Inside Cecot – 60 Minutes [video]
Key topics
A suppressed 60 Minutes report on CECOT, a notorious El Salvador prison, has sparked a heated discussion after being archived on the Internet Archive. Commenters are sharing links to the report and torrent seeds to keep it accessible, with some speculating that CBS News' new leadership pulled the report to appease the US government. As users rally to seed the torrent, they're also recommending torrent clients like qBittorrent and Transmission to help keep the report online. The community's efforts highlight the tension between free speech and censorship in the digital age.
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- 01Story posted
Dec 22, 2025 at 7:36 PM EST
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Dec 22, 2025 at 7:46 PM EST
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82 comments in 12-18h
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 26, 2025 at 4:23 PM EST
11 days ago
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...
8105370ed7dba50dc7ec659fd67550569b4dd8a0
What's the best torrent client nowadays?
https://www.qbittorrent.org/
I’m still using it happily on windows/linux.
Don’t forget your vpn!
That said protonvpn seems reputable
RTings recently updated their reviews and seems to agree: https://www.rtings.com/vpn/reviews/best/privacy
(At least not mine, which are old and almost obsolete but have enough RAM)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KTorrent / https://apps.kde.org/ktorrent/
Otherwise follow the links from there to qBitTorrent, or its mentions from other commenters here. Am not fond of transmission at all. Feels slow and sluggish in comparison.
We're not going anywhere.
—Hydra
I'm honestly speechless. But thanks for the magnet link.
Where are the independent and non-VC fueled discussion forums when you need them?
As a noob here on HN, that's what I gathered from your previous comment:
> In the year since, a bunch of their original reporting has hit the front page
So, a year ago, before my time, 404 media was moderated in a way that seemed like a ban, but now it no longer appears to be shadowbanned, is that what I'm learning?
Tell HN: Paywalls with workarounds are OK; paywall complaints are off topic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 - Sept 2015 (160 comments)
But: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=404media.co sure has a lot of [dead]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46347561
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335424
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46300618
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272934
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46148458
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821460
From what I can see, in the most recent handful of comments, there were some downvotes but not by moderators and not by the same community members (and unfair downvotes get detected and dropped on HN). And I think at least one comment that was downvoted when you posted your edit has now received enough upvotes to be back in the positive.
Of the first two pages of comments (60), covering most of the past 3 days, only 9 have any downvotes and they're from different users. The "most recent" comments are mostly unaffected by downvotes; prior to this one, only two of the past 23 comments had any downvotes.
> including the one that just straightforwardly answers someone's question
That one was odd, and it seemed like an unfair downvote so we've reversed it. But that just one of only two of the past 23 comments that was downvoted.
But really, why do people keep coming up with these false/exaggerated claims to try to cast doubt on our integrity? (Also, in the case of this claim, users can tell if comments have been downvoted from the comment text's shade of grey.)
Why do people think we're motivated to “suppress” negative stories about A16Z? They've been criticized forever here and we've never had a problem with it. All we care about is whether a topic makes for an interesting discussion on HN.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
For a while there was a widespread standing principle to not assume malice for actions that could be explained as a simple mistake. If only one person follows this policy, it's great. However, so many people were following this policy that it created massive incentives to disguise profit motivated malice as explainable accidents. We're in the midst of a massive backswing against this.
So, there is very little taste for patience when agents of ycombinator make mistakes that benefit a16z such as accidentally removing them from the title of a negative article, due to the billions of dollars entangling ycombinator with the reputation of a16z. This is not because it wasn't an accident- it's because any culture of patience with this will lead (and has led) to an explosion of copycat whoopsies.
Specifically, how does that title make any difference to A16Z's outcomes?
I think a more charitable interpretation of this kind of argument is that the money and power that entities like A16Z have make the possibility of corruption of endeavours like HN trivial.
In light of the ease in which a wealthy entity like A16Z can exert influence over an entity like HN and the track records of various A16Z adjacent/similar people doing similar things to other HN-like entities it's very natural that people are concerned about the possibility of similar things happening here.
Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence and others with far greater power would certainly leverage what you have here if suited their interests.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is no easy task especially in this medium and I don't envy you in taking it on, but it's an essential part of something like HN. If the users in aggregate don't trust the moderation process or the administrators then this all sort of falls apart and the interesting discussion suffers.
What does this mean? Why would a VC firm like this "corrupt" HN and how would they to it?
> Like it or not as an editor at HN you're in a position of power and influence
I think Dan has written about this plenty [1]; he certainly talked about it in article in The New Yorker; it's a myth that the moderators have great power and influence. The HN community has the power here. I wouldn't/couldn't be doing this job if hadn't learned that a long time ago. The only thing anyone at A16Z has ever done to try and influence HN is to refer to it as “Hater News”, which really just goes to show how much they feel like they have no control over it. Which is exactly what we want and like. Nobody controls HN other than the HN community, and those of us who work on it know that we can only succeed at this if we act in the way that the community wants and expects of us every day.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://archive.is/ybxFT
How does it materially benefit an outside VC firm if the title on an HN post about one of their portfolio companies excludes their name? What is the tangible economic impact?
There doesn't need to be an explicit effort to protect vc firms for your blind spots to shape conversation on this website away from criticizing them.
It's noticeable in this subthread that there is so much emotionally charged language about our motivations or blind spots and Kafakaesque logic that allows no space for any benign explanation, nobody has made any effort to explain how a title on an HN discussion thread has any influence on the economic outcomes of a firm like A16Z.
I also wonder if this story will get the type of leeway to stay on HN to collect the 200+ upvotes and 300+ comments of that previous example or if it will be flagged off the front page within minutes like so many other similar stories.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23759283
Also, it’s not unheard of for people working on the op-ed side of the house to become editors in chief. Most notable example I can think of would be Katharine Viner at the Guardian. And in the reverse, James Bennet went from being editor in chief at the Atlantic to running the op-ed page at the NYT.
I suspect she was hired at least in part because she would be willing to take the heat for stuff like this,
She is more or less an Israeli propaganda agent. She was hired at CBS because, after purchasing CBS from Zionist Shari Redstone, Zionist Larry Ellison and his son needed a reliable Zionist editor in chief. Weiss’ primary qualifications are her extremely pro Israeli career path.
Larry Ellison needed a woman like Weiss because he’s invested in Israel’s success. He’s both a close personal friend of Netanyahu and the number one private donor to the IDF. Netanyahu has declared US public perception of Israel as the 8th front of their war, and Ellison (with the help of Trump) is doing his part stateside.
Why we have so many powerful “Americans” exercising their power on behalf of a foreign country is the real discussion here.
The signatories have generally continued to complain about censoriousness from the left even while the right wing is detaining people for their speech, insisting that media personalities be fired for their speech, insisting that people (including naturalized citizens) be deported for their speech, cancelling grants because they are too "woke", and straight up passing laws banning the teaching of certain topics in secondary and postsecondary school.
Weiss herself is a participant with UATX, a expressly right wing university that has fired people for not being sufficiently critical of DEI efforts.
Weiss also has a long history of efforts to stifle the public debate that the signatories claim to support. The first thing that got her notoriety was an effort to get various professors at Columbia fired for their speech.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/woke-right...
And you can compare this article against the entire book that he published about the left's flaws this year. On one hand we've got an article critical of the right that finds the need to smuggle criticisms of the left in constantly and on the other hand we have a complete manuscript. You tell me where Williams is focusing his attention.
But you're also making this point about all signatories being hypocrites because you seemingly have a big bone to pick with the amount of blame Thomas Chatterton Williams portions to each side.
Williams is a public intellectual. What goes on in his mind is of much less importance to public discourse than what he writes.
Let me be clear. I believe that Williams is a hypocrite and I believe that the large majority of the signatories on the harpers letter are hypocrites. I mention him specifically because he was one of the people who actually wrote a lot of its text rather than just signing it, which makes him of particular interest for this discussion.
A once-reasonable friend of mine genuinely thinks RJK is just some dude who tries his best, and doesn't consider him a crazy anti-vaxxer. Crazy
As much as it would be comforting for all dudes who’re trying their best to pretend otherwise, the two are not mutually exclusive. (No opinion on whether RFK Jr is in the intersection—I’m not in the US and couldn’t affect his actions even if I tried.)
It's both. That's one of the things that's difficult to suss out and therefore have a plan to engage. There's plausible deniability on both ends of that spectrum. Even in the high positions in the administration, there's a smattering of True Believers in amongst the grifters.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46361571
> The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the men sent to El Salvador were overwhelmingly violent criminals; Pro Publica reported that the administration knew at least 197 of the men had not been convicted of crimes in the United States, and six had been convicted of violent offenses.
https://www.404media.co/archivists-posted-the-60-minutes-cec...
...and outside of the United States?
Or is it that perhaps they were convicted but not punished enough (for us), so we have to correct that?
Or something else? If they were convicted of a crime in another country, it suggests that justice has been doled out already, right?
I wonder if we could set up a system where the government has an opportunity to share its evidence and the public gets an opportunity to scrutinize it on a case-by-case basis so they can fully understand whether their government is acting appropriately.
Just a random little thought I had...
> The Trump administration claimed that the majority of Venezuelans sent to CECOT were members of the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua.
> Only [3.1% of the 226/252 Venezuelan prisoners in CECOT] had been convicted of a violent or potentially violent offense.
> Human Rights Watch reviewed documents in 58 of the 130 documented cases of people held in CECOT, and all indicated that they did not have criminal records in Venezuela or other countries in Latin America.
CECOT was already found to violate the UN’s minimum treatment of prisoners rights (aka “The Nelson Mandela Rules”) [2] by a report of the US.
Trump’s administration blatantly violates human rights.
Finally, here is a report investigating why the US can use the El Salavador prison [3].
> It has been clear from the beginning what Trump wants from El Salvador: an ally who would accept, and even imprison, deportees. Less clear has been what Bukele might want from the United States. In striking the deal with the Salvadoran president, Trump has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials said.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/11/12/you-have-arrived-in-he...
[2] https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/Ne...
[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/bukele-trump-el-salvador-...
But for this thread, despite qualifying within that 8%, I have chosen to upvote. My reasoning is that this policy of deportation is heinous — representing a failed regime's last gasps for relevancy — which will affect USA's reputation, economy, R&D, and technical innovation.
—Shamefully Embarassed American
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity
So, porn, then? Surely there must be limits.
----
From those same guidelines:
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime
I did think to myself "I hope they're using the Richard Feynmann/MIT Model Railroad Club sense of the work "hacking" there, not the "dude in a hoodie in front of a green on black terminal" sense. HN, for me, for over a decade, has been a source of intellectual curiosity provoking links, not just software/computing related stuff.
My attendances at DEF-CON have been mostly grey-hat. I don't really care about downvotes just here to spread knowledge on topics I find interesting.
Thanks for the sanity/perspective.
Pretty sure HN has discussed porn, the porn industry, sex work, sex workers, etc tons.
For example you can find in my history on posts about how porn access is being restricted that the "They have more fraud" claim is likely false and claimed in bad faith, and in fact Pornhub has been so removed from the payments industry that they now seem to have grafted themselves onto the internet gambling industry to make money, which is just awful. They have not turned to crypto payments because they just don't work, which is interesting to discuss.
But you would never see any of those discussions if you banned from the front page anything that mentioned porn.
Do you see how that works? Interesting discussion is about who is discussing, not about what is being discussed.
IMO the topic guidelines are entirely the wrong way to ensure meaningful discussion. All they have done, as clearly evidenced by the time HN tried to outright ban politics, is provide ample fodder for people to shut down discussions they were never going to participate in and contribute to anyway, and force people to have less interesting discussions about "Does this belong here", despite the guidelines themselves saying "If it's here, it belongs here"
HN also bans a lot of meta discussion which is crap, as talking about the sneaky and intransparent parts of HN, like the Orange Nametag cohort, would be interesting to the constant influx of new accounts.
I for one would also find deep dives into moderation or site meta information to be very interesting. I deal with abuse prevention in my day job, so seeing how others experience that abuse and deal with it would be not just interesting to me, but downright educational.
Meanwhile, HN is full of "I slapped an LLM into someone else's open source code" as if that is interesting at all. The entire point of vibe coding and agents etc is that anyone else could do that just as easily. So it seems "being interesting to hackers" just isn't the actual desired content.
Absolutely. See /u/grey's comment above, which /u/DanG responded with saying ~"no personal attacks"~ (I don't think grey got personal, and I don't think DanG's response was appropriate/warranted).
But as DanG and you have pointed out (in response to my other comments in this thread), porn does have a place on /hn/ — I truly believe the porn industry is the major driver of consumer tech.
Respectfully submitted, and thanks for all the great discussions among ALL users, oranges/admins/®ulars.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Believe it or not, this mod comment from 5 years ago addresses just that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23087737 (May 2020)
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Your post was intentionally disingenuous, and we really don’t need more of that around here.
The hack is in the leak, and the sudden availability, of the video segment, across international borders, against the Weiss will (and apparently against the Ellison and Trump will), rebounding back to us in the US via the good graces of https://archive.org and via some true journalistic (or political) chutzpah.
That's what drew me to this page, to learn more about how presumed underhanded corrupt billionaire-sanctioned censorship was defeated by an innocent premature distribution.
Stand with me as I rise to sing O Canada!
Which is funny, see, because this video wasn't on the news! How nice of CBS to ensure it didn't hit the news so we could talk about it here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Andreessen was directly involved in the rise of Bari Weiss too.
I hope you’re embarrassed at a human level by this point, but we know where your paycheck comes from.
And once any degree of censorship is involved by mainstream media the burden of open-ness goes up 10x in my opinion. At least I personally hadn't seen this article until today, and then the one I saw disappeared from the front page. I'm sorry but this story is more important than source code for photoshop 1.0
Musk and DOGE killed and estimated 600,000 people, mostly kids under 5, and the death hasn't abated yet. Tech workers helped him do it.
If you'd rather not be the kind of useful idiot who helps a megalomaniacal tech billionaire rack up the body count of an early 20th century despot, politics are unfortunately unavoidable.
If someone feels so strongly that the community is 'wrong' about a flag that one is tempted to post the umpteenth comment about it, then it's probably better instead either to post a 'Tell HN' or to email the mods.
I didn't and wouldn't flag this particular story, by the way. It's beside the point.
This administration has censorious friends everywhere, even (or especially) hn.
This is disgraceful [0], whatever your opinion on illegal immigration.
[0] deporting non-citizens to 3rd-party countries/prisons
See perhaps United States Declaration of Independence:
> "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...
Above is #19; see #18:
> "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Jury trial:"
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievances_of_the_United_State...
These men were never intended to spend the rest of their lives at CECOT, nor did they. All were released in July 2025 to their home country of Venezuela, and they were in El Salvador for a total of 125 days.
Wherever they go, the U.S. taxpayers are stuck footing the bill for their prison stay, food, medical treatment, etc., but why would it need to be in the United States? They have no claim to stay there.
The disgraceful part is sending illegal immigrants without criminal history to maximum-security prisons, sending asylum seekers to prison, or sending anybody to prisons that torture the inmates.
How many just vote Republican without thought as they have always done, how many are in the fox news cult? So many people just thought they didn't want a female president or Trump would lower inflation. It's hard for me to accept that Trump represents America, but he represents enough of it.
CBS defends pulling 60 Minutes segment about Trump deportations
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrnv3keeneo
or
‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump...
Looks to me like it’s all damage control/pressure valve release stuff designed to distract from any real change. Because SURELY we will get some real change finally, right?? /s
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