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It's an interesting world we live in where Reddit and Hacker News users are the ones doing investigation into the truth of claims journalists publish. With rea

It's an interesting world we live in where Reddit and Hacker News users are the ones doing investigation into the truth of claims journalists publish. With real-time feedback and real-time coverage, it's almost inevitable that our news sources will become increasingly less investigative and more reactive. The first to report wins the traffic, which creates pressure to get stories out the door. Unless you take The Atlantic or New Yorker approach, it's a race, which leaves users users to do the fact checking. We can be cynical about the state of online journalism, and maybe it's partly warranted, but this is definitely where we're headed.

ps4fanboy 12y ago
We are already there.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Reporters write, domain experts expertificate.
mistermann 12y ago
To be fair, you can't expect journalists to have the depth individuals in the online community do, it's just now that everyone can have an influential voice.
paulhauggis 12y ago
Many of the "investigations" on Reddit..actually result in Internet mobs destroying the reputation of a company or individual..even if they've done nothing wrong (besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind). It just happened to have worked out in this case, but this is the minority from what I've seen in the past couple of years.
- rhizome 12y ago
  Can you quantify that? How much of a minority?
- meowface 12y ago
  It's a little bit more nuanced than that. It's easy to get the Internet riled up over a perceived offense (deception, scamming, fraud, other unethical behaviors), just like it's easy to get any group of people up in arms over the same thing. I wouldn't list Reddit or any particular website as the source of this kind of witch hunting issue. The only thing to blame is the stupidity of crowds. If people went out of their way to see both sides of an issue, consider the sources and veracity of claimed facts and evidence, and actually make an informed decision then it'd be fine. Obviously, this doesn't happen that much. But all I'll say is that just because some wall of text on Reddit has a lot of upvotes doesn't necessarily say anything about the actual truth of its contents. That means it's a bit foolish to discount all such things as distorted and inaccurate rabble rousing, just as foolish as the people who believe whatever they read without a second thought.
- monochr 12y ago
  >(besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind). People love showering people they agree like with money, this case proves it. People also don't like to feel they are being taken advantage of and online you can find that out with a few clicks and 10 minutes of googling. If someone gives $5 to a campaign that promises awesome wonderfulness but then finds out the awesome wonderfulness is being made in a Thailand sweatshop by 10 yearolds eating arsenic for breakfast they will pull the pledge and ruin the companies reputation. Which is all to the good. Just look at Apple, they had their hipsters locked in when it was just the ridiculous 50% margins they were putting on their products. When we found out people were being worked to death and we had to pay those ridiculous margins that's when people became anti-Apple on mass. Now if by anti-capitalist you mean anti-Dickensian exploration capitalist you're damned right. And I hope every half decent human being would be.
verroq 12y ago
Unless of course, it doesn't further their agenda or about corruption in the journalism. That's asking for radio silence.

ps4fanboy 12y ago

We are already there.

sitkack 12y ago
Reporters write, domain experts expertificate.

mistermann 12y ago

To be fair, you can't expect journalists to have the depth individuals in the online community do, it's just now that everyone can have an influential voice.

paulhauggis 12y ago

Many of the "investigations" on Reddit..actually result in Internet mobs destroying the reputation of a company or individual..even if they've done nothing wrong (besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind). It just happened to have worked out in this case, but this is the minority from what I've seen in the past couple of years.

rhizome 12y ago
Can you quantify that? How much of a minority?
meowface 12y ago
It's a little bit more nuanced than that. It's easy to get the Internet riled up over a perceived offense (deception, scamming, fraud, other unethical behaviors), just like it's easy to get any group of people up in arms over the same thing. I wouldn't list Reddit or any particular website as the source of this kind of witch hunting issue. The only thing to blame is the stupidity of crowds. If people went out of their way to see both sides of an issue, consider the sources and veracity of claimed facts and evidence, and actually make an informed decision then it'd be fine. Obviously, this doesn't happen that much. But all I'll say is that just because some wall of text on Reddit has a lot of upvotes doesn't necessarily say anything about the actual truth of its contents. That means it's a bit foolish to discount all such things as distorted and inaccurate rabble rousing, just as foolish as the people who believe whatever they read without a second thought.
monochr 12y ago
>(besides offend the anti-capitalist hive mind). People love showering people they agree like with money, this case proves it. People also don't like to feel they are being taken advantage of and online you can find that out with a few clicks and 10 minutes of googling. If someone gives $5 to a campaign that promises awesome wonderfulness but then finds out the awesome wonderfulness is being made in a Thailand sweatshop by 10 yearolds eating arsenic for breakfast they will pull the pledge and ruin the companies reputation. Which is all to the good. Just look at Apple, they had their hipsters locked in when it was just the ridiculous 50% margins they were putting on their products. When we found out people were being worked to death and we had to pay those ridiculous margins that's when people became anti-Apple on mass. Now if by anti-capitalist you mean anti-Dickensian exploration capitalist you're damned right. And I hope every half decent human being would be.

verroq 12y ago

Unless of course, it doesn't further their agenda or about corruption in the journalism. That's asking for radio silence.