4 ms·

Remote Amazon tribe did not get addicted to porn

81 points by h2odragon 2y ago

h2odragon 2y ago
https://archive.ph/N30K7 https://archive.ph/N30K7 https://web.archive.org/web/20240602043457/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/americas/starlink-internet-elon-musk-brazil-amazon.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240602043457/https://www.nytim...
spondylosaurus 2y ago
So the entire misinformation spiral basically traces back to the New York Post? Damn. I'm always shocked that anyone ever takes the Post seriously, but they're in a double whammy situation where (1) 90% of their content is sensationalist garbage and (2) most people seem unaware of this prior point. Which means they can spin up whatever shit and it'll get a lot of traction, way more than most other tabloids.
- vsuperpower2020 2y ago
  There's nothing in this blog post that proves it's wrong other than one guy in the tribe denying it because it looks bad for them. We're going to need access to the tribe's entire search history to sort this one out.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > There's nothing in this blog post that proves it's wrong Is this satire? In case not: The source didn't report it happening. Therefore no one needs to invent it, not even as a pretext for an invasive investigation.
    - vsuperpower2020 2y ago
      Sure they did. The tribe representative they interviewed in the original nytimes article said they had minors watching porn, and only backpedaled afterwards in this article because it make them look bad. Minors sharing porn in group chats is insane enough, but that it only took a little exposure to the internet for a small remote tribe to start is even more telling.
      - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        > and only backpedaled afterwards It's not clear if you're accusing the tribe or the reporter of backpedaling but neither happened. The reporter made a statement in the original article and repeated it verbatim in this article. It is closer to an opposite of backpedaling.
    - gnicholas 2y ago
      The source did mention sharing of porn in group chats, and being not thrilled about that. You're right the source didn't say they were addicted to porn, which is a far cry from what he reported. However, people tend to downplay porn viewing habits, as with anything that they are embarrassed about. It seems reasonable to think that if someone tells a reporter that he's upset that porn is being shared in group chats, that there's a good chance the level of usage is in fact greater.
      - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        > However, people tend to downplay porn viewing habits, as with anything that they are embarrassed about This is justification for inventing an issue and then attributing it to them. > It seems reasonable to think that if someone tells a reporter that he's upset that porn is being shared in group chats, that there's a good chance the level of usage is in fact greater. It is not reasonable to start with a conclusion and then find any road possible to get there.
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    I was curious about the lack of definitive evidence in this follow-up story. I would think they'd want to have some sort of fact-checking from an unbiased source. The tribe is saying it's embarrassing that people think they're addicted to porn, and they're the only source for saying that this is untrue. What happened to the journalistic motto: "if your mother says she loves you, check it out"? [1] 1: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/if-your-mother-says-she-loves-you-a-reporters-cautionary-tale/ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/if-your-mothe...
    - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
      > I was curious about the lack of definitive evidence in this follow-up story. The reporters followup story reports on 1) his own original story and 2) how other news shops 'customized' [ed] the original story. 1) He repeated the original story. 2) He said what the downstream stories said. "Lack of definitive evidence" is not what this is.
- thsksbd 2y ago
  Except when things matter, like an election. Then, the NyPost is the only media outlet to run a story of a laptop (recently verified by the FBI in court) containing incriminating evidence of corruption of one of the two leading candidates.
Spivak 2y ago
It's a really depressing state of affairs when a filter for "is this piece of journalism false" could just `return True` and be accurate enough to be useful. It feels bad when you are genuinely less informed for having read the news, and it's pervasive -- across news all outlets and across the political spectrum. Everyone would have been better off had nothing about this ever been published, and that includes NYT's contribution that spawned the tabloid-spam. They put this tiny little community on blast in front of the whole world and now the misinformation is all they'll be remembered for. There is nary an article that exists that couldn't inspire academic level discourse on how wrong it is, and the factors that contributed to its wrongness. Thank the lord I'm not in high school anymore because writing a paper on current events has got to be painful.
- squigz 2y ago
  The NYT posted an article with a comment that was taken grossly out of context. Then the NYT posted another article addressing that. I'm not trying to say the NYT is perfect, or defend the news outlets that take things out of context, but it is difficult to arrive at the conclusion that all news outlets are doing that.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    I see how you took that from my comment, I do not want to imply that all news outlets are the same level of bad. That would be an impossible position to defend even if I believed it, the Daily Mail exists. It's that even the cream of the crop isn't helping you be meaningfully informed and this article is a perfect case-study of it. Having read neither of these articles, the original or the retraction, would be the ideal state.
    - squigz 2y ago
      > Having read neither of these articles, the original or the retraction, would be the ideal state. I disagree. The ideal state would be news organization would be held accountable for the nonsense they get up to. The original article was an interesting insight into the benefits of the Internet and how it can be beneficial to tribes like that. This latest article (not really a retraction) is also beneficial in that it calls out the nonsense other news outlets got up to, and points a light at the issue itself, as you yourself are doing.
htfu 2y ago
Hey this is much like that tribe from the other day that DID get addicted to porn. What a coincidence. I've also heard of this one tribe heavily addicted to misinformation. They just can't get enough of it! They weren't even feral and naive to exposure, it somehow just... crept up on them.
victor22 2y ago
I mean, 99% of the world is addicted to social media and online porn, but this 1 remote amazon tribe is not, yay!!!!!
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  Naked tribe not interested in nudity. News at 11.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    The original nyt article says: "Alfredo Marubo, leader of a Marubo association of villages, has emerged as the tribe’s most vocal critic of the internet. ... He is most unsettled by the pornography. He said young men were sharing explicit videos in group chats, a stunning development for a culture that frowns on kissing in public. " So the young men am seem pretty interested in sex acts. So yeah, maybe not interested in nudity. I wonder if they like lingerie videos?
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    The tribe has clothes. This isn't one of those tribes. But also people don't watch porn for the nudity alone.
- smcin 2y ago
  That's not the point, though. This is a serious cautionary tale about how factual journalism gets transformed into clickbait slop by third-party sites, at industrial scale; consider this a dress rehearsal for the 11/2024 US election. Since the sites don't attribute their sources, you can't easily find out whether the claims are true (they aren't), or disprove them.
  - smcin 2y ago
    The UK national election will be July 4 2024 and the French two-round snap national election will be June 30 (first round) and July 7 (run-off). And the Trump sentencing is July 11. Expect a ton more of this garbage, some with image/meme/video/audio. At least we'll get an idea what to beware of for the upcoming US election.
WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
The Marubo people are not addicted to pornography. There was no hint of this in the forest and there was no suggestion of it in The New York Times’s article. the article mentioned a complaint from one Marubo leader [about some porn in chats] sites that distorted this detail are news aggregators By now, these sorts of sites and misleading headlines are just another part of the internet economy. To an informed internet user, their tactics are familiar. For the Marubo, however, the experience was bewildering and infuriating.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Last week's discussion about the NYPost article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40582566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40582566 And the original NYT article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40553438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40553438
calibas 2y ago
It's interesting, this article largely shifts blame to the Post, while the leader of the Marubo seems to blame the original article. >The Times article had overemphasized the negatives of the internet, he said, “resulting in the spread of a distorted and damaging picture.”
joseda-hg 2y ago
Me being completely unaware of the original article read the title and went "Huh, maybe porn is significantly less interesting to people that have a different social structure" Alas, it's a bit less interesting than that
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

81 points by h2odragon 2y ago

https://archive.ph/N30K7 https://archive.ph/N30K7 https://web.archive.org/web/20240602043457/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/world/americas/starlink-internet-elon-musk-brazil-amazon.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240602043457/https://www.nytim...

spondylosaurus 2y ago

So the entire misinformation spiral basically traces back to the New York Post? Damn. I'm always shocked that anyone ever takes the Post seriously, but they're in a double whammy situation where (1) 90% of their content is sensationalist garbage and (2) most people seem unaware of this prior point. Which means they can spin up whatever shit and it'll get a lot of traction, way more than most other tabloids.

vsuperpower2020 2y ago
There's nothing in this blog post that proves it's wrong other than one guy in the tribe denying it because it looks bad for them. We're going to need access to the tribe's entire search history to sort this one out.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > There's nothing in this blog post that proves it's wrong Is this satire? In case not: The source didn't report it happening. Therefore no one needs to invent it, not even as a pretext for an invasive investigation.
  - vsuperpower2020 2y ago
    Sure they did. The tribe representative they interviewed in the original nytimes article said they had minors watching porn, and only backpedaled afterwards in this article because it make them look bad. Minors sharing porn in group chats is insane enough, but that it only took a little exposure to the internet for a small remote tribe to start is even more telling.
    - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
      > and only backpedaled afterwards It's not clear if you're accusing the tribe or the reporter of backpedaling but neither happened. The reporter made a statement in the original article and repeated it verbatim in this article. It is closer to an opposite of backpedaling.
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    The source did mention sharing of porn in group chats, and being not thrilled about that. You're right the source didn't say they were addicted to porn, which is a far cry from what he reported. However, people tend to downplay porn viewing habits, as with anything that they are embarrassed about. It seems reasonable to think that if someone tells a reporter that he's upset that porn is being shared in group chats, that there's a good chance the level of usage is in fact greater.
    - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
      > However, people tend to downplay porn viewing habits, as with anything that they are embarrassed about This is justification for inventing an issue and then attributing it to them. > It seems reasonable to think that if someone tells a reporter that he's upset that porn is being shared in group chats, that there's a good chance the level of usage is in fact greater. It is not reasonable to start with a conclusion and then find any road possible to get there.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  I was curious about the lack of definitive evidence in this follow-up story. I would think they'd want to have some sort of fact-checking from an unbiased source. The tribe is saying it's embarrassing that people think they're addicted to porn, and they're the only source for saying that this is untrue. What happened to the journalistic motto: "if your mother says she loves you, check it out"? [1] 1: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/if-your-mother-says-she-loves-you-a-reporters-cautionary-tale/ https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2003/if-your-mothe...
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > I was curious about the lack of definitive evidence in this follow-up story. The reporters followup story reports on 1) his own original story and 2) how other news shops 'customized' [ed] the original story. 1) He repeated the original story. 2) He said what the downstream stories said. "Lack of definitive evidence" is not what this is.
thsksbd 2y ago
Except when things matter, like an election. Then, the NyPost is the only media outlet to run a story of a laptop (recently verified by the FBI in court) containing incriminating evidence of corruption of one of the two leading candidates.

Spivak 2y ago

It's a really depressing state of affairs when a filter for "is this piece of journalism false" could just `return True` and be accurate enough to be useful. It feels bad when you are genuinely less informed for having read the news, and it's pervasive -- across news all outlets and across the political spectrum. Everyone would have been better off had nothing about this ever been published, and that includes NYT's contribution that spawned the tabloid-spam. They put this tiny little community on blast in front of the whole world and now the misinformation is all they'll be remembered for. There is nary an article that exists that couldn't inspire academic level discourse on how wrong it is, and the factors that contributed to its wrongness. Thank the lord I'm not in high school anymore because writing a paper on current events has got to be painful.

squigz 2y ago
The NYT posted an article with a comment that was taken grossly out of context. Then the NYT posted another article addressing that. I'm not trying to say the NYT is perfect, or defend the news outlets that take things out of context, but it is difficult to arrive at the conclusion that all news outlets are doing that.
- Spivak 2y ago
  I see how you took that from my comment, I do not want to imply that all news outlets are the same level of bad. That would be an impossible position to defend even if I believed it, the Daily Mail exists. It's that even the cream of the crop isn't helping you be meaningfully informed and this article is a perfect case-study of it. Having read neither of these articles, the original or the retraction, would be the ideal state.
  - squigz 2y ago
    > Having read neither of these articles, the original or the retraction, would be the ideal state. I disagree. The ideal state would be news organization would be held accountable for the nonsense they get up to. The original article was an interesting insight into the benefits of the Internet and how it can be beneficial to tribes like that. This latest article (not really a retraction) is also beneficial in that it calls out the nonsense other news outlets got up to, and points a light at the issue itself, as you yourself are doing.

htfu 2y ago

Hey this is much like that tribe from the other day that DID get addicted to porn. What a coincidence. I've also heard of this one tribe heavily addicted to misinformation. They just can't get enough of it! They weren't even feral and naive to exposure, it somehow just... crept up on them.

victor22 2y ago

I mean, 99% of the world is addicted to social media and online porn, but this 1 remote amazon tribe is not, yay!!!!!

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Naked tribe not interested in nudity. News at 11.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  The original nyt article says: "Alfredo Marubo, leader of a Marubo association of villages, has emerged as the tribe’s most vocal critic of the internet. ... He is most unsettled by the pornography. He said young men were sharing explicit videos in group chats, a stunning development for a culture that frowns on kissing in public. " So the young men am seem pretty interested in sex acts. So yeah, maybe not interested in nudity. I wonder if they like lingerie videos?
- chrisco255 2y ago
  The tribe has clothes. This isn't one of those tribes. But also people don't watch porn for the nudity alone.
smcin 2y ago
That's not the point, though. This is a serious cautionary tale about how factual journalism gets transformed into clickbait slop by third-party sites, at industrial scale; consider this a dress rehearsal for the 11/2024 US election. Since the sites don't attribute their sources, you can't easily find out whether the claims are true (they aren't), or disprove them.
- smcin 2y ago
  The UK national election will be July 4 2024 and the French two-round snap national election will be June 30 (first round) and July 7 (run-off). And the Trump sentencing is July 11. Expect a ton more of this garbage, some with image/meme/video/audio. At least we'll get an idea what to beware of for the upcoming US election.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago

The Marubo people are not addicted to pornography. There was no hint of this in the forest and there was no suggestion of it in The New York Times’s article. the article mentioned a complaint from one Marubo leader [about some porn in chats] sites that distorted this detail are news aggregators By now, these sorts of sites and misleading headlines are just another part of the internet economy. To an informed internet user, their tactics are familiar. For the Marubo, however, the experience was bewildering and infuriating.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Last week's discussion about the NYPost article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40582566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40582566 And the original NYT article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40553438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40553438

calibas 2y ago

It's interesting, this article largely shifts blame to the Post, while the leader of the Marubo seems to blame the original article. >The Times article had overemphasized the negatives of the internet, he said, “resulting in the spread of a distorted and damaging picture.”

joseda-hg 2y ago

Me being completely unaware of the original article read the title and went "Huh, maybe porn is significantly less interesting to people that have a different social structure" Alas, it's a bit less interesting than that

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]