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It's not just professional outlets that create fake news. 4chan regularly does false-flagging to create a more heated discussion. And so does the other side, se

It's not just professional outlets that create fake news. 4chan regularly does false-flagging to create a more heated discussion. And so does the other side, see mattress girl for example or the gas station thing mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Lies are cheap on the internet. And since those stories are a claim that something happened and there is noone to argue the other side my position is that the burden of proof that anything happened at all is on the poster. Otherwise they might be crying wolf.

dao- 10y ago
Sure, 4chan does that. I find it hard to believe that all those reports come from 4chan. Look, saying some reports may be fake, some may be exaggerated, some may be inaccurate is something entirely different than saying they're all bullshit.
- throwaway54675 10y ago
  But now you have several problems: we don't know: * which reports are fake * which percentage of reports are fake * which side of the argument creates more fakes than other Maybe it's almost entirely a propaganda war with a few traces of facts. Maybe it's mostly real, who knows. This is far away for many of us. So without some hard evidence we don't have much reason to believe any of it. "Someone said something" is not good enough. Even pictures can be easily taken out of context. Hell, some fake stories even use photos from unrelated news, so even photographic evidence needs to be taken with a grain of salt. So really, why should I believe anything that gets reposted over 3 corners in the form of unattributed, cropped screenshots?
  - dao- 10y ago
    I'm not saying you should believe them all. Reasonable skepticism is healthy, unfounded conspiracy theories are not. What I'm saying is that one shouldn't make unfounded assertions that all reports about everyday racism are fake.
    - throwaway54675 10y ago
      Nobody said that all stories are fake. But if reasonable skepticism tells us that an unknown percentage might be then then they do not "raise awareness". It just tells us something between "one side is just virtue-signalling, things are mostly peachy" and "things are actually getting worse". In other words, I'm not getting much useful information out of random clipped images on facebook. The error bars are way too large.
      - dao- 10y ago
        > Nobody said that all stories are fake. You're sure about that? The OP was referring to a "vile post of total incendiary bullshit." I don't know what led to this rather vague statement, but to me one possible reading seems to be that all or at least the vast majority of the reports are false (and are spread knowing that they're false.)

dao- 10y ago

Sure, 4chan does that. I find it hard to believe that all those reports come from 4chan. Look, saying some reports may be fake, some may be exaggerated, some may be inaccurate is something entirely different than saying they're all bullshit.

throwaway54675 10y ago
But now you have several problems: we don't know: * which reports are fake * which percentage of reports are fake * which side of the argument creates more fakes than other Maybe it's almost entirely a propaganda war with a few traces of facts. Maybe it's mostly real, who knows. This is far away for many of us. So without some hard evidence we don't have much reason to believe any of it. "Someone said something" is not good enough. Even pictures can be easily taken out of context. Hell, some fake stories even use photos from unrelated news, so even photographic evidence needs to be taken with a grain of salt. So really, why should I believe anything that gets reposted over 3 corners in the form of unattributed, cropped screenshots?
- dao- 10y ago
  I'm not saying you should believe them all. Reasonable skepticism is healthy, unfounded conspiracy theories are not. What I'm saying is that one shouldn't make unfounded assertions that all reports about everyday racism are fake.
  - throwaway54675 10y ago
    Nobody said that all stories are fake. But if reasonable skepticism tells us that an unknown percentage might be then then they do not "raise awareness". It just tells us something between "one side is just virtue-signalling, things are mostly peachy" and "things are actually getting worse". In other words, I'm not getting much useful information out of random clipped images on facebook. The error bars are way too large.
    - dao- 10y ago
      > Nobody said that all stories are fake. You're sure about that? The OP was referring to a "vile post of total incendiary bullshit." I don't know what led to this rather vague statement, but to me one possible reading seems to be that all or at least the vast majority of the reports are false (and are spread knowing that they're false.)