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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”

#141

Post by throwawaylinux »

rat87 wrote: post #139
throwawaylinux wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree -- hell, I still can't work out if "Trump colluded with Putin to hack the election" was satire or if people actually believed it.

I mean the majority of public evidence strongly points towards Trump colluding with Putin regardless of whether Russias efforts changed a close election

There is no evidence of that at all actually. Saying there is is on par with anti-vaxxers and other election conspiracy theorists. It's a denial of reality, and a denial of the expert investigations and reports into it.

You have been taken by a conspiracy theory. You were lied to by people you trust, etc. I know it's hard or impossible to accept that, but that's what it is.

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

#142

Post by ZeroGravitas »

esyir wrote: post #121
robbrown451 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it shows some promise. Do you have a credible citation? Because I've followed it closely, and nothing out there indicates it shows promise, and a lot shows it doesn't. I'll agree that it is misleading to call it horse paste, but if you call it a de-wormer, that doesn't sound a lot better to me. It's not an anti-viral, and the only "promise" it has shown is equivalent to the promise shown by a handgun fired at…

Big paper retracted recently, current status is in the low to no effect size. Still under study and might get a better grasp of effectiveness in the future, so nothing on efficacy is conclusive atm.

Since you seem to be knowledgeable is there an objective writeup of the thought process behind this whole thing e.g. Joe Rogan, who was vaguely skeptical of Covid, I think, I remember Bill Burr mocking him for having a big opinion on the manliness of masks rather than listening to doctors.

But then he got Covid and announced he was taking a medicine that some people think might help, but hasn't been proved.

Now there's all the talk about horse paste or whatever but I feel like we all skipped over a step where there's a group of people who have taken a conspiratorial approach now leaping on an unproven medicine, which just seems odd. So they've always believed in Covid, but pretended not to?

And I feel like I'm going crazy but didn't this already happen with some other drug, that people thought might be really helpful but turned out not to be?

Is it the lockdowns they don't like, the vaccines? Why is jumping on unproven meds so popular in certain circles?

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

#143

Post by 90211 »

jjeaff wrote: post #126
gruez wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Anyone who has a baseline knowledge of medicine would call it a dewormer Right, but in all the contexts I've heard it, it's not just a "dewormer", it's a "horse dewormer". That's technically true, but it's also FDA approved for human consumption. Making fun of people for consuming "horse dewormer" is like making fun of people for consuming "horse tranquilizer" for their depression[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

Except many of the people being made fun of are calling poison control because they are literally overdosing on horse dewormer. Literally apple flavored dewormer paste for horses.

You're referring to the fake news a user a few posts above you just mentioned.

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

#144

Post by cemkum »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #137

I feel like trolls are a bit too self-congratulatory. They're always talking about how many people they've fooled and the numbers, objectively are not very high. "I fooled the underpaid person who writes clickbait headlines to attract eyeballs to adverts by doing their job for them" isn't really the great triumph it is often made out to be. It's like 'revealing' the mermaid you donated to PT Barnum's museum was a fis…

The people they fool write articles for places that have institutional prestige. They might just be fooling some clickbait farmer which is not super interesting, but when you see outcomes of your work in "real and trusted™" news sites, it's something a lot more interesting.

Also, it strips away the institutional trust and prestige layer by layer.

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

#145

Post by ZeroGravitas »

cemkum wrote: post #144
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #137

I feel like trolls are a bit too self-congratulatory. They're always talking about how many people they've fooled and the numbers, objectively are not very high. "I fooled the underpaid person who writes clickbait headlines to attract eyeballs to adverts by doing their job for them" isn't really the great triumph it is often made out to be. It's like 'revealing' the mermaid you donated to PT Barnum's museum was a fis…

The people they fool write articles for places that have institutional prestige. They might just be fooling some clickbait farmer which is not super interesting, but when you see outcomes of your work in "real and trusted™" news sites, it's something a lot more interesting. Also, it strips away the institutional trust and prestige layer by layer.

This comes back to my comment on objectively low impact.

The media outlets cited are Vice and Business insider, the Twitter feed of a science journalist and several subreddits.

This is not convincing anyone of anything they don't want to be convinced of.

It would be like someone thinking they'd struck a blow against academic fraud with the Barnum stunt.

I'm not saying that academic fraud isn't a real problem, but this 'attack' on it is simply pathetic by any objective measure.

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

#146

Post by cmcaleer »

programmarchy wrote: post #131
jjeaff wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except many of the people being made fun of are calling poison control because they are literally overdosing on horse dewormer. Literally apple flavored dewormer paste for horses.

Are you referring to the Rolling Stone article which then spread through cable news? That story was retracted because it was totally bogus. There’s more to the ivermectin story than having anti-parasitic properties, even though that’s how it became famous. It also appears to have anti-viral properties [1]. And there have been 60+ studies showing its efficacy [2]. Just because it has anti-parasitic properties doesn't…

> inhibits the replication in vitro

https://xkcd.com/1217/

FWIW researching it is good and should be encouraged but most quality clinical trials so far like NCT04429711 and NCT04391127 haven't been very promising. Those which do show a statistically significant result have been flawed in one way or another. Hopefully when the Principle Trial reports people will get over it one way or another, but it's not looking promising. It may help somewhat at best, but it's no miracle cure.

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

#147

Post by actually_a_dog »

rualca wrote: post #134
thebooktocome wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horse paste is an intentionally derogatory term for it. It's not meant to be scientifically accurate.

> Horse paste is an intentionally derogatory term for it. It's not meant to be scientifically accurate. "Horse dewormer" is as accurate as it can possibly be. It is also used extensively as a cow dewormer and pet dewormer. People are going to veterinarian and pet shops to buy paste sold to deworm horses and cows to take it themselves. They are not taking drugs produced for human consumption. They are going with the a…

It's a dewormer for horses that literally comes in paste form: https://archive.is/k2JUb

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

#148

Post by guerrilla »

ethbr0 wrote: post #118
guerrilla wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that there are sides and not a web of gradients (in the US) is built on polls. The real mystery I want an answer to is why the country us split 50/50 on almost everything.

The nature of democracy. There's a strong selection bias for positions which attract more votes. Ergo, all parties continually optimize their positions, and apparently meet at a boundary that's usually about half the elective.

> The nature of democracy.

Not really. There are basically no countries in Europe with a 50/50 split.

> There's a strong selection bias for positions which attract more votes

Again, no, not really in Europe with proportional representation or similar systems.

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

#149

Post by mmarq »

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…

I think the real problem is that “some guy wrote some crazy shit on a forum and somebody liked it” became newsworthy. The fact that this journalist didn't even check the story on Google, is certainly a problem but no the main one.

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

#150

Post by draw_down »

burlesona wrote: post #76

>Reading responses like this, more than anything, I am reminded of C.S. Lewis: > Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to…

“Do not give too much to the devil”

People want the other side to be as evil as possible. Not a commendable tendency.

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