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QAnon Website Shuts Down After N.J. Man Identified as Operator

14 points by weare138 6y ago

quattrofan 6y ago
Dumb fucks anon more like
phobosanomaly 6y ago
Since the website is down, I clicked on one of the links qagg.news. I'm actually surprised at how well-designed the site is to vacuum in the human mind. As someone who is well-aware that the Qanon stuff is bullshit, my first thought on opening the link was 'fascinanting,' and I wanted to explore more. Unfortunately, I could see how someone could get sucked into this. Most people don't objectively assess the world around them, they rely on heuristics. If your heuristics are based on information relayed to you by those around you, rather than a mainstream average of the interpretation of what's going on around you (from reading NYT, WaPo, a more educated friend-group) in your community, why wouldn't you fall for this? At some point, I hope there is a shift in the high-school curriculum to make sure that every American gets a class that at least somewhat resembles this syllabus: 1. Introduction to bullshit 2. Spotting bullshit 3. The natural ecology of bullshit 4. Causality 5. Statistical traps 6. Visualization 7. Big data 8. Publication bias 9. Predatory publishing and scientific misconduct 10. The ethics of calling bullshit. 11. Fake news 12. Refuting bullshit https://www.callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html https://www.callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html There is a lot of anti-news sentiment on HN. Unfortunately, when people ignore the news, don't live in a more-educated area like SV, and rely on their community for their interpretation of the world, this kind of thing seems like a very natural extension of that. We tend to get off in the weeds on discussions of bias and such, but we really should be concerned about what happens when you totally divorce from reality by utterly abandoning information about the world around you from a mainstream source.
retox 6y ago
What is the journalistic value in doxing a private citizen?
- phobosanomaly 6y ago
  I guess it could be argued that it functions to pull back the curtain from the Wizard-of-Oz like elements of the Qanon conspiracy, and helps to show it for what it really is.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  revealing who uses the conspiracy theory and benefits from it financially (the author of the site runs a patreon account) is quite obviously in public interest. Not to mention someone who operates a website on the internet with 10 million monthly viewers, a business model, and a self-declared 'patriotic movement', is not a private citizen, but a publisher and a political activist.
  - Fjolsvith 6y ago
    Why does antifa.com redirect to joebiden.com?
    - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
      The owner of nazisr.us could redirect their site to trump.com, your point being?
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      I mean, I could* redirect ra.pi.st to donaldjtrump.com and it'd have about the same worth as this redirect. * I'm not going to.
    - dTal 6y ago
      What does that have to do with anything?
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Why does antifaleadership.com redirect to donaldjtrump.com?
      - Fjolsvith 6y ago

14 points by weare138 6y ago

Dumb fucks anon more like

Since the website is down, I clicked on one of the links qagg.news. I'm actually surprised at how well-designed the site is to vacuum in the human mind. As someone who is well-aware that the Qanon stuff is bullshit, my first thought on opening the link was 'fascinanting,' and I wanted to explore more. Unfortunately, I could see how someone could get sucked into this. Most people don't objectively assess the world around them, they rely on heuristics. If your heuristics are based on information relayed to you by those around you, rather than a mainstream average of the interpretation of what's going on around you (from reading NYT, WaPo, a more educated friend-group) in your community, why wouldn't you fall for this? At some point, I hope there is a shift in the high-school curriculum to make sure that every American gets a class that at least somewhat resembles this syllabus: 1. Introduction to bullshit 2. Spotting bullshit 3. The natural ecology of bullshit 4. Causality 5. Statistical traps 6. Visualization 7. Big data 8. Publication bias 9. Predatory publishing and scientific misconduct 10. The ethics of calling bullshit. 11. Fake news 12. Refuting bullshit https://www.callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html https://www.callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html There is a lot of anti-news sentiment on HN. Unfortunately, when people ignore the news, don't live in a more-educated area like SV, and rely on their community for their interpretation of the world, this kind of thing seems like a very natural extension of that. We tend to get off in the weeds on discussions of bias and such, but we really should be concerned about what happens when you totally divorce from reality by utterly abandoning information about the world around you from a mainstream source.

retox 6y ago

What is the journalistic value in doxing a private citizen?

phobosanomaly 6y ago
I guess it could be argued that it functions to pull back the curtain from the Wizard-of-Oz like elements of the Qanon conspiracy, and helps to show it for what it really is.
Barrin92 6y ago
revealing who uses the conspiracy theory and benefits from it financially (the author of the site runs a patreon account) is quite obviously in public interest. Not to mention someone who operates a website on the internet with 10 million monthly viewers, a business model, and a self-declared 'patriotic movement', is not a private citizen, but a publisher and a political activist.
- Fjolsvith 6y ago
  Why does antifa.com redirect to joebiden.com?
  - 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
    The owner of nazisr.us could redirect their site to trump.com, your point being?
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    I mean, I could* redirect ra.pi.st to donaldjtrump.com and it'd have about the same worth as this redirect. * I'm not going to.
  - dTal 6y ago
    What does that have to do with anything?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Why does antifaleadership.com redirect to donaldjtrump.com?
    - Fjolsvith 6y ago