Hope the average HN reader is aware that Breitbart is banned on HN, as a submission source.
Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
151–160 of 219 posts
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see it that way. This is probably just a pragmatic move to keep Wikipedia users and contributors from getting their panties in a knot. It's basically impossible to have a discussion on the internet about the merit something a strongly right leaning media outlet says (well it's possible, but the discussion won't be very civil). Anything factual Breitbart reports will be reported elsewhere because that's how me…
Many conservatives consider CNN as left wing and disreputable as many liberals consider Breitbart. Your same reasoning would also apply to Wikipedia banning CNN. Would you consider that a pragmatic move? If not, then for what reasons would they differ?
Does Breitbart even publicly retract or correct stories at all?
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well stated. The problem that the blanket ban on one source introduces is that it becomes a divisive issue. The source and faction that subscribes then believes Wikipedia has lost its objectivity (even if it is trying to maintain the truth). The faction then just starts saying Wikipedia is biased and discounts it as a credible source that speaks the truth universally. To be clear I am not saying that the non-truth sh…
If some group of people think Wikipedia is bullshit, they're going to miss out on the most accessible repository of human knowledge that Man has ever compiled. That's their own problem. They will fall behind others.
Should we care more about accessibility or reliability?
If Wikipedia is the source of knowledge for you, you may have a problem.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#154Hope the average HN reader is aware that Breitbart is banned on HN, as a submission source.
I was blissfully unaware. For a fleeting moment your post made me wonder whether I should consider the ban problematic. Then I figured that credible sources would report on whatever Breitbart was shouting about, if it was serious.
And I'll live on as before.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gamergate's entire "mission" is highly questionable.
Do you think that because of all of the biased media reports about it? That's literally what it's about (as is the topic of this thread). Social media, new media and old media being politicized, cliquish and dishonest. That Vox and Gawker are viewed as more reputable than Breitbart gets to the very heart of what Gamergate was about (IMO).
GamerGate was founded on lies, and I see no reason to trust anyone who continues to be taken in by those lies. If you're really concerned about ethics in games journalism, stop marching under the banner of a group founded to harass some guy's cheating ex.
A rundown of the facts, again:
Eron Gjoni publicly claimed that his girlfriend Zoe Quinn, an indie game developer, had cheated on him with a bunch of guys, who he named. Most of these guys were other indie game developers. One of them was a writer for Rock Paper Shotgun, who had once mentioned Quinn's game in a single paragraph of a larger article about indie games, months before he allegedly slept with her by Gjoni's own account.
Some right-wing gamers immediately spun this into a narrative that Rock Paper Shotgun and several other sites they didn't like were corrupt and trading positive coverage of left-wing developers for money and sex. This narrative was wildly successful and wound up drawing in a bunch of people who were legitimately concerned about ethics in games journalism, and somehow didn't grasp the agenda behind it.
Consider Milo Yiannopoulos, a Breitbart reporter who "infiltrated" a game-writer forum, cherry-picked their discussions about how to respond to the harassment campaign, and spun them as sinister censorship. Yiannopoulos is a frequent supporter of literal, self-described Nazis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos#Leaked_Breit... But many were and are completely taken in by his article--I still see people posting it to justify GamerGate.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
>If you are into news and being informed, leaving off sites like breitbart from regular perusal is a mistake. They often bring up facts and perspectives considered unimportant by other outlets. Even infowars has its uses, if for nothing else other than entertainment value. I am not from US so I have no bias in this case, do you mean that I should check sites that I consider to be garbage because they sometimes may br…
I sometimes glance at Breitbart although I'd be more of a NYT guy politically. It can be useful as an indication what the 40% or so that support Trump are thinking.
Is it even a useful indication of that? Perhaps it's a more useful indication of how certain groups want a particular demographic (e.g. Trump supporters) to think?
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#157Maybe this speaks more about how Wikipedia works than quality of Breitbart as a source. First, if you look how credible news organizations work, they need three confirmations from unrelated sources before calling it a fact. If Wikipedia has lower standards than that, then it doesn't really matter whom they choose as a source of information, it still rises the question of validity of the claim if there is only one cor…
> Maybe this speaks more about how Wikipedia works than quality of Breitbart as a source.
It has nothing to do with how wikipedia works rather than the pressure being put on it by monied interests and the news organizations.
What is happening to wikipedia is what happened to google, reddit, youtube, twitter, etc.
It's the elite media ( particular nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, et al ) trying to muscle out everyone else.
In the long run, this isn't going to hurt breitbart or any of the right leaning news sources. Right leaning people are going to find it one way or another. It's going to hurt vox, theverge, huffingtonpost, buzzfeed and the billions of left leading fringe news sources as the big boys get special treatment. I'm certain that breitbart is going to be around 10 years from now. I'm not sure about vox and company.
And also in the long run, it's going to make people distrust the nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc even more. But I don't think they care. Que sera sera.
People really underestimate how much external money pressure is being put on tech companies like wikipedia to serve as propaganda outlets. It's not even tech, even the ACLU is feeling the pressure. The only thing mere mortals can do is see out things play.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well stated. The problem that the blanket ban on one source introduces is that it becomes a divisive issue. The source and faction that subscribes then believes Wikipedia has lost its objectivity (even if it is trying to maintain the truth). The faction then just starts saying Wikipedia is biased and discounts it as a credible source that speaks the truth universally. To be clear I am not saying that the non-truth sh…
If some group of people think Wikipedia is bullshit, they're going to miss out on the most accessible repository of human knowledge that Man has ever compiled. That's their own problem. They will fall behind others.
Wikipedia is biased to hell now days - pages are now routinely “owned” by editors, not because they are experts in a field but because they have the most time to camp pages.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#159Hope the average HN reader is aware that Breitbart is banned on HN, as a submission source.
I was blissfully unaware. For a fleeting moment your post made me wonder whether I should consider the ban problematic. Then I figured that credible sources would report on whatever Breitbart was shouting about, if it was serious. And I'll live on as before.
> Then I figured that credible sources would report on whatever Breitbart was shouting about, if it was serious.
Seems a lot like how authoritarian countries view news. First, they classify (a.k.a. anoint) sources as kosher & credible, and then blanket ban the others. Then they demonize anyone who makes a logical argument for freedom of speech.
You can see this pattern in China, Russia, Iran, ... and HN, Wikipedia, ...
Of course, HN is a private company who is free under US speech laws to pick and choose sources it deems kosher. But it's ironic that HN considers it's audience immature enough to "protect" it from the triggers of opposing viewpoints, of Breitbart & ilk.
Re: Wikipedia bans Breitbart as a source for facts
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well stated. The problem that the blanket ban on one source introduces is that it becomes a divisive issue. The source and faction that subscribes then believes Wikipedia has lost its objectivity (even if it is trying to maintain the truth). The faction then just starts saying Wikipedia is biased and discounts it as a credible source that speaks the truth universally. To be clear I am not saying that the non-truth sh…
I don't see it that way. This is probably just a pragmatic move to keep Wikipedia users and contributors from getting their panties in a knot. It's basically impossible to have a discussion on the internet about the merit something a strongly right leaning media outlet says (well it's possible, but the discussion won't be very civil). Anything factual Breitbart reports will be reported elsewhere because that's how me…
I don't think this is completely true. They've also deprecated Occupy Democrats as a source of facts, so it's not like they're solely against the right, and if you read the RFC the editors are more concerned with their lack of fact checking and their history of publishing blatantly wrong information than their bias.