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The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#181

Post by arp242 »

irontinkerer wrote: post #127

The first link in the article is not a "lie". "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing. How is that a lie?

That may perhaps not be the best example – although the linked Breibart article is hardly a stellar journalism and some of the commentary is wildly off-base – but the general pattern described in the article seems to be mostly right to me.

IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#182

Post by DangitBobby »

askxnakjsn wrote: post #168
foobarbecue wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check-ratings/

I was thinking more along the lines of a true spectrum, like a percentage system. What you have here is a bunch of qualitative truthiness symbols decided arbitrarily, it's not much different from just saying true or false. For example, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marijuana-electron-microsc... this article would lead a passerby to believe that there is equal parts truth and lie in this picture + caption. In real…

I saw one on PolitiFact about Biden a while back. The claim was that he's been fighting to cut social security benefits for the last 40 years. The verdict was "mostly false" but if you read the contents [1], it's "mostly true." You see shit like this all the time.

1. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/12/bernie-san...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#183

Post by luckylion »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #174
luckylion wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming…

There is a long, long history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.

Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's a lie because they might be false flag seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#184

Post by bjowen »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #133
Dotnaught wrote: post #124

The linked article concludes: "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal." Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.

As always, who judges whether something is true?

Oh nobody’s even bothered to think about epistemology before.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#185

Post by andrewtbham »

thatwasunusual wrote: post #179
andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

> The days of BSing people are over. Really?

lol... things are different. in the old days, no one would have ever known tesla's side of the story.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#186

Post by smolder »

luckylion wrote: post #166
awinder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced d…

1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming…

There's a lot of precedent for right wing false flag provocation during these protests, and lots of evidence, while there's no credible evidence of Trump being a double agent for the Democrats. There are people vandalizing their own property to blame it on antifa, "boogaloo" proponents smashing windows and lighting things on fire and posing as BLM supporters while calling for violence. It is wild, yes.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#187

Post by dj_mc_merlin »

luckylion wrote: post #183
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a long, long history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.

Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's a lie because they might be false flag seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.

Agreed. I don't know the article author's opinion on this, but my personal problem with the article is not its veracity, but that it is obviously engineered to cause outrage in a certain group. It is nearly impossible to put forward facts that do not tend towards a bias, but efforts can be made to present it in a less emotionally charged way. Many comments on HN that are factually true get downvoted because of accusatory phrasing, this is the same in my opinion.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#188

Post by bena »

Falling3 wrote: post #148
imustbeevil wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government, scientists, experts in various fields, people who have proven to tell the truth in the past, etc. You obviously still have your own ability to determine what fits your model of the universe and what doesn't. These are just groups of people more likely to have access to information that you might not. You don't have to trust anyone, but in a system where someone has to judge what is true, these groups…

Governments, scientists, and experts have also been proven to be wrong and to have lied in the past.

And how have we discovered the incorrect and dishonest claims?

Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.

Also, I take issue with the attempt to conflate people who are incorrect with people who are dishonest.

There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Being wrong is the first step to being right. You can't be corrected if you're never willing to be wrong. And we can't learn if everyone has to wait to be completely correct before making a claim. Often, we don't even know we should be looking into something until someone makes a claim that turns out to be incorrect on further study.

Knowledge isn't furthered in "eureka" moments where we have all the answers at once, it's in observing something and thinking, "Huh, that's weird", then seeking the answers.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#189

Post by rukittenme »

a_bonobo wrote: post #152
irontinkerer wrote: post #127

The first link in the article is not a "lie". "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing. How is that a lie?

Where does OP's article say that the bible-burning incident was a 'lie'? New York Post says 'a bible', and your video a single book being burned, can't see whether that's a bible. The original video has been deleted (link is dead here: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 ) but quickly picked up by the usual far-right BS twitterati. >The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black L…

> so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.

How does this follow? One faction burns a bible and another faction puts it out. How do you choose which narrative to privilege?

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#190

Post by bena »

listenallyall wrote: post #83
rawfan wrote: post #22

I just want Netflix for journalism. I don't want a super expensive sub to a dozen papers. I want one subscription, they all should be included (maybe offer different tiers if you are an arse) and it shouldn't be more than $20/month. Go.

The absolute worst posts on HN start with "I just want..." and then selfishly lowball the cost of whatever it is they want. Anyway, you've described a cable bundle model, not Netflix's model.

"Just". If I could get rid of that word, I would. "Just" is the tip of the iceberg. It often means the speaker has no idea how to implement or what it would take to implement.
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