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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”

#51

Post by grapist420 »

jolux wrote: 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…

and > 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.

Jokes aren’t sociopathic? We make fun of anyone, and where else can you demonstrate that people are too willing to fall for stories they’re mad at but with topics they are super invested in in an over the top way?

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

#52

Post by yanderekko »

jolux wrote: post #35
yanderekko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disincen…

But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire. I hold the prior that most people writing on the internet are not doing it merely to get a rise out of liberals. I have also known men who became violent and angry when a women they had sex with decided to get an abortion. What’s different about this Reddit post? What’s supposed to indicate to me that it’s obviously in jest?…

>But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire.

It doesn't cut equally both ways because there's an obvious ground truth that exonerates those who believe it's satire. I didn't claim it was obvious, and I could see why an outsider would be unsure. But the deflection of "can't blame me, Poe's Law" doesn't hold when plenty of people are able to see through the ruse.

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

#53

Post by jimt1234 »

dabbledash wrote: post #8

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.

> It doesn’t take much to convince “professional journalists” of things, as long as the things confirm their priors.

It doesn’t take much to convince “professional journalists” of things, as long as they know it will get clicks. FTFY ;)

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

#54

Post by refenestrator »

tyingq wrote: post #41
lr4444lr wrote: post #31

Groups like this are very important to have around for the rest of us to periodically recalibrate our bull@#$% detectors against. That people whose professional reputation and livelihood it is to keep well-calibrated fell for this, is leagues more dangerous than these jokesters themselves. Sad!

They should amp it up into an automated gullibility meter for news outlets and journalists.

They can go meta, and have all the links to justify their ratings be fake bs. Maybe the occasional rickroll.

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

#55

Post by jolux »

grapist420 wrote: post #50
jolux wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand it was intended as satire. What I don’t understand is why anyone would be surprised that you fooled people. People are notoriously easy to fool! Smart people, dumb people, brilliant scientists. Happens all the time. I would go so far as to say that being fooled, and being a gigantic dumbass, is the state of nature of human beings. It didn’t end up in any news source I would classify as having a good repu…

Subs like transpets illustrate more how ridiculous it is people are fooled. Thousands of upspergs on posts about dilating dogs or castrating cats. People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible.

> People are absurdly gullible and it’s really just terrible.

Have you considered how far we would have gotten as a species if we had a pervasive assumption of bad faith in our interactions with other people? Complex societies depend on assuming good faith. People who assume others are always acting in bad faith are often traumatized or suffering from other forms of mental illness. I don’t find it “ridiculous” that people believe stupid things. I believe stupid things, and I’m sure you do as well. It’s certainly bad, but I’m not quite sure how your contributions improve the situation. Mostly they seem calibrated to reduce social trust and push people towards assuming bad faith. What if you wrote about how to identify satire instead?

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

#56

Post by cortesoft »

jolux wrote: 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…

So as long as you can imagine someone holding the view you are reading, it is no longer important to critically evaluate its veracity?

In isolation, this view might be rational. However, in aggregate, this mindset can cause a cycle of increasing extremism. A good portion of those misogynists you speak of came to their views because they have read countless fake left-wing content that they thought was real, and in response became more entrenched in their opposing views.

The cycle goes like this - a fairly sane, conservative person sees someone on a conservative subreddit post a link to the 'transparents' subreddit, and sees posts they believe are real that talk about parents giving their kids hormones against their will. A natural response is to think "Woh, those trans rights people are crazy, maybe we should push back against trans rights"... and they become a little bit more extreme in their beliefs. Multiply this by a thousand, and you have a crazy extremist on your hands.

The same thing happens on the other side, and you get more and more extremists on the left. Now the cycle becomes even more self-sustaining, because now you have legitimate crazy extremists adding fuel to the fire by making real posts that sound a lot like the satire posts. So now, the satire has to be even MORE extreme to be humorous, and the cycle deepens.

This is a really hard problem to combat. I agree with you that this Texas law is absolutely insane and dangerous. However, I don't think the solution is to stop being critical of evidence that confirms what we already believe to be true, just because we are so sure of what we believe.

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

#57

Post by jolux »

yanderekko wrote: post #52
jolux wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire. I hold the prior that most people writing on the internet are not doing it merely to get a rise out of liberals. I have also known men who became violent and angry when a women they had sex with decided to get an abortion. What’s different about this Reddit post? What’s supposed to indicate to me that it’s obviously in jest?…

>But this cuts both ways — you are exposing your own biases in believing it’s obvious satire. It doesn't cut equally both ways because there's an obvious ground truth that exonerates those who believe it's satire. I didn't claim it was obvious, and I could see why an outsider would be unsure. But the deflection of "can't blame me, Poe's Law" doesn't hold when plenty of people are able to see through the ruse.

All I’m saying is I think it’s forgivable to take something like this seriously, especially without full context. Doubling down after learning it’s a ruse, not so much. My observations on this issue are hindsight, this article is the first I learned of it.

> I didn't claim it was obvious, and I could see why an outsider would be unsure

You described people who believed it as “detached from reality.” Is that not tantamount to saying it’s obvious?

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

#58

Post by deelowe »

lr4444lr wrote: post #31

Groups like this are very important to have around for the rest of us to periodically recalibrate our bull@#$% detectors against. That people whose professional reputation and livelihood it is to keep well-calibrated fell for this, is leagues more dangerous than these jokesters themselves. Sad!

Same sort of bs is happening with the horse paste stuff now. The story about hospitals being overrun due to people oding were wildly inaccurate at best.

Whatever fits the narrative I guess…

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

#60

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #44
TraceWoodgrains wrote: post #29

Oh hey, cool to see my article here. If anyone has questions or wants further details on anything, I'm happy to stick around this thread for a bit. I've paid altogether too much attention to this saga; glad it's going to some use.

Definitely an interesting article. Have a clap or two. (I have no idea what that's worth on Medium anymore.) I haven't encountered this specific group before, but I've definitely run into the "we want to believe the worst of our enemies" mindset, when I got into an argument with an earnest, well-meaning Bernie Sanders supporter who came across an obviously tongue-in-cheek Joe Biden pinup coloring book during the 2020…

Did you leave a word out here:

> I mean, how can you read "Joe Biden pinup coloring book" and immediately go "oh, this is a joke")

Should read and not immediately?

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