6 ms·

Yesterday HN had 14 posts in 2 hours about Russia attacking Poland

6 points by unpopularopp 4y ago

https://files.catbox.moe/w4aax3.png Today there are 0 posts that it was not intentional and very likely caused by Ukrainian air defence https://nitter.net/BBCBreaking/status/1592842861535526913 https://nitter.net/cnnbrk/status/1592831547228524544 HN is manipulated at its finest

syzarian 4y ago
It’s reasonable that people are more interested in articles about an incident that could mean a war between Russia and NATO is imminent than they are about articles that such a war is not about to happen.
- lordfrito 4y ago
  This exactly... the moment I knew the missile wasn't from Russia, this became a non issue to me and I lost interest
h2odragon 4y ago
7 min before your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 " Poland says missile that hit it was Ukrainian stray" and there's others. Your counts are in error. Re-evaluate the data and see if you change your mind?
- unpopularopp 4y ago
  Your link has 4 points. My RSS is filtering to minimum 20, the post you linked never reach the front page, not even the 2nd
melling 4y ago
One story in much bigger than the other. People are posting the second story though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33619587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33619587 So, zero posts is not correct
- LinuxBender 4y ago
  My submission is still there as well. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33614533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33614533
- unpopularopp 4y ago
  4 and 5 points stories. They can't even make the 2nd page let alone the front.
  - melling 4y ago
    Are you moving the goal posts? Now the complaint isn’t that stories are posted but that people don’t upvote them. I’ve already explained that one story is much more important than the other. One can cause an escalation in the war, the other will be viewed as a mistake.
    - blub 4y ago
      On one hand there’s a story which hints at an escalation that may lead to a world war which is understandably very interesting. But on the other hand the story which would calm the potentially panicking population is not important? This is public announcement 101 and there should be huge interest in knowing that the world is not heading into a war (for now). I personally think that the people in the previous thread are too embarrassed to post any more after they speculated and were proven wrong.
Normille 4y ago
>HN is manipulated at its finest It's patently obvious to anyone who is honest with themselves that all coverage of the Ukraine conflict is biased to one side or the other. And here in the west, it's biased towards the pro-Ukraine narrative. I read a wide variety of news sites, ranging from The Guardian to Russia Today to China Daily [and several more in between] and it's striking, not how bias is shown in what's reported. But also in what's not reported or is glossed over. A couple of examples: 1: The alleged discovery of US biolabs in Ukraine was pretty much ignored by the western media but got lots of coverage on RT and was also mentioned on CD. 2: When Ukraine bombed the Crimean bridge, Russia Today led with the fact 3 civilians were killed and 2 were missing presumed dead. The fact that civiliams were killed was not mentioned at all on the BBC etc. Conversely, when Russia started the bombardment of Ukraine's infrastructure, RT led with how the bombardments had taken out 'weapons storage' and 'communications' and didn't mention any civilian casualties. While the BBC etc. led with the numbers of civilians killed. 3: RT has been claiming that there have been videos posted on social media of Ukrainian militia flying fascist banners and giving nazi salutes. Again this has not been mentioned at all in the western press --presumably as it gives some credence to Russia's justification that it invaded Ukraine to counter Fascism and undermines the western narrative that 'Russia = Wholly Evil. Ukraine = Wholly Good' I said at the top, I consume news from a wide range of sources, of all political hues. Interestingly, since the Ukraine conflict started, I've been finding that most of the time Russia Today is unreachable from my browser, or through VPN connected via anywhere in western Europe or the US. Yet, strangley enough I have no problem connecting to the site though VPN via Asian countries. Odd that, isn't it? It's almost like censorship. Except, as we all know, only nasty oppressive countries like Iran, China, Russia etc. try to block their people's access to foreign news sources. It must be just coincidence.
- syzarian 4y ago
  It seems unreasonable to me to call Ukraine fascist when it has a democratically elected government and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was a consequence of Ukrainians getting rid of a highly corrupt, dubiously elected leader. In Russia “nazism” is synonymous with “anti-Russia”. From my perspective it’s clear that Russia is the aggressor and it’s actions are morally unjustifiable. All societies engage in censorship in one form or other.
heneryville 4y ago
HN is a news aggregation site, which means what people find interesting gets posted, not every fact. An escalation of the war is a whole lot more interesting than the discovery that this is a non-event. Western media has correctly and widely covered the correction, so this is not evidence of (or against) western media bias.
- blub 4y ago
  The confirmation that NATO will definitely not go to war with Russia is not as boring and uninteresting as you’re making it to be. After the original news broke out the “correction” on the source of the missile was the most important piece of information since the war began. Western media has fallen on its face yet again and then cooly got up and kept walking as if nothing happened. Except many people saw it with their own eyes.
dang 4y ago
You're right that later corrections never do as well as misleading sensational stories, but that has nothing to do with this particular topic, nor with HN. Mass psychology and media all work that way, and complaints about it long predate the internet. Here's Jonathan Swift in 1710: It often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect. - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ All you observed was the routine dynamics of the forum. Sensational media stories get posted all the time to HN, and get upvoted all the time. Most are off topic and get flagged by users and/or downweighted by mods. As far as I know there was only one moderator intervention of any kind, and it went the opposite way to what you thought you perceived: we downweighted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613278 when it was on the front page, because it wasn't in English (about that see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20english-language%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We would probably have downweighted it even if it had been in English, since a rushed story about a sensational event on a sensational topic makes for bad HN threads—there simply isn't enough reliable information. We try to wait for more information to emerge in such cases, as would anyone who had reflected a little on media reporting. As far as I can tell from a quick scan of the data, that was the only submission mentioning Russia, Poland, or missiles that made HN's front page yesterday. If you consider how easy it is to convince yourself that you're perceiving "manipulation" and to post accusations about it, and then compare that to how much harder it is to write an accurate and informative response, you might notice how your post is itself an example of the thing you're complaining about.

6 points by unpopularopp 4y ago

syzarian 4y ago

It’s reasonable that people are more interested in articles about an incident that could mean a war between Russia and NATO is imminent than they are about articles that such a war is not about to happen.

lordfrito 4y ago
This exactly... the moment I knew the missile wasn't from Russia, this became a non issue to me and I lost interest

h2odragon 4y ago

7 min before your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 " Poland says missile that hit it was Ukrainian stray" and there's others. Your counts are in error. Re-evaluate the data and see if you change your mind?

unpopularopp 4y ago
Your link has 4 points. My RSS is filtering to minimum 20, the post you linked never reach the front page, not even the 2nd

melling 4y ago

One story in much bigger than the other. People are posting the second story though. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33619587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33619587 So, zero posts is not correct

LinuxBender 4y ago
My submission is still there as well. [1] [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33614533 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33614533
unpopularopp 4y ago
4 and 5 points stories. They can't even make the 2nd page let alone the front.
- melling 4y ago
  Are you moving the goal posts? Now the complaint isn’t that stories are posted but that people don’t upvote them. I’ve already explained that one story is much more important than the other. One can cause an escalation in the war, the other will be viewed as a mistake.
  - blub 4y ago
    On one hand there’s a story which hints at an escalation that may lead to a world war which is understandably very interesting. But on the other hand the story which would calm the potentially panicking population is not important? This is public announcement 101 and there should be huge interest in knowing that the world is not heading into a war (for now). I personally think that the people in the previous thread are too embarrassed to post any more after they speculated and were proven wrong.

Normille 4y ago

>HN is manipulated at its finest It's patently obvious to anyone who is honest with themselves that all coverage of the Ukraine conflict is biased to one side or the other. And here in the west, it's biased towards the pro-Ukraine narrative. I read a wide variety of news sites, ranging from The Guardian to Russia Today to China Daily [and several more in between] and it's striking, not how bias is shown in what's reported. But also in what's not reported or is glossed over. A couple of examples: 1: The alleged discovery of US biolabs in Ukraine was pretty much ignored by the western media but got lots of coverage on RT and was also mentioned on CD. 2: When Ukraine bombed the Crimean bridge, Russia Today led with the fact 3 civilians were killed and 2 were missing presumed dead. The fact that civiliams were killed was not mentioned at all on the BBC etc. Conversely, when Russia started the bombardment of Ukraine's infrastructure, RT led with how the bombardments had taken out 'weapons storage' and 'communications' and didn't mention any civilian casualties. While the BBC etc. led with the numbers of civilians killed. 3: RT has been claiming that there have been videos posted on social media of Ukrainian militia flying fascist banners and giving nazi salutes. Again this has not been mentioned at all in the western press --presumably as it gives some credence to Russia's justification that it invaded Ukraine to counter Fascism and undermines the western narrative that 'Russia = Wholly Evil. Ukraine = Wholly Good' I said at the top, I consume news from a wide range of sources, of all political hues. Interestingly, since the Ukraine conflict started, I've been finding that most of the time Russia Today is unreachable from my browser, or through VPN connected via anywhere in western Europe or the US. Yet, strangley enough I have no problem connecting to the site though VPN via Asian countries. Odd that, isn't it? It's almost like censorship. Except, as we all know, only nasty oppressive countries like Iran, China, Russia etc. try to block their people's access to foreign news sources. It must be just coincidence.

syzarian 4y ago
It seems unreasonable to me to call Ukraine fascist when it has a democratically elected government and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was a consequence of Ukrainians getting rid of a highly corrupt, dubiously elected leader. In Russia “nazism” is synonymous with “anti-Russia”. From my perspective it’s clear that Russia is the aggressor and it’s actions are morally unjustifiable. All societies engage in censorship in one form or other.

heneryville 4y ago

HN is a news aggregation site, which means what people find interesting gets posted, not every fact. An escalation of the war is a whole lot more interesting than the discovery that this is a non-event. Western media has correctly and widely covered the correction, so this is not evidence of (or against) western media bias.

blub 4y ago
The confirmation that NATO will definitely not go to war with Russia is not as boring and uninteresting as you’re making it to be. After the original news broke out the “correction” on the source of the missile was the most important piece of information since the war began. Western media has fallen on its face yet again and then cooly got up and kept walking as if nothing happened. Except many people saw it with their own eyes.

dang 4y ago

You're right that later corrections never do as well as misleading sensational stories, but that has nothing to do with this particular topic, nor with HN. Mass psychology and media all work that way, and complaints about it long predate the internet. Here's Jonathan Swift in 1710: It often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect. - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/ All you observed was the routine dynamics of the forum. Sensational media stories get posted all the time to HN, and get upvoted all the time. Most are off topic and get flagged by users and/or downweighted by mods. As far as I know there was only one moderator intervention of any kind, and it went the opposite way to what you thought you perceived: we downweighted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613278 when it was on the front page, because it wasn't in English (about that see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20english-language%20site&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We would probably have downweighted it even if it had been in English, since a rushed story about a sensational event on a sensational topic makes for bad HN threads—there simply isn't enough reliable information. We try to wait for more information to emerge in such cases, as would anyone who had reflected a little on media reporting. As far as I can tell from a quick scan of the data, that was the only submission mentioning Russia, Poland, or missiles that made HN's front page yesterday. If you consider how easy it is to convince yourself that you're perceiving "manipulation" and to post accusations about it, and then compare that to how much harder it is to write an accurate and informative response, you might notice how your post is itself an example of the thing you're complaining about.