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India’s SMS Hoax Panic: Could It Happen In The U.S.?

42 points by spathak 14y ago

sageikosa 14y ago
No
w1ntermute 14y ago
No, a lot of the social ills in India, including this one, can be traced back to poor education. And no matter what you say about the US education system, it's nowhere near as bad as in India.
- KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
  Did you guys even read the article? It cited at least 1 social media hoax that's massively successful, the birther issue.
  - trafficlight 14y ago
    The birther thing is straight up racism, not education. Maybe a little of both, I suppose.
    - icegreentea 14y ago
      The hoax in question prays as much on discrimination and "the other" as the birther movement.
      - PakG1 14y ago
        Just a note, I do think you mean preys. It gives quite a different meaning to the sentence. :)
    - anamax 14y ago
      > The birther thing is straight up racism, not education. Birthers think that all Blacks/African-Americans were born in Indonesia?
      - prakashk 14y ago
        Is it racism only when you consider the group as a whole? Can't one be racist when talking about individuals? [To be clear, I am neither supporting nor refuting the GP's claim that the birthers are racist.]
        anamax 14y ago
        > Is it racism only when you consider the group as a whole? Can't one be racist when talking about individuals? The claim was that racism explains why birthers think that Obama was born in Indonesia. Racism supposedly means "ascribing attributes to individual/group based on their skin color/ethnicity". How are you defining racism such that Birthers believe that Obama was born in Indonesia because of racism/their beliefs about Black people but don't believe that other Black people were born in Indonesia? In terms of actual usage, "racism" is basically code for "I'm a good person, we disagree, therefore you're a bad person".
  - noarchy 14y ago
    I don't recall any calls to ban Twitter over the birther issue, though.
xelipe 14y ago
No. The article is a link bait opinion piece that is not all to thought out, as evident by it's original claim that a large region of Indian wants to be part of China. I remember that days after 911 there were some fake/spam emails that where forwarded around that claimed that more attacks where eminent, including at malls and other public areas. These were immediately debunk and people went about their business.
603techguy 14y ago
This happens daily via email threads, and more prominent media, that are passed around. Recently I was told that President Obama had replaced all forever stamps with stamps that celebrate an Isalamic holiday. Clearly false, but had made its rounds among a large group of people. Don't under estimate the stupidity and gullibility of a very large population.
- ryanmolden 14y ago
  People tend to be very receptive to things that confirm what they already believe. I don't know if stupidity or gullibility have as much to do with it, those are just people whose juju is different than yours or mine.
thyrsus 14y ago
It happens every hour on partisan "news" shows.
suprgeek 14y ago
It would be difficult to perpetrate this kind of Hoax in the US (though not impossible). On the whole a lot of people would try to find some other source to back up the SMS after the number of Hoaxes they have been subjected to. Unless there was a really coordinated campaign that used multiple media platforms to reinforce the message....
tokenadult 14y ago
Human frailty can happen to anyone, any time. I have been on Hacker News 1376 days now, and over the years I have seen highly educated people here believe absolute nonsense on many (and, alas, repeated) occasions. Our best defense against our common human cognitive bias of believing what we want to believe, or what fits our preexisting prejudices, rather than the truth is to have communication with our fellow human beings about what the facts show, and which facts are most reliable, and how all the evidence fits together. In the best case, Hacker News discussions can be practice in learning how to think twice before believing the latest new story on the Internet. But already today, and for every day thereafter, we will continue to see examples here of people whose minds are already made up before they've sufficiently examined their own beliefs on some controversy, and who will gladly pass on a rumor as fact.
Brajeshwar 14y ago
Well, This article is funny. The Chinese affiliation part is kinda weird. Seriously, China? I'm a North Easterner, Manipur to be precise, who moved to Bombay in 1999. In Bangalore (the epicenter of the North East Exodus), since 2011. I've lived long enough in Bombay, some in Pune and now in Bangalore. Have travelled to almost all of the major cities in India for business and pleasure. Of course, I've faced enough stare, ridicule and the perpetual question, "Are you Indian!". Sometimes, it's fun and you get the 'foreign' treatment (you know the way, we Indians treat foreigners, the good way) on various occasions. Those non-indian treatment were mostly in established government establishments and mostly by not-so-educated people. I have never had an issue with the educated people, working class people, colleagues and business partners. In India, most of the tourist destinations have two entry tickets - one for Indians and for 'Foreigners', which is costlier. Me and my family always have to carry an Indian Identity when we enter such spots to prove my "Indianness" and avail of the Indian pricing. Once at the Taj Mahal, me and my wife could not find our ID quickly. Instead of arguing with the person-in-charge, we got the 'foreigner' tickets. Of course, we got the foreigner treatment and were able to skip the long winding "Indian" queue to enter the gates to the Taj Mahal. As for the SMS hoax and the recent NE Exodus back home, it was fueled by the fact that the North East people have always been kinda alienated by the common Indians who could not understand and fathom that we, the 'Asian' looking people live and thrive in India. Add to that, the miscreants taking chances of a phenomenon and attacking any 'asian' looking people in the cities. So, it was not just those NE people but many Tibetans, Nepalese were at the receiving end. The incident could have well been evaded but this is India and nobody, specially the people in the governance, care about timely actions and getting things done on time. Finally, in my personal experience, I get a much better treatment from the American people when I visit the US than here in my own country, India. Except for the immigration officers, nobody cares who or from where the hell am I. With my oriental look and an Indian Origin, I enjoy the company and good treatment specially from both the communities in US. Anyway, everybody else is too scared of lawsuits to have anything to do with racial profiling. :-) As a parting note, here is a nice article about the perception of the general Indian towards the North Easterners. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-we-the-ignorant/989798/0 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-we-the-i...
matznerd 14y ago
Any hoax or spam you've seen in email is being tried or has been tried with SMS. Texts are read instantly, so the information can spread faster than email. Social media is pretty quick with things like this because it is a one-to-many broadcast medium.

42 points by spathak 14y ago

No, a lot of the social ills in India, including this one, can be traced back to poor education. And no matter what you say about the US education system, it's nowhere near as bad as in India.

KaoruAoiShiho 14y ago
Did you guys even read the article? It cited at least 1 social media hoax that's massively successful, the birther issue.
- trafficlight 14y ago
  The birther thing is straight up racism, not education. Maybe a little of both, I suppose.
  - icegreentea 14y ago
    The hoax in question prays as much on discrimination and "the other" as the birther movement.
    - PakG1 14y ago
      Just a note, I do think you mean preys. It gives quite a different meaning to the sentence. :)
  - anamax 14y ago
    > The birther thing is straight up racism, not education. Birthers think that all Blacks/African-Americans were born in Indonesia?
    - prakashk 14y ago
      Is it racism only when you consider the group as a whole? Can't one be racist when talking about individuals? [To be clear, I am neither supporting nor refuting the GP's claim that the birthers are racist.]
      - anamax 14y ago
        > Is it racism only when you consider the group as a whole? Can't one be racist when talking about individuals? The claim was that racism explains why birthers think that Obama was born in Indonesia. Racism supposedly means "ascribing attributes to individual/group based on their skin color/ethnicity". How are you defining racism such that Birthers believe that Obama was born in Indonesia because of racism/their beliefs about Black people but don't believe that other Black people were born in Indonesia? In terms of actual usage, "racism" is basically code for "I'm a good person, we disagree, therefore you're a bad person".
- noarchy 14y ago
  I don't recall any calls to ban Twitter over the birther issue, though.

xelipe 14y ago

No. The article is a link bait opinion piece that is not all to thought out, as evident by it's original claim that a large region of Indian wants to be part of China. I remember that days after 911 there were some fake/spam emails that where forwarded around that claimed that more attacks where eminent, including at malls and other public areas. These were immediately debunk and people went about their business.

603techguy 14y ago

This happens daily via email threads, and more prominent media, that are passed around. Recently I was told that President Obama had replaced all forever stamps with stamps that celebrate an Isalamic holiday. Clearly false, but had made its rounds among a large group of people. Don't under estimate the stupidity and gullibility of a very large population.

ryanmolden 14y ago
People tend to be very receptive to things that confirm what they already believe. I don't know if stupidity or gullibility have as much to do with it, those are just people whose juju is different than yours or mine.

thyrsus 14y ago

It happens every hour on partisan "news" shows.

suprgeek 14y ago

It would be difficult to perpetrate this kind of Hoax in the US (though not impossible). On the whole a lot of people would try to find some other source to back up the SMS after the number of Hoaxes they have been subjected to. Unless there was a really coordinated campaign that used multiple media platforms to reinforce the message....

tokenadult 14y ago

Human frailty can happen to anyone, any time. I have been on Hacker News 1376 days now, and over the years I have seen highly educated people here believe absolute nonsense on many (and, alas, repeated) occasions. Our best defense against our common human cognitive bias of believing what we want to believe, or what fits our preexisting prejudices, rather than the truth is to have communication with our fellow human beings about what the facts show, and which facts are most reliable, and how all the evidence fits together. In the best case, Hacker News discussions can be practice in learning how to think twice before believing the latest new story on the Internet. But already today, and for every day thereafter, we will continue to see examples here of people whose minds are already made up before they've sufficiently examined their own beliefs on some controversy, and who will gladly pass on a rumor as fact.

Brajeshwar 14y ago

Well, This article is funny. The Chinese affiliation part is kinda weird. Seriously, China? I'm a North Easterner, Manipur to be precise, who moved to Bombay in 1999. In Bangalore (the epicenter of the North East Exodus), since 2011. I've lived long enough in Bombay, some in Pune and now in Bangalore. Have travelled to almost all of the major cities in India for business and pleasure. Of course, I've faced enough stare, ridicule and the perpetual question, "Are you Indian!". Sometimes, it's fun and you get the 'foreign' treatment (you know the way, we Indians treat foreigners, the good way) on various occasions. Those non-indian treatment were mostly in established government establishments and mostly by not-so-educated people. I have never had an issue with the educated people, working class people, colleagues and business partners. In India, most of the tourist destinations have two entry tickets - one for Indians and for 'Foreigners', which is costlier. Me and my family always have to carry an Indian Identity when we enter such spots to prove my "Indianness" and avail of the Indian pricing. Once at the Taj Mahal, me and my wife could not find our ID quickly. Instead of arguing with the person-in-charge, we got the 'foreigner' tickets. Of course, we got the foreigner treatment and were able to skip the long winding "Indian" queue to enter the gates to the Taj Mahal. As for the SMS hoax and the recent NE Exodus back home, it was fueled by the fact that the North East people have always been kinda alienated by the common Indians who could not understand and fathom that we, the 'Asian' looking people live and thrive in India. Add to that, the miscreants taking chances of a phenomenon and attacking any 'asian' looking people in the cities. So, it was not just those NE people but many Tibetans, Nepalese were at the receiving end. The incident could have well been evaded but this is India and nobody, specially the people in the governance, care about timely actions and getting things done on time. Finally, in my personal experience, I get a much better treatment from the American people when I visit the US than here in my own country, India. Except for the immigration officers, nobody cares who or from where the hell am I. With my oriental look and an Indian Origin, I enjoy the company and good treatment specially from both the communities in US. Anyway, everybody else is too scared of lawsuits to have anything to do with racial profiling. :-) As a parting note, here is a nice article about the perception of the general Indian towards the North Easterners. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-we-the-ignorant/989798/0 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-we-the-i...

matznerd 14y ago

Any hoax or spam you've seen in email is being tried or has been tried with SMS. Texts are read instantly, so the information can spread faster than email. Social media is pretty quick with things like this because it is a one-to-many broadcast medium.