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Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

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Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#11

It doesn’t take much to convince “professional journalists” of things, as long as the things confirm their priors. I’d cut them some slack, because we’re all bad at that, but their literal job is to check things out.

If you have to rely on a news source’s veracity, I would not rely on the veracity of Vice and Business Insider, to put it mildly. And “New York Times bestselling author” is a marketing blurb, not a reputation for reporting the truth.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#13
Oh hi HN

It's interesting to see that a lot of people still believed it, even when evidence that it was a Drama troll op was provided.

The Texas bounty hunters sub wasn't the first foray of the dramanauts, but it definitely attracted the most attention out of all of them.

The C.S. Lewis quote is basically my thoughts on the matter of people's reactions to these sorts of subs.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#16
post #5

The author of this article says it was unsubtle, obvious satire but I would say that the post they referenced was solidly in Poe’s law territory. Is it really so hard to imagine someone genuinely writing that? Perhaps they’ve never met a misogynist. Wishing for it to be true after it had been shown to be false is one thing (and clearly dumb), but I think the existence of such a subreddit is a perfectly reasonable thi…

The problem with Poe's Law is that the person invoking it is often just revealing their own biases. It's not impossible to imagine any number of people writing any number of things, it's a failure to calibrate your expectations about the likelihood of parody properly that's the issue.

Journalists in particular should feel responsible to investigate likely satire before signal-boosting it. If they're actually disincentivized from doing so, that indicates that something is pretty rotten about our media culture..

>Texas’s SB8 will cause real harm, and making fun of people who are deeply concerned for women’s safety because of it seems borderline sociopathic to me.

If your deep concern causes you to detach from reality, then being made fun of will hopefully provide a merciful way for you to regain your grip. Look at the recent "witches vs. Taliban" fiasco - perhaps gentle mockery will help people focus their activist impulses towards more-productive ends?

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#17
post #11

It doesn’t take much to convince “professional journalists” of things, as long as the things confirm their priors. I’d cut them some slack, because we’re all bad at that, but their literal job is to check things out.

If you have to rely on a news source’s veracity, I would not rely on the veracity of Vice and Business Insider, to put it mildly. And “New York Times bestselling author” is a marketing blurb, not a reputation for reporting the truth.

I’ve never once seen a worthwhile article come out of Business Insider and yet yours is the first negative opinion I’ve ever seen expressed about it. Maybe because most don’t click inside to know that the titles are invariably clickbait compared to the actual bulk of the article? I don’t know.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#18

It doesn’t take much to convince “professional journalists” of things, as long as the things confirm their priors. I’d cut them some slack, because we’re all bad at that, but their literal job is to check things out.

That's the frustrating thing isn't it, "fake news" became popularized in the last few years and 'professional journalists' who can't even be bothered to fact check anything are really proving it right. Which is a shame since a free unbiased press is healthy for a society.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#19
I know a common tactic these days is to claim “Major Outrage from x Community” and then source said outrage from a few random tweets. It’s yellow journalism, really, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the less ethically constrained journalists were anonymously behind those tweets in order to hit their 5pm deadlines.

Re: Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

#20
post #5

The author of this article says it was unsubtle, obvious satire but I would say that the post they referenced was solidly in Poe’s law territory. Is it really so hard to imagine someone genuinely writing that? Perhaps they’ve never met a misogynist. Wishing for it to be true after it had been shown to be false is one thing (and clearly dumb), but I think the existence of such a subreddit is a perfectly reasonable thi…

Dude, if you're so far down your partisan internet mouthbreather rabbit hole that you start to defend other people for biting on embarrassingly obvious bait, you might want to take a break. Go camping or join a bowling league or something. Touch grass.
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