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Comment by wyldfire | Hacker News Reader

Smells like 4chan manufactured not just the claims but perhaps even the outrage. But they got what they wanted: NYT coverage. YHBT. HAND.

Times: please don't feed the trolls.

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No. There are actual voters that believe(d) this [1]. It's trolling but it needs to be addressed.

[1] https://twitter.com/ch402/status/796409197411713024

Yeah, this thing is semi-big on reddit, and to me it looks like a lot of nuts actually believe this. But the question remains, was this thing initialized by some /pol/ übertrolls, or was it only conspiracy nuts from the beginning?

Started with people finding what they thought were pedo keywords in the Podesta emails. More searching led to circumstantial evidence. Besta Pizza is the one they think is most guilty. Besta Pizza logo looked a lot like a secret symbol used by pedos, until they recently changed it.

Not sure how Comet fits in. Maybe Podesta ordered from them for the many 'pizza parties' referenced in his emails, with lines like 'i don't like hair on my pizza.'

Combination of strange references to 'pizza' in the emails, the logos, the utter distrust of establishment politicians (especially those connected to Hillary), fuelled by ongoing theories about so-called elites' child trafficking rings (Epstein).

> what they thought

What makes so sure about this? These claims are so nonsensical that it could be “what they wanted the reddit conspiracy hive-mind to believe”.

Yep you're 100% on the money. I've been watching this unfold since it started with anons croudsourcing the podesta email dumps looking for crimes.

The new york times has no credibility with a large portion of liberals and conservatives after the last election. I don't think them addressing anything right now is a good idea. Half of my liberal friends dont trust the mainstream media at all anymore, and ALL of my conservative friends are taking the new york times articles as PROOF something is afoot.

* no credibility with a large portion of liberals and conservatives after the last election

Citation needed that people think the NYTimes is lying (as opposed to selectively reporting). I don't dispute some conservatives believe the NYTimes is lying.

At this point, I'd frankly be satisfied if the NYT stopped feeding the literal white supremacist neo-Nazis, but that doesn't seem likely to happen. (Seriously, they recently gave someone that even Breitbart doesn't seem willing to give the time of day to a huge platform to expound his views, political goals, and his importance - all of which would otherwise be irrelevant, because he had almost no audience or power.)

If it were wholly manufactured, then the timing of strikes against wikileaks and other CP uncovering agents was way too convenient for the trolls. I don't think that's the case.

Good god you can't be serious.

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