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Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

tracingwoodgrains.medium.com

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

#181

Post by iammisc »

rat87 wrote: post #140
iammisc wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe Biden is literally on videotape saying he threatened the Ukrainian government to not receive aid if they didn't fire their prosecutor investigating his son's company. When trump accused him of it, trump was impeached for his predecessors crimes. But yeah let's talk about what's literally on videotape

Talk about a non sequitur. Biden is on tape talking about he passed along the message that Ultimate had to fire a corrupt prosecutor who was refusing to investigate companies including Burisima the company whose board Hunter Biden was on. VP Biden was merely the messanger Getting rid of the corrupt Shokin was supported by the rest of the Obama administration, the State Department, the EU, and many Republicans. https:…

Keep telling that to yourself. Getting rid of a prosecutor investigating your son's company because of 'corruption' smells of corruption. That more members of the administration supported it just smells widespread corruption.

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

#182

Post by RickJWagner »

drdec wrote: post #71
floren wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that tweet was intended as comedy.

It might not be true, but it is so revealing of the mindset of people who think that way.

Reminds me of the rush to condemn the Covington High school students who were accused of harassing the Native American. (As it turns out, the Native American was at fault.) Hordes of enraged, under-informed snowflakes took to the internet to bully the kids. Not very many apologies afterward.

Especially repulsive are the Hollywood light-thinkers and politicians who were duped. Imagine how the kids felt, having celebrities and politicians talk about them that way.

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

#183

Post by caeril »

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!

> That people whose professional reputation and livelihood it is to keep well-calibrated fell for this

No, their professional livelihood is predicated specifically on the opposite: to lie to the public, but to do so convincingly. Falling for anything that fits their narrative is par for the course, since discovering and reporting truth is literally the opposite of their mandate.

Journalism is a profession filled by people who would push their own mother down a flight of stairs to earn a "Pulitzer Prize", a prize that is literally named after one of the most dishonest propagandists whose lies are directly responsible for the Spanish-American War and the fate of millions of Cubans for a century after.

These are people PROUD to win something named after this scumbag. They CRAVE it. This small fact is all you need to know about the character of the kind of people who choose to work in this "profession".

Imagine investment bankers scrambling over each other to win a coveted "Ponzi Award", or pastors working to earn a "Payne Award"

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

#184

Post by shephardjhon »

jjk166 wrote: post #164
shephardjhon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, my question is, WHAT should have tipped the journalists off? If this was some elaborate puzzle what were the actual clues? or are they just supposed to dismiss anything that "sounds" unusual. And that goes for both cases, the bounty hunters and the trans one. Your article claims it was "obvious" but you NEVER mention WHY it was obvious

> WHAT should have tipped the journalists off? If this was some elaborate puzzle what were the actual clues? or are they just supposed to dismiss anything that "sounds" unusual. Their inability to verify the claims. The proper approach to journalism is to neither dismiss nor accept claims, but to investigate them. If the investigation yields a story, you publish the evidence collected; if it's a dead end then nothing…

>Their inability to verify the claims This is circular logic.

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

#185

Post by shephardjhon »

wutbrodo wrote: post #165
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.

> I’d cut them some slack, because we’re all bad at that, It's really not that difficult a skill to build though. The trick is not to get perfect at detecting sarcasm or trolls but to realize that if you're talking about an individual or a minuscule group of people online (like the 57 members of the "bounty hunter ring"), it's almost never worth paying attention to regardless of its trolling status. Best-case they're…

"worst-case they're a little nuts and talking shit" That is NOT the worst case. If they were serious in the bounty case it could result in punishment for multiple people and reward of $10000 for the "trolls". In the trans case, it could result in child abuse or animal abuse. And this would be true if even ONE of those posts were serious. Not to mention it could give actual crazy people some horrible ideas. In light of today's date,remember that Sudan offered up Osama Bin Ladin to the US in the 90s before shipping him off to Afghanistan. Imagine if the US didn't dismiss the offer as "well you are just offering us one crazy guy and we don't care". 3000+ people in NYC and millions in the Middle East and South East Asia would be safer.

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

#186

Post by mzs »

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.

FWIW I didn't see any of the journalists I follow amplify this, nor did I see any articles in credible outlets fall for this.

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

#187

Post by mzs »

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.

FWIW I didn't see any of the journalists I follow amplify this, nor did I see any articles in credible outlets fall for this.

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

#188

Post by perl4ever »

gruez wrote: post #117
msrenee wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horse paste? It's not you specifically, but you're not the first person I've seen recently who has referred to it and didn't appear to understand what the substance is. Someone I know called it a "horse tranquilizer" in a conversation the other day. It's Ivermectin. It's a dewormer. It shows some promise, but more research is needed into its efficacy. Anyone who has a baseline knowledge of medicine would call it a de…

>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…

>horse tranquilizer

Come on, nobody calls it that, ketamine is generally known by the epithets:

"Date rape drug"

also

"Drug used to murder Elijah McClain"

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

#189

Post by wutbrodo »

ryandrake wrote: post #175
wutbrodo wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d cut them some slack, because we’re all bad at that, It's really not that difficult a skill to build though. The trick is not to get perfect at detecting sarcasm or trolls but to realize that if you're talking about an individual or a minuscule group of people online (like the 57 members of the "bounty hunter ring"), it's almost never worth paying attention to regardless of its trolling status. Best-case they're…

> Even in the worst case, "I found an infinitesimal amount of nutty people on the internet" is not useful information for either a journalist or your personal model of the world. Careful though, QAnon was once an infinitesimally small amount of nutty people, and now they have at least two[1], likely more, sitting US Congressional representatives, with 36 running next year[2]. 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrews…

Sure, I'm not suggesting there's 0% signal. I'm suggesting that the SNR of "someone said something crazy" is so close to zero as to be useless. Hell, crying wolf about it isnt just useless, it's counterproductive.

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

#190

Post by msrenee »

macinjosh wrote: post #157
actually_a_dog wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It is also used to treat rosacea and other ailments in _humans_. Calling it a dewormer in this context is a lie of omission.

That's a good point, but the majority of ivermectin in the US is used as a dewormer. Maybe I'm incorrect here, but I'd say that the principle use of this drug is as a dewormer. It can also be used in other applications, but anti-strongyles and such is the majority use.
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