The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#291

Post by klyrs » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:19 PM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #164

shadowgovt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are biased, but if the facts are accurate, that's irrelevant. A trustworthy organization doing fact checking on one side of the aisle while ignoring inaccuracies from the other side is preferable to no fact-checking at all. Question is: where is Republican Snopes? It's a free information market; why is nobody doing it?

There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "f…

Snopes for Mormons: https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_apologetics

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#292

Post by gonehome » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #227

blueyes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the author of this piece want? The "truth", or even a plausible interpretation of the facts, is expensive to produce. It is even more expensive when you do it every day covering a wide array of topics. If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN. * But a lot of what the New Y…

>If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. If you have a society where people must pay for truths but are given lies freely, then should we be surprised when people believe lies? Given those people have equal say in how things are ran as the people willing to pay for truth, doesn't this cause a social level problem?

It's hard to have a society where lies are expensive that doesn't lead to suppressing speech in general.

So, I think you touch on a real problem - but I don't think making lies expensive will lead to a good outcome either.

The internet creates a huge amount of easily accessible false information, but also a huge amount of easily accessible true information (more than at any other time in history).

People just need the ability to tell the difference.

Arguably access to all the information in the world won't save us because the non-free stuff isn't accurate either, and people still aren't trying to actually understand what's true. They're just trying to find stuff to support what they already believe. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#293

Post by klyrs » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

throwaway8582 wrote: post #290

jhardy54 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in for a surprise when you discover Fox News.

I always laugh when I see someone bring up Fox News in this context. You realize your just proving his point, right? I can name dozens or hundreds of major media outlets that that lean left (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, etc.), but you can only name one or two that lean right.

Fox is the most familiar example, but there are many more:

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#294

Post by colllectorof » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

awinder wrote: post #154

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?

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…

> but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT

They have originated with events on the ground widely reported by independent journalists, citizens and local news.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo

What people here are doing is dismissing the overall picture of what's happening on the ground in Portland based on a few misreported facts. No matter that that are hundreds of videos from different sources showing all kinds of crazy shit. "Breitbart lied about bible burning, so the protests must be peaceful!"

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#295

Post by googthrowaway42 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #291

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "f…

Snopes for Mormons: https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_apologetics

This looks like its for questions about Mormonism or theological questions, not current events or other pop-culture things (forwards from Grandma) like Snopes.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#296

Post by bena » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

Falling3 wrote: post #202

bena wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

>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. The GP's post didn't say trust science or trust data. It said trust scientists. I'm taking issue with the desire to put faith in individuals.

He's essentially reiterating Mac's argument from It's Always Sunny, casting doubt on people who deliver information by informing us that "Science is a liar... sometimes".

It was also people who found out those people were wrong or lying.

Yes, Piltdown man was a fraud, but it was the same "scientific community" that discovered it was a fraud. Because there were things that didn't make sense even within the confines of the field of study.

That's the great thing about the process, it's ultimately self-correcting.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#297

Post by labcomputer » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

fabbari wrote: post #207

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…

Just out of completeness you could have added the actual response to Tesla's comments: https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-... To say the least: it's not as clear cut as you make it to be. My personal opinion - for what is worth it - is that between Musk and a journalist of the NYT I would still trust the journalist more. But I am naive that way.

> Musk and a journalist of the NYT I would still trust the journalist more

Why do you believe a journalist who contradicts his own story after being called out on the original? Anyone reading your link in isolation might think it a fine rebuttal, but it's inconsistent with the original piece he wrong for the NYT--they can't both be true.

I also like how he defends the "sloppy note-taking" with, "But the manufacturer didn't tell me they had a GPS tracker on the car." That speaks volumes.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#298

Post by GenerocUsername » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #213

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…

It's a mistake to judge an organization on one, or even a handful of incidents. There should be a pattern of inaccuracy and bias before you "cancel" a news source. This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough t…

The more you know about a subject, the more false reporting you will find related to that subject.

Remember that next time you read news about something you are not already well versed in.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#299

Post by codydh » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

awalton wrote: post #271

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Reader was just an RSS reader, and there are plenty of those available, both free and paid. RSS doesn't get you past pay walls, though.

That's like saying "Google is just a search engine" and ignoring the fact that "to google" is now an English verb and the rest of the impact it has had on information availability in the world. Reader was a synthesis of open web culture - it offered a hub of reading multiple streams of content in one formatted location, and it did so with the support of one of the largest companies on the earth with the ability to us…

The point still stands that what Google Reader was and what you want is an RSS reader.

Unless I'm missing something, they never did anything unique to "use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted"—it was just an RSS reader, and what you've described is exactly how I use my reader of choice (Feedbin). Many modern offerings even offer a feature to pull the full text for articles where it's not included by default.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#300

Post by tehjoker » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #213

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…

It's a mistake to judge an organization on one, or even a handful of incidents. There should be a pattern of inaccuracy and bias before you "cancel" a news source. This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough t…

The NYT is wildly inaccurate on foreign affairs regularly. For an exceptionally famous example, recall their reporting on WMDs in Iraq for which they have never squarely apologized.

https://nypost.com/2004/05/27/nyt-whispers-apology-for-wmd-s...