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Trolls convinced journalists they were “abortion bounty hunters”

tracingwoodgrains.medium.com

31–40 of 192 posts

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

#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!

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

#33

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.

>yellow journalism Coming soon: A biting expose on racist tech bros on ycombinator...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

It’s not called yellow because of the reason you’re thinking.

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

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>yellow journalism Coming soon: A biting expose on racist tech bros on ycombinator...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism It’s not called yellow because of the reason you’re thinking.

thatsthejoke.jpg

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

#35
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 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? Genuinely asking.

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

#36

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.

I'm with you until your last line. An "unbiased" press I think was a pretty unusual and brief development in the mid 20th century. I have no problem with a partisan press that wears its heart on its sleeve and states its objectives in the masthead: I'm perfectly capable of reading critically, and noting what's omitted as much as what's covered, and I'll know which alternative periodical to seek out for the other side of the story. The pretension to neutrality, to me, seems to result in less information overall.

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

#37

Trace Underwood looks like a douchebag here with his tone-deaf narrative. Women have their rights trampled upon in Texas, but let's focus on the "internet troublemakers" who draw attention to this situation using satire?

Can't more than one thing be important at any one time?

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

#38
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…

https://camas.github.io/reddit-search/#{"subreddit":"TXbount... See the posts there if you want. A few were removed by the mods for being too obvious, but in general it was not subtle. u/cry_for_me_fatty and u/cats_like_my_cum, etc. the comments or post histories would make clear to anyone of even mild discernment that it’s not real.

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

#40
post #35

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?…

ok but I wrote some of it and it was explicitly intended to be satire for the purpose of ridiculing people dumb enough to believe it
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