Personally I don’t think it’s wrong to have it up; there is enough bullshit in the “factual” news that I think it’s okay if people see this interesting thing while still being aware of the context that maybe it is a weird mistake or means nothing at all. I was just - maybe for the first time - sort of actually wanting the bot to tell me more about this news source.

As a general rule, to me the model of “let me take the information and figure out for myself and based on comments whether I think it is well founded enough to take seriously” is better than “the mods and MBFC bot will keep me safe, anything untrustworthy should come down, anything that does stay up I can just accept uncritically because it’s had a stamp of being definitely trustworthy”.

At least in the case of 'The Spot News', I don't think that's what they are and I think it's giving them more legitimacy than they deserve. I don't believe it's a genuine effort to do reporting. They're posing as a news agency when they're just reposting stuff they find online. Even in that tweet, they're reposting a video as if it's their own.

There are a million of these grifty accounts/sites that claim to be 'The World's #1 Source for Global Breaking News'. Two people and a camera can do a lot of things, but they can't be that. The people and the camera can only be in one place at a time, right?

In just the last 12 hours, The Spot News have "covered" Aerosmith, an attack on Israel, Imane Khelif (with this scummy nugget: "Imane Khelif, who has male hormones and beats women, took refuge in Allah."), a Kirill Fedorov interview with a Russian soldier, bird-shaped Chinese drones, Eylem Tok's lawyer, and a Ukrainian attack on a Russian sub. That's quite the travel budget for a little operation out of Sheridan, Wyoming! They don't indicate who their "reporters" are. There isn't one human being associated with that account. These are all hallmarks of news grifters. What they're really doing is plagiarism.

'Ukraine News 24' doesn't make any big claims about being the world's top news source and, honestly, I'm not totally sure that they're even trying to claim that they're doing journalism even though they've identified themselves as a "media and news company." It seems more like news activism and 99% of what they seem to do is curate and amplify news about Ukraine (with attribution). There's no problem at all with them doing that. They don't seem to do any original reporting though. I was too harsh in equating those two but I think pointing out that they're not really a news org is appropriate because their name is kind of deceptive (intentionally or not).

Venezuela's oil reserves are the last that should ever be pumped out of the ground in the world. It is thick sludge like bitumen, full of heavy metals and hard to extract and process because it has lots of Sulphur, so it's corrosive. It is almost as bad as burning coal and produces less high-value light hydrocarbons like gasoline and more bunker fuel that can only be used in tankers and industry...which are heavy polluters.

I'm almost tempted to say that it would be better for those reserves to be under the control of a backwards dictator who won't be able to develop them or privatize them, but China has its eyes on exploiting those reserves too, not just the US, so even that unethical argument is moot.

Ahh okay.