4 ms·

I reached a similar conclusion after lurking on subreddits of opposite political leaning. I favored the views of one subreddit over another (naturally). Over ti

I reached a similar conclusion after lurking on subreddits of opposite political leaning. I favored the views of one subreddit over another (naturally). Over time, I found that I was blindly believing the comments in my favored subreddit over the other one, only to find that the comments were false or citing unreliable sources. I saw this happen several times, until I stopped lurking on both of the subreddits. I guess it's better to keep your identity small ...

redis_mlc 5y ago
For those who want a concrete example of this ... I watch material from mainly CNN, Sky Australia and NTD Media. Virtually every big story on CNN in the past 2 years has had some kind of retraction (ie. lying): - corona lab leak considered misinformation until a month ago - first impeachment (orchestrated/funded by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden) which failed due to lack of evidence/coverup of a bogus FISA warrant extension by Joe Biden - second impeachment (faked phone call transcript from Trump to an election official, retracted by WaPo) - Hunter Biden story suppression just before 2020 election, with CCP and Ukraine bribing the Biden family with $1 billion and various drug/weapons/sexual favors/influence peddling/etc. counts - CCP influence minimized (journalists are getting free junkets to Beijing, White House press corps contains multiple CCP organs nominated by US media outlets, etc.) - Jan. 6 riot protesters killed nobody (4 died of natural causes and 1 shot by Capitol Police.) Sky and NTD use old-school reporters, and have retracted nothing because they do factual reporting, not narratives. Their facts are ugly, but turn out to be very accurate. NTD had some of their reporting on the lab leak suppressed by Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, and currently are semi-frozen and demonetized by Youtube, so they've had to create their own media website. Sky reporters were insulted by other media outlets, yet tenaciously followed the lab leak, and have accumulated a lot of data not published anywhere else.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  Is this the same sky news that calls Covid the China Virus and employs known racists and xenophobes to prop up one side of the Australian political landscape? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-news-australia-is-tapping-into-the-global-conspiracy-set-and-its-paying-off https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-n...
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    I skimmed the entire contents of the link your provided. There is no Guardian evidence that Sky is wrong, racist or xenophobic. There is plenty of evidence that the Guardian, CNN, etc. are wrong though as recently reported, the most obvious being that the lab leak is some kind of right-wing "conspiracy theory" - it's actually the most plausible origin of Covid-19. Covid-19 is from China. Whether you call it the Wuhan, CCP or China virus, it's factual to call it using those terms - that's not racist. In the same way, the press reports variants from Brazil, the UK and India using the name of the country. I've watched Sky for about a year, and they've never said anything racist. Can you link to an actual racist comment by Sky or Trump? Where I come from, calling somebody racist without any proof makes you the racist.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I'm sorry that leftists on HN don't understand facts. Let me know if you have any questions, so you can stop looking sorry. AMA.
ineedasername 5y ago
Or distrust factual claims by people on Reddit until/unless you track things back to primary sources that you can review. Same goes for traditional news.
- Flex247A 5y ago
  I actually verified the sources myself when somebody replied to the false comments.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Primary seems a little extreme, and looking at primary sources in isolation can often be misleading. I think secondary sources (or even tertiary sources) are much more important when it comes to evaluating claims on the internet.
  - qsort 5y ago
    Strongly disagree. Secondary sources are more likely to introduce statistical artifacts, weird biases or cherry-picking, which are often hard to detect even for experts. We don't look at primary sources nearly as much we should. The only exception is for claims so dumb ("the time complexity of mergesort is O(n), the earth is flat, 1+1=5") that anything at all directly contradicts them.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    It's not extreme at all. I don't think that's the only thing a person should consider, but it has to be part of the picture. Secondary sources can have their own agenda. Also the simple fact that they have to choose what to include from the primary source means you don't get a complete picture. Even somewhat responsible scientific reporting falls into this trap: They may successfully report that something has a correlation, avoid implying a strong causal link, but then fall flat on their face by failing to realize that it was a low-powered study with very few participants. Tertiary sources are often reporting on secondary sources: The NYT reports on something that WaPo reports on. Any mistakes or biases present in the secondary source may be amplified & added to. I never read reporting about someone else's reporting without seeking out that first reports. At best, tertiary sources should be taken as commentary/opinion/interpretation. Non-primary sources are for when you want something explained to you in non-jargon terms or a TL;DR, or you want an expert's opinion on the primary sources etc. A medical study comes out about hear disease, and you want a cardiologist's assessment of the study. Even then, you need to understand who the cardiologist is. The average cardiologist may not be a great source: There are levels of expertise within any community, and I want someone who is at the top of the field. I don't want the average cardiologist's opinion. The problem is that no one has time to track down primary sources for everything they read/see/hear, or the level of knowledge to evaluate it. I'm fascinated by quantum computing, but I have no chance of understanding primary source research there. I have no choice but to rely on a secondary source or, if possible, the researchers themselves giving a higher level TL;DR. My rule of thumb is that, absent prior knowledge of bias/agenda/ill-intent, I skeptically take what people say at face value but don't accept it into my own views/opinions/etc unless I've done some digging of my own. If I'm not capable (e.g. quantum physics) of doing that, I simply try harder to get a variety of expert opinions, and avoid presenting anything I say/think as anything other than an outsider's imperfect understanding.

redis_mlc 5y ago

For those who want a concrete example of this ... I watch material from mainly CNN, Sky Australia and NTD Media. Virtually every big story on CNN in the past 2 years has had some kind of retraction (ie. lying): - corona lab leak considered misinformation until a month ago - first impeachment (orchestrated/funded by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden) which failed due to lack of evidence/coverup of a bogus FISA warrant extension by Joe Biden - second impeachment (faked phone call transcript from Trump to an election official, retracted by WaPo) - Hunter Biden story suppression just before 2020 election, with CCP and Ukraine bribing the Biden family with $1 billion and various drug/weapons/sexual favors/influence peddling/etc. counts - CCP influence minimized (journalists are getting free junkets to Beijing, White House press corps contains multiple CCP organs nominated by US media outlets, etc.) - Jan. 6 riot protesters killed nobody (4 died of natural causes and 1 shot by Capitol Police.) Sky and NTD use old-school reporters, and have retracted nothing because they do factual reporting, not narratives. Their facts are ugly, but turn out to be very accurate. NTD had some of their reporting on the lab leak suppressed by Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, and currently are semi-frozen and demonetized by Youtube, so they've had to create their own media website. Sky reporters were insulted by other media outlets, yet tenaciously followed the lab leak, and have accumulated a lot of data not published anywhere else.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
phist_mcgee 5y ago
Is this the same sky news that calls Covid the China Virus and employs known racists and xenophobes to prop up one side of the Australian political landscape? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-news-australia-is-tapping-into-the-global-conspiracy-set-and-its-paying-off https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-n...
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I skimmed the entire contents of the link your provided. There is no Guardian evidence that Sky is wrong, racist or xenophobic. There is plenty of evidence that the Guardian, CNN, etc. are wrong though as recently reported, the most obvious being that the lab leak is some kind of right-wing "conspiracy theory" - it's actually the most plausible origin of Covid-19. Covid-19 is from China. Whether you call it the Wuhan, CCP or China virus, it's factual to call it using those terms - that's not racist. In the same way, the press reports variants from Brazil, the UK and India using the name of the country. I've watched Sky for about a year, and they've never said anything racist. Can you link to an actual racist comment by Sky or Trump? Where I come from, calling somebody racist without any proof makes you the racist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
redis_mlc 5y ago
I'm sorry that leftists on HN don't understand facts. Let me know if you have any questions, so you can stop looking sorry. AMA.

ineedasername 5y ago

Or distrust factual claims by people on Reddit until/unless you track things back to primary sources that you can review. Same goes for traditional news.

Flex247A 5y ago
I actually verified the sources myself when somebody replied to the false comments.
bawolff 5y ago
Primary seems a little extreme, and looking at primary sources in isolation can often be misleading. I think secondary sources (or even tertiary sources) are much more important when it comes to evaluating claims on the internet.
- qsort 5y ago
  Strongly disagree. Secondary sources are more likely to introduce statistical artifacts, weird biases or cherry-picking, which are often hard to detect even for experts. We don't look at primary sources nearly as much we should. The only exception is for claims so dumb ("the time complexity of mergesort is O(n), the earth is flat, 1+1=5") that anything at all directly contradicts them.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  It's not extreme at all. I don't think that's the only thing a person should consider, but it has to be part of the picture. Secondary sources can have their own agenda. Also the simple fact that they have to choose what to include from the primary source means you don't get a complete picture. Even somewhat responsible scientific reporting falls into this trap: They may successfully report that something has a correlation, avoid implying a strong causal link, but then fall flat on their face by failing to realize that it was a low-powered study with very few participants. Tertiary sources are often reporting on secondary sources: The NYT reports on something that WaPo reports on. Any mistakes or biases present in the secondary source may be amplified & added to. I never read reporting about someone else's reporting without seeking out that first reports. At best, tertiary sources should be taken as commentary/opinion/interpretation. Non-primary sources are for when you want something explained to you in non-jargon terms or a TL;DR, or you want an expert's opinion on the primary sources etc. A medical study comes out about hear disease, and you want a cardiologist's assessment of the study. Even then, you need to understand who the cardiologist is. The average cardiologist may not be a great source: There are levels of expertise within any community, and I want someone who is at the top of the field. I don't want the average cardiologist's opinion. The problem is that no one has time to track down primary sources for everything they read/see/hear, or the level of knowledge to evaluate it. I'm fascinated by quantum computing, but I have no chance of understanding primary source research there. I have no choice but to rely on a secondary source or, if possible, the researchers themselves giving a higher level TL;DR. My rule of thumb is that, absent prior knowledge of bias/agenda/ill-intent, I skeptically take what people say at face value but don't accept it into my own views/opinions/etc unless I've done some digging of my own. If I'm not capable (e.g. quantum physics) of doing that, I simply try harder to get a variety of expert opinions, and avoid presenting anything I say/think as anything other than an outsider's imperfect understanding.