The DPRK could put out any set of numbers and would be accused of fudging them before anyone even looked at them.
It’s not even just lately. The Black Book of Communism shows the extreme lengths you can distort numbers and still be trusted as reputable by the average westerner.
Somehow after covid, bird flu, “job creation” statistics, the US’s reporting is not worthy of instantaneous distrust like NK’s.
DPRK couldn’t even fudge the statistics enough to look better than China.
Literally why would they, like actually why would they?
For more epic memes like this one, which is doing rounds on totally not niche western communist internet forums. Our image boards are so powerful and hold great cultural influence in the West, which is why the Chinese patrol the Lemmyverse with their Deepseek-R1 internet hordes. Without these incredible dunks, all hope for socialism is lost, but thankfully the PRC is redirecting their compute resources away from less important tasks to help us make fun of stupid libs harder.
Westerners really believe the plot of that shitty Seth Rogan movie is reality. L
Liberals put up the fiercest fights for the things of least consequence.
It lets them feel like they’re “sticking it to the man” in a way that is universally socially rewarded.
The intense circle jerking gives them many frequent dopamine releases as every dimwitted soul and LangleyGPT chimes in to make the same “MUH social credit score” and xinnie the poop jokes.
Imagine spending several hundred dollars to pull a racist stunt based on some incorrect information John Oliver ran a decade ago
*NED.
And I don’t think this is enough to discredit them as not secure and private.
Organizations like the NED or the CIA benefit immensely from private encrypted chats for conducting regime change operations and preventing their adversaries from being able to compromise espionage cells.
Just as the CIA produces good intel for itself, despite being the world’s foremost powerhouse at speeding misinformation, it is a simple case of interests aligning. They don’t mind a few Western libs having off-the-grid discussions if it furthers imperialist and regime change projects.
…or they could be honeypots, we may never know for certain, even if I think it is far less likely than wanting to discreetly communicate with assets embedded in foreign countries. If Matrix was a CIA honeypot, it would work better.