Hacker News Reader

Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

I just read this and thought ... didn't that transaction take place after the infamous tweet? Couldn't anyone have done it? Quick google and sure enough: https://medium.com/@jimmysong/no-sean-spicer-didnt-make-some...

Why are so many so desperate to believe this immense hydra of a conspiracy theory?

View on HN

I read an interesting article pointing out that fake news originating on the left spiked dramatically after Trump's election.

In general, it seems that those who feel out of power and out of control are more willing to latch onto nonsense and conspiracies.

Edit: sources, since this is attracting mindless downvotes

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/06/liberal-fake-n...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39592010

I'm not sure why you're getting down votes, gas-lighting has been a discussion topic since a year ago.

If Putin is behind mass propaganda, the Kremlin's gas-lighting approach explicitly involves supporting extremist groups across the political spectrum in order to disrupt opposition forces. One would expect more left-leaning propaganda, because planting propaganda serves to fracture the movement from within, demonize it in the eyes of the extreme opponents, and undermine the legitimacy of the communication medium. Go read Dugin's playbook, or the numerous English translations/analysis.

Example: Why was Jill Stein photographed sitting at the same table as Flynn and Putin? Because it delegitimized the native Russia Green Party, and builds a narrative that drives a wedge between the Green and Democrat progressive groups.

Not saying you or the article you linked are wrong, but are the two timestamps the same time zone? (Are they both GMT?) It seems like an obvious thing to check but I don't see the time zone mentioned anywhere, and there do exist pairs of time zones where the ostensibly later bitcoin transaction could have actually come before the tweet.

Hi, author of the Medium article here. The block containing the transaction was mined at 4:57pm EST (21:57 GMT) on 1/26:

https://blockexplorer.com/block/000000000000000001b12145b9ba...

https://blockchain.info/tx/143a764d3fa405f428e1d0e5b9d01b88e...

This tweet showing the screenshot is clearly earlier:

https://twitter.com/evanoconnell/status/824614832691355648

Would it be implausible that the user that took the tweet's screenshot was in a timezone 12+ hours behind the timezone used in bitsig? Am I watching too much House of Cards?

Very implausible. Largest plausible timezone difference would be like 8 hours (US west coast to GMT), which wouldn't be enough to explain this. The actual timezone difference seems to be a mere 5 hours.

I think it started right around the same time as "ratings" outweighed "truth" on the metrics media companies cared about...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com