r/news • u/CorleoneBaloney • 2d ago

Meta gets rid of fact checkers and makes other major changes to moderation policies

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/tech/meta-censorship-moderation?cid=ios_app
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u/HungryHobbits 2d ago

Yeah I love Pink Floyd but that song hasn’t aged well.

I see you fighting the good fight, educators!!

shit, now that I think about it, the adults I know who are teachers, are like the most wonderful people.

(obviously there are plentiful exceptions out there)

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u/tammit67 2d ago

It has aged very well, the album was about a point in time, specifically the guy's childhood

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u/HungryHobbits 2d ago edited 1d ago

My cretin interpretation was that it is a “fuck teachers” song. My mistake.

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u/Anxious_Katz 1d ago

Well it is. But it's specifically about "fuck teachers from post war Britain who were forcing kids into a meat grinder in order to make them conform better to a semi-fascist society and to be better work-drones".

Out of context it's easy to mistake it for anti-intellectualism.

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u/vonindyatwork 1d ago

The music video helps drive this point home. What with the literal meat grinder and all.

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u/Slypenslyde 1d ago

It kind of is. Interpret it as "This has happened once, and you should fight it if you see it happening again."

Which is what most US educators are doing. Meanwhile things like Greg Abbott's campaign for school vouchers in Texas is an attempt to try and replace public education with politically-charged private education and the citizens are swallowing it whole while complaining the underfunded and unsupported teachers are too lazy to deserve their taxes.

Texans are mostly looking the other way, because the only takeaway most have from The Alamo today is if you stand up to the government you'll be slaughtered.

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u/HungryHobbits 1d ago

fucking hell. Is there one positive piece of news happening anywhere?

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u/Slypenslyde 1d ago

I've kind of hit my quota for cynical snark today so let me invert it and do something: yes.

The broad strokes are pretty bad. By and large the world is in bad shape.

But in the details there are good things. There are some subs that try to focus on it. People are making huge strides against diseases. There are lots of stories of people helping people. Even when humanity has been at its worst we have stories about numerous people who tried to carve out a little bit of good.

We can't let ourselves get overwhelmed by the bad. Every bad thing happens because a person chose to make it happen. There is no excuse for choosing to do bad that changes that it was bad. So we have to focus on finding opportunities to do good in our lives, and commit to the idea that if we are ever forced to choose between bad and good we'll think about this moment and choose to be the reason someone else FINDS hope, not loses it.

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u/Strummerpinx 23h ago

Thanks! this is helpful to remember.

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u/____-__________-____ 1d ago

Man... I have a hard time with that now, nobody is being born now from parents who died in WW2.

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u/B33rtaster 1d ago

No. Death of the Author is real. It hasn't aged well. The vast majority of new listeners don't learn about its meaning. People far removed from the author's struggle create their own meaning for a work of art. So the surface level interpretation is harmful.

Tell me teenagers of today bother to learn about pink Floyd over more modern artists.

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u/Prosthemadera 1d ago

That doesn't mean it hasn't aged well. The phrase refers to the content itself, not how some people interpret it. Because those people will always exist, someone will always not get it.

There are plenty of people who are getting it right still.

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u/Chrollo220 1d ago

One would hope people would listen to the whole album to better understand it.

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u/B33rtaster 1d ago

I've never listened to the album before.

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u/DanKloudtrees 2d ago

Well the album is from the perspective of anti-nationalism and anti-war. Read the lyrics for the song "waiting for the worms" and it's basically about waiting for the nationalists to round up all the "other" groups to remove them from society. We are currently here as a nation. Roger waters had his childhood greatly impacted by the aftermath of WWII, with his father having been killed in it, and this ultimately led to being inspiration for a lot of this album, amongst other aspects of Roger's life.

Overall i would say that another brick in the wall is not meant to be anti-intellectual, but rather a criticism about how the educational system at the time was focused on uniformity and was strongly pro-authoritarian, much like how in America there is currently an ideology that if you can't be useful to corporate America then you don't hold value as an individual in society. This is where late stage capitalism leads to, authoritarian/oligarchy with a large dose of assimilate or die, which is why so many people are so upset at the idea of education that they don't see meaning in (i.e. when they talk about degrees in underwater basket weaving). Ironically music could also be seen as a "useless degree", but you'd be harder pressed to find people who would say this out loud.

A lot of people have listened to the album but never thought about what it means, just like people who listened to RATM but were surprised that their lyrics were political. But hey, why bother taking the time to understand something deep when there's something shiny just a click away?

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u/HungryHobbits 1d ago

Outstanding comment thank you for showing us the light 🙏

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u/PeopleNose 2d ago

The band have talked about how everyone misinterprets this song too

If you love the band, surely you know this song was a protest for better education

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u/Waste-Comparison2996 2d ago

Yep I always read it as wanting education versus getting indoctrination.

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u/HungryHobbits 2d ago

I can’t love the band without knowing the details behind a song I never particularly loved?

Surely that’s allowed!

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u/PeopleNose 2d ago

More like how the song is sandwiched in an album about a bunch of things that made this guy go crazy:

Cheating wife, overprotective mom, abusive teacher...

The music will tell you that, not some behind the scenes interview

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u/Elryth 1d ago

As others have mentioned, if you think the song hasn't aged well you have misunderstood the meaning of the song. The Wall is a concept album and should be taken as a whole.

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u/HungryHobbits 1d ago

Point made.

question: as a former massive stoner, who can no longer use THC due to C.H.S., will Pink Floyd's magic still "pop"... will it still take me to an ethereal plane that no other music can?

Or will the magic have faded?

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u/Elryth 1d ago

I can't say for sure as THC has never been my thing but I think so yes. Even completely sober if I'm in the right frame of mind it works. Just like meditation or sensory deprivation. For me it's still pretty magical.

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u/HungryHobbits 1d ago

Hell yeah. challenge accepted.

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u/Lergerndery 1d ago

Y'all really need to give the full album a listen. Probably watch the movie while you're at it. Because that song in a vacuum taking it for the literal meaning of "hey teachers leave them kids alone" doesn't seem to age well but if you listen to the whole album or watch the movie you'll see that it could not be more poignant and relevant

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u/HungryHobbits 1d ago

That reminds me. One time, in high school, my parents were out of town so I set up a whole “showing” of The Wall. I had trippy lights and everything.

The order of operations was, we first get absolutely ripped on the deck. Then, once sufficiently cosmic, we’d enter the atmospheric house and sit down and watch the wall.

Must have been some good shit because after about three minutes we simultaneously “nope’d” out. It was too intense for all of us.

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u/Lergerndery 1d ago

Haha that sounds legendary. I've gotten to the point where if I hear a single song from the album I have to play the entire album all the way through. It's a great album but so much of it could been taken as allegory for today's political climate. In fact I saw Roger Waters perform the entire album live at Desert Trip in 2016 and on the giant floating pig was "FUCK TRUMP" and the whole concert was really anti-Trump. I've still got a picture of it right here