Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned | Hacker News Reader

Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned

nytimes.com

13 pointstim33317 comments

Let's forget "conspiracy" and let's think "curiosity" for a moment. How is it possible that Epstein, who is accused of organizing sex with children and apparently with lots of evidence against him, and who has apparently tried to kill himself two weeks ago, has to appear in court and is facing many years in jail, apparently has a lot of dirt on others, (a) is not on a suicide watch, (b) is found dead in a specialised institute where suicide is said to be impossible (stated by a man who was imprisoned there).

I do not buy it when officials say that it was not necessary to have him on suicide watch. For whatever reason them come up with, I do not buy it. I find it extremely suspicious that he was found dead. We have to wait and see what an investigation will bring forward... but probably I will not buy whatever will be stated.

This was a really interesting comment:

> This creates big incentives to game trending. Either:

> 1) press will cover it & amplify

> 2) press will debunk & still amplify, while creating controversy

> 3) press will very occasionally ignore,then conspiracy press will cover to ask why

> if you make it trend, you make it true.

Let's just be hypothetical though. It is possible that one of more of his rich friends knew or participated in his activities with children. It was all nice and under the covers until now, his might confess.

Let's say for instance POTUS was involved. How hard would it then be for Epstein to have a "accident" like suicide? The truth is simply we don't know, but if there is anything, perhaps it will leak out one day.

But the investigation will be stopped now, only know other suspects will be looked into.

And what about the obvious 4) which I'm not sure what exactly it is, but does seem to end in actual covering up.

The big example these days is the evolution of the Yellow Vests movement in France. It is baffling how little attention it gets compared to the impact the movement is having.

Right now there is a bit of a contrast between the situation in Paris last weekend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkEaLFvk9R4

(there have been weekly anti-government protests in pretty much every city in France for more than a year. Officially the tally is on 39 continuous weekends)

And the top/only news item from France for the week: a boating accident in Normandy killed 3 kids.

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2019/08/12/drie-kinderen-verdri...

But if you feel like looking for any other news items ...

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/rubrieken/buitenland/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world/europe

https://www.lemonde.fr/

I have friends in Paris and their claim is that life there is disrupted on a near constant basis, also during the week, but especially during weekends. I have zero reason to disbelieve that claim, except of course that you just won't find it in newspapers. The movement is big enough that it is pretty well known in neighboring countries, but it sure as hell isn't the press that's spreading the news.

And you will have to dig deep indeed to get the central message of these protests "Macron, demission" (impeach Macron, the French president)

Before that it was the mass car burnings, also in France, that come to mind: years of cars getting torched in pretty much every large French city, dozens to hundreds (in Paris). Never got paid much attention.

Like the Yellow Vests, It wasn't quite zero, but pretty close.

So the problem here is that you cannot trust the reasoning being put forth: the "normal" press is also covering some things up, and the narrative clearly isn't neutral. I can come up with a few somewhat believable reasonings (ie. Le Pen, and what the inevitable result will be if elections were called in France today. It isn't so much that they like Macron, although they do, they're scared to death that elections before the situation changes will turn France into Italy. Or worse, maybe destroy the EU. I don't think destroy the EU is entirely realistic, but it sure is a lot more realistic now than it was a year ago)

Epstein isn't a left vs. right problem. It's an "everyone is corrupt" problem. Easiest thing for the powers that be is that he go away.

You mean just like all those conspiracy theories that said that Epstein was engaged in child sex trafficking on his private island?

Well played.

Has the question been answered though? Why was he allowed to die? Why wasn't he on suicide watch, or why did the suicide watch fail?

What a hilarious title, coming from the NYT, I thought, with no particular bias myself, just a grossed out observer of all American politics and media.

I mean, we pay a lot of money for the buffoonery, corruption, and incompetence that isnour government.

If we can't enjoy some tinfoil hat riffs over idiocy like this, then what good is the First Amendment?

I thought it was interesting that there is a kind of positive feedback on conspiracy theory stuff - people share it so it trends and goes exponential in a way that boring factual type stuff might not. I was wondering if you could use machine learning pick out stuff that looked like that and damp down the spread by mechanisms similar to HN where you move it down the list and so on.

Polynomial

BBC also playing the conspiracy card https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49312746

hackernews has become more and more nytimes traffic forward website...how many nyt links gets posted here everyday

You can check for yourself, by clicking on the domain name next to the submission title. Or use HN search to filter by points>N or comments>N:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nytimes.com%20points>30&sort=b...

I'm not seeing many off-topic NYT submissions getting significant attention. Also, NYT has always been a prominent source of good HN submissions. I don't think this has changed much.

I know you moderators got profiled by NYT and got free publicity but doesn't mean that this site should be become a traffic generator for NYT fakenews Rot of journalism ethics at New York Times has turned into leftist plague https://nypost.com/2019/08/13/rot-of-journalism-ethics-at-ne...

NYT promoted political stories are also getting posted here and not removed by admins though political links are banned here.

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