Hacker News Reader

Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

We're meant to accept those fake viral stories on social media because they fit the narrative. For example, take this tweet from a senior reporter at CNN attacking famed right-wing news cesspit Breitbart for covering the fakery: https://twitter.com/DylanByers/status/798263162508177410 The FBI actually said there was a surge in hate crimes in 2015. This in no way confirms the post-election surge of social media stories as he pretends it does. (Which makes his tweet a fake viral claim that a story about fake viral hate crime claims is fake. Confusing, I know.)

View on HN

Not to mention if you actually look at the number of hate crimes per year they are almost incredibly low. Something like (you can google yourself for exact numbers) 500 hate crimes against Muslims in 2015 (400 in 2002, I think). Considering how many people live in the United States, it's kind of amazing. And hate crimes against Jews are always the highest. But now, just days after the election, we're supposed to believe that the number has tripled, quadrupled, whatever, in just a matter of days. It begs one to really think about the veracity of some of the claims. As if people only suddenly became openly racist. I think the type of person who would call someone a nigger is gonna do it no matter who runs for president or who wins. And I wager a large percentage of the reports are well-meaning (from an SJW perspective) BS.

There's no reason to think that the number of reports about low-threshold hate speech and similar incidents on social media and the number of incidents on FBI record should be the same. They can be vastly different and still true for what they count, because they count different things. They are related, though, and if one number goes up I'd expect the other number to go up as well.

No, you're right. I just wanted to point out how low the numbers are according to the FBI. It's actually surprising to me, I would expect more. I didn't mean to say that because the number of recent reports on social media seemingly quadruples those numbers that they're not true -- I didn't word my comment properly. I'm not making any truth claims, just that the amount of reports and the content of the claims feel suspicious to me.

> We're meant to accept those fake viral stories [snip]

And now /you/ are calling those reports fake without presenting credible evidence. How does a misguided tweet about the Breitbart cesspit suddenly make Breitbart's claim right?

So much confusion, I know.

It doesn't, the fact that more reputable news organisations have contacted the local police and they've confirmed that several of the most prominent reports are fake does.[1] Ultimately the problem isn't that any one particular story turned out to be false, it's that social media spreads the most incendiary, terrifying stories regardless of truth and there's an atmosphere of hostility towards anyone questioning them. (Though this did lead to the confirmed fakes being the most successful, viral hate crime claims I saw post-election.)

[1] http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/11/election-night-hijab-attac... is a reasonable summary.

Thanks for the link. This seems to be a mix of straight-out fakes, misunderstandings, inaccuracies, missing police reports (not necessarily a proof for anything) etc.

Is there an analyses that goes a bit further, maybe looking at the top X shared stories and counting how many of them turned out to be false vs. how many could be confirmed vs. how many we just can't proof or disproof? I think something like that would be needed to make a blanket statement like "those fake viral stories."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com