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Wired Deliberately Misleads on Bitcoin: Yellow Journalism?

17 points by sidko 13y ago

anigbrowl 13y ago
Oh no, someone is wrong on the internet. It must be a big conspiracy to bring down Bitcoin by overstating the miniscule amount of money that's paid for clickvertising, because there's no way a math error could creep into a fluff article. Obviously the foes of Bitcoin will never rest until they have made us associate it with homelessness. Or something. This exemplifies what's wrong with the cult mentality surrounding Bitcoin; what was probably a simple error is recast (absent evidence) as a deliberate untruth, despite the fact that the story was basically positive reporting about Bitcoin.
- tikhonj 13y ago
  The article never talked about "a big conspiracy to bring down Bitcoin"--those are entirely your words. Instead, the article talked about a journalist compromising accuracy to gain more pageviews: much more plausible. If anything, you're the one twisting facts to discredit the BitCoin community and trying to recast an article about somewhat shoddy journalism as a cultish conspiracy theory. The fact that the criticized article is pro-BitCoin just further shows how unreasonable your claims are: the community is willing to critically examine press that's in its favor, not just anti-BitCoin articles.
  - Steko 13y ago
    "those are entirely your words" Did he put them in quotes? Well then it's not much of a revelation that those are his words. I emailed her back, with clarification, at 7:21am, telling her that this was wrong. Yes, she knew, for certain, that the facts in her story were wrong, within an hour of it being published. Isn't it good to know that email of random enthusiast on the internet = TRUTH.
    - sidko 13y ago
      Those are verifyable facts, no one needs to rely on me. The article was modified to change the Bitcoin earnings from 0.0004 to 0.00004. The facts were known by everyone, they weren't a secret and you certainly don't need to rely on anyone's testimony for the same - you can do the math yourself as to what 40 micro Bitcoins evaluate to.
      - Steko 13y ago
        "Those are verifyable facts," And they were verified. I'm sorry it wasn't done on your preferred schedule but that doesn't mean it was a huge conspiracy by the author to mislead the public.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        But how is this misleading on Bitcoin, as you claimed in your headline? If I say that a person earned $6 when they earned $0.60, does that mean I'm making misleading statements about the US dollar? Of course not. To the extent that the article was misleading (ie trivially) it was misleading about the amount paid out for clicking on videos. The fact that payment was made in BTC rather than USD is wholly incidental to that.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    The headline speaks for itself. And the author's posting of it here with the suffix of 'Yellow journalism?' certainly implies a conspiracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I take it that 'BitCoinTapper' is really just a way of collecting human click entropy to feed into a click fraud engine?
- Steko 13y ago
  It's sometimes said that bitcoin is mainly used for money laundering and drug deals. How sad is it that bitcointapper click fraud might improve the median use case?

17 points by sidko 13y ago

Oh no, someone is wrong on the internet. It must be a big conspiracy to bring down Bitcoin by overstating the miniscule amount of money that's paid for clickvertising, because there's no way a math error could creep into a fluff article. Obviously the foes of Bitcoin will never rest until they have made us associate it with homelessness. Or something. This exemplifies what's wrong with the cult mentality surrounding Bitcoin; what was probably a simple error is recast (absent evidence) as a deliberate untruth, despite the fact that the story was basically positive reporting about Bitcoin.

tikhonj 13y ago
The article never talked about "a big conspiracy to bring down Bitcoin"--those are entirely your words. Instead, the article talked about a journalist compromising accuracy to gain more pageviews: much more plausible. If anything, you're the one twisting facts to discredit the BitCoin community and trying to recast an article about somewhat shoddy journalism as a cultish conspiracy theory. The fact that the criticized article is pro-BitCoin just further shows how unreasonable your claims are: the community is willing to critically examine press that's in its favor, not just anti-BitCoin articles.
- Steko 13y ago
  "those are entirely your words" Did he put them in quotes? Well then it's not much of a revelation that those are his words. I emailed her back, with clarification, at 7:21am, telling her that this was wrong. Yes, she knew, for certain, that the facts in her story were wrong, within an hour of it being published. Isn't it good to know that email of random enthusiast on the internet = TRUTH.
  - sidko 13y ago
    Those are verifyable facts, no one needs to rely on me. The article was modified to change the Bitcoin earnings from 0.0004 to 0.00004. The facts were known by everyone, they weren't a secret and you certainly don't need to rely on anyone's testimony for the same - you can do the math yourself as to what 40 micro Bitcoins evaluate to.
    - Steko 13y ago
      "Those are verifyable facts," And they were verified. I'm sorry it wasn't done on your preferred schedule but that doesn't mean it was a huge conspiracy by the author to mislead the public.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      But how is this misleading on Bitcoin, as you claimed in your headline? If I say that a person earned $6 when they earned $0.60, does that mean I'm making misleading statements about the US dollar? Of course not. To the extent that the article was misleading (ie trivially) it was misleading about the amount paid out for clicking on videos. The fact that payment was made in BTC rather than USD is wholly incidental to that.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  The headline speaks for itself. And the author's posting of it here with the suffix of 'Yellow journalism?' certainly implies a conspiracy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I take it that 'BitCoinTapper' is really just a way of collecting human click entropy to feed into a click fraud engine?

Steko 13y ago
It's sometimes said that bitcoin is mainly used for money laundering and drug deals. How sad is it that bitcointapper click fraud might improve the median use case?