big deal #Pegasus is.
NYT is like Kohli. WaPo is like Pujara. If you know what I mean.
Read 5 tweets

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