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Honest question - it's obvious how you identify politically by all your posts here, but what has your comment got to do with the story? If it's a false story,
by forgingahead 6y ago
Honest question - it's obvious how you identify politically by all your posts here, but what has your comment got to do with the story?
If it's a false story, say it. If it's not - what exactly are you saying with your comment?
- tptacek 6y agoThat stories from "Newsweek" are routinely submitted here and often voted onto the front page, despite "Newsweek" being essentially an SEO scam.
- forgingahead 6y agoAre the facts in the story false?
- marton78 6y agoThe claim is probably "they're likely false, please exercise caution"
- tptacek 6y agoI have no idea if they're false. It's a phoned-in article about a series of tweets. I wrote a comment about "Newsweek", not about the particulars of the post. "Newsweek" is essentially an SEO scam, is the point I'm making, the same way we'd point it out if a scraped blog post was blogspam.
- snoshy 6y agoPublic service at its finest in the modern world, little thanks for the perseverance it can take to drive it through. Kudos.
- Guthur 6y agoPurchasing a brand is hardly a scam. You might not like who bought it but it's quite common to buy brands. To be honest I have no idea who Newsweek were or are and if they stopped being the original group 7-8 years ago it hardly seems like you could maintain any brand loyalty if you were eroding it with wrong doing over that whole time.
- pvg 6y agoTo be honest I have no idea who Newsweek were or are These things seem germane to the discussion, though.
- Guthur 6y agoNot at all. The OP was maintaining because the brand changed hands that it was somehow a scam, that feels quite disingenuous.
- kasey_junk 6y agoNewsweek was a bastion of print media for decades in the US. It would be similar to someone turning the BBC into a Christian news organization. The organization that took over Newsweek did it with the intention to improve their own credibility by banking on the name, while removing all the people and processes that built that credibility in the first place. If it’s not an outright scam it’s certainly approaching it.
- NeutronStar 6y agoIf you ever change your stance on an issue are you a scam?
- tclancy 6y agoConsider the anti-tracking browser extensions that gain enough popularity they get bought by ad tracking companies. Is that also legitimate?
- mellosouls 6y agoThat we only seem to be reading this terrible story in Newsweek (despite the facts being there to see) suggests then that "SEO scams" are doing a better job than mainstream journalists in some cases.
- sellyme 6y agoI suppose that depends on whether you think the job of journalists is to report news, or to generate clicks.
- mellosouls 6y agoHow is somebody being fired for this reason not news?
- specialist 6y agoFWIW, I recently learned that Wikipedia has list of perennial sources. The entry for Newsweek 2013-present says "not reliable". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... Maybe aggregators like HN can leverage this list, like a pre-filter for the moderators.
- ronenlh 6y agoI know it sounds like he’s “poisoning the well,” but this comment answered the question I had in my head. I thought the source was left-leaning but the article had a conservative voice. It’s important to know who’s writing: The article is not an objective list of facts. They did not reach to the publication for comment. Some nuances might have been ironed out. This is true regardless of the political side talking.
- cheph 6y ago> I know it sounds like he’s “poisoning the well,” but this comment answered the question I had in my head. I thought the source was left-leaning but the article had a conservative voice. Comment contradicts what is in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek#2018_investigation_and_firings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek#2018_investigation_an... Maybe ask for sources before using some random post making unverified claims as confirmation for your own biases.
- mellosouls 6y agoThe summary in Wikipedia may be correct but it is worth remembering that Wikipedia itself is hideously biased to the left at times in its coverage of political issues. I've generally taken that not to be down to malevolence but probably just down to the fact those drawn to editing it are most likely of a similar political hue to those from academia.
- opheliate 6y agoHonest question: Could you point to some examples of Wikipedia's "hideous" left-wing bias? Not trying to catch you out, I've just personally always been surprised by how neutral Wikipedia's political articles tend to be when I've read them, and I'd like to challenge my own perception here.
- barbacoa 6y agohttps://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/ https://thecritic.co.uk/the-left-wing-bias-of-wikipedia/
- ThankYouBernard 6y agoHonest question - you're claiming to know what the other person's politics are. If their politics has any relevance to this story, please say it. Otherwise what are you trying to insinuate here? (see -- this kind of bad faith "sealioning" is the most low-effort crap that anyone can do)
- eznzt 6y ago> Honest question - it's obvious how you identify politically by all your posts here, but what has your comment got to do with the story? It is the literal meaning of "virtue signalling".
- arp242 6y ago> If it's a false story, say it. If it's not - what exactly are you saying with your comment? Right now it's not entirely clear what all the facts are. Perhaps she really was just fired for having an account, or perhaps she posted some things that were less-than-savoury. I think the chance that a Conservative publication would do any diligence at getting at the facts of the matter is essentially zero. A few years ago a Conservative publication had an article that they had "proof" that Conservative accounts were banned more frequently on Twitter, based on "analysis" of the data. It took me a bit of effort to find the data, and it included shining examples of Conservatism such as the American Nazi Party. Yes, literally, the American fucking Nazi Party. It included a list of a whole bunch of other similarly minded people; I wrote down a list here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette#Banning_Neo-Nazis_is_oppressing_conservatives.E2.84.A2 https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quillette#Banning_Neo-Nazis_is... This is a very marked example, but there have been many examples where all nuance or details were left out because it was more convenient. This is the kind of playing field we're dealing with. Now, I'm not saying that you should trust other publications blindly – trusting anything blindly would be foolish – but trust is not binary, and generally speaking I would trust other sources more on this topic. A Conservative publication on topics like these without details are, unfortunately, not proof of anything right now and carry very little trust. So, do I know it's a false story? No. Do I know it's a true story? Also no. Essentially a story like this is useless outside of being a lead for further investigation.
- LarvaFX 6y agoThank your for explaining it so clearly.
- cm2187 6y agoBecause the left-leaning orthodoxy of the moment is that you should under no circumstances read or watch any conservative media.
- enkid 6y agoDo you have any evidence the "left wing" is in any more of an echo chamber than the right wing? Is this just personal observation or do you have something more to point to?
- mellosouls 6y agoYou can just read the many, many articles on cancel-culture and de-platforming that have emerged in the last few years which is all a part of the same thing and overwhelmingly a problem from the left. Presumably the right-wing are just as capable (and historically have been the aggressor often), but the left have mastered it as a form recently.
- enkid 6y agoSo, this is a different argument from the one you were making before. You first post is about ingestion of media. This one is about production. This is a very different claim, but still requires evidence beyond stating that there is some. Can you help me out and provide some?
- forgingahead 6y agoI'm not sure if you're asking in good-faith, your comment history shows a history of "Sea-lioning" (a term I just learned myself today): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning From the original web-comic: http://wondermark.com/1k62/ http://wondermark.com/1k62/
- tptacek 6y agoThe moderators of this site specifically ask you not to employ this tactic of trying to summarize people's comment history as a rhetorical weapon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25130908
- eric_b 6y agoI used find GPs comments insightful, particularly with regard to computer security. Now his comments are predictably and assiduously leftist-political, and rarely on-topic to the article from what I've seen. > The new "Newsweek" capitalizes on the brand reputation of the old one, but has no connections to it From an external perspective it seems like the same argument could be made about the tptacek HN account. The posts from years ago which I enjoyed reading are nothing like the posts from recent history. It's like different people wrote them.
- nemothekid 6y agoI don’t think it’s fair to disparage someone because they don’t share your political views. tptacek hasnt changed extremely; you just never knew. I’ve been following him on Twitter for years; and I don’t believe he had changed at all - rather HN has had more political stories as the tech sector grew.
- skinkestek 6y agoIn fact I have reason to believe tptacek have mellowed a bit since I first joined HN under another name a decade or so ago.
- tptacek 6y agoThe irony is that my friends on the left say the same thing about me (it's a rough time to be a "liberal" and not a "leftist", even though we apparently managed to take control of all the levers of power and should be reveling in our ascendancy). Anyways, this is yet another reason to flag political stories on Hacker News! It blows to lose the ability to enjoy someone else's writing because you learn too much about their politics.
- kls 6y agoI know you have been on the site a little longer than I have, but I have always assumed we where of around the same genesis of digital nomads that arrived here in the second wave. Which leads me to have made some assumptions about over the years when I read your post. If they are correct, then we hold the many of the same liberal views, the next wave of HN'ers see the world very different from what the majority on the site did in the second wave of newcomers. It's not the same liberalism and I completely understand what you are saying about your friends on the left thinking the same thing. People on the right think I am a hippy people on the left think I am ready to start goose stepping and I just want everyone to be happy and live in peace, without the government mandating it.
- onion2k 6y agoIf it's a false story, say it. If it's not - what exactly are you saying with your comment? I find a warning that a single story might be false much less useful than a comment pointing out that the reputation of the source is no longer to be trusted.
- JeremyNT 6y ago> Honest question - it's obvious how you identify politically by all your posts here, but what has your comment got to do with the story? If it's a false story, say it. If it's not - what exactly are you saying with your comment? It seems like this should go without saying, but some news outlets have a better reputation for accuracy than others, and a story can be "true" in a technical sense while still being designed to further some agenda by omitting important context or facts. I'd submit that understanding the biases and incentives of a publication are prerequisites to taking any of their content seriously. This is true of any outlet. This doesn't mean you discard outright their content, but you may view it through a more skeptical lens and seek out additional corroboration.
- ubermonkey 6y agoHe's implying, correctly, that Newsweek is not a trustworthy or even-handed source, and that the ownership now is very likely to push stories in directions by leaving out information, or emphasizing red herrings, in order to drive an agenda.
- tptacek 6y agoNote that I am confident about the first clause in your summary and less confident about the second. What I'm sure of is that "Newsweek" was purchased as a skeevy ploy to acquire the journalistic reputation of Newsweek (without acquiring or investing in any of the infrastructure that created that reputation). Lots of sources claim Newsweek, in a manner similar to the Epoch Times, also has a pronounced partisan lean; I'm less sure of that, but more sure that when you look at the bylines of "Newsweek" stories, you often find content mill writers.
- nec4b 6y agoHis intent was to discredit and disqualify the source and to turn attention away from what is being debated.