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Comment by bruceb | Hacker News Reader

This includes The Guardian opinion pieces.

I am surprised their isn't outrage as a service on twitter. I writer needs 10 twitter accounts to say something controversial so that can write about the "backlash" to some event or celeb. Maybe this already exists, just not obvious yet.

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Not really necessary. There is __always__ some pushback on Twitter. Take a position and you'll find those on your side, and those against you. Confirmation bias is alive and well on the internet.

What continues to shock me is how willing (so called) jouranalist are to use Twitter as a source of reliable and trustworthy info. Again, you can find a handful of tweets to support - or not - _any_ issue.

Journalists don’t use Twitter as the source of truth unless there is no other way to get info. Eg the current POTUS doesn’t even have regular press briefings and uses Tweets to broadcast everything.

Journalists do seem to like Twitter as a platform to debate though. This was where they found it very useful, and why so many of them were early adopters and continue to be active there.

Why do they like Twitter?Today’s issues are so complex that writing long form articles on every event can limit the scope of your views to one or 2 main things while you may still be interested to debate other things. Twitter is a low cost, easily setup platform to do that.

>> interested to debate

Can you elaborate on good debate threads that happened on Twitter?

Please note: so called preceded journalists. That is, there are a vast number of media-ites who think of themselves as journalists. It's not that easy.

I'm not entirely certain this is necessary. If any article gains any traction at all, you can simply pull tweets from random, completely normal humans, and spin that to make whatever point you're trying to make.

It's... kinda discouraging both how easy this is to do, and how credible it appears on the surface with the right framing.

Twitter is Outrage as a Service. It's just not a service you have to pay for.

Or 10 twitter accounts to rage about the article you just wrote but no one read.

Controversial articles need controversy

It is obvious most of the time.

Do you assume major companies don't do it to each other all the time? Sometimes they get caught at it. See:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Samsung+paying+students+for+...

Reddit for Sale: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_s...

This is provided by some of the "mainstream" "press"; Brendan O'Neill in Spiked, for example, can be relied on to produce the absolute worst, most controversial take on something that's just happened, manufacturing a whole load of outrage.

> their isn't outrage as a service on twitter

There isn't? What are all those social media managers doing ?

This is in the category of "outrage outrage", where we are outraged that other people are getting outraged about things.

Ironically, this is why I personally find the use of "snowflake" and "SJW" so enraging.

"outrage outrage outrage".

I find those terms particularly perplexing because the idea of ridiculing people for their sensitivity to particular political concerns is an exercise in demonstrating your sensitivity to particular political concerns. Cura te ipsum!

"Tu quoque, (Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is a fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s)."

You might find the rest of the wikipedia article interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

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