Authorities Investigating 4chan Post on Epstein's Death | Hacker News Reader

Authorities Investigating 4chan Post on Epstein's Death

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27 pointsAndrewBissell25 comments

"The 4chan thread was first found by Konrad Iturbe, a developer based in Barcelona who was researching conspiracies surrounding Epstein online." First found? Its not like 4chan is an AI or Bots.. what do they mean by first found..

Right? It was technically 'first found' by the first 4chan user to read it.

This information was in the public interest - that 4chan user was doing a public service by releasing information relevant to the public: a.k.a journalism.

Further, with all of the oddities around this case, if there was in fact a conspiracy to kill Epstein, the release of this information at that time may have prevented authorities from altering the narrative around this incident.

wrong. journalism requires paywalls

And then clickbait ads once you get past the paywall.

If there was any reason to believe that the authorities were "altering the narrative" or trying to hide information then I would agree with you that there's a case for this being a pretty valid case of whistleblowing.

Given that the death apparently occurred an hour before the post and a news outlet reported it less than an hour after it that seems like more of a stretch.

No real way of knowing, but it seems likely that OP was just trying to achieve notoriety through their access to privileged medical information. I'm not really ready to cheerlead that, especially if it muddies the water with any ongoing investigation regarding (unlikely) suspicious circumstances.

> If there was any reason to believe that the authorities were "altering the narrative" or trying to hide information then I would agree with you

Most of the US disagrees with you on that one. They have since the polls predicted Hilary would win in a landslide. The authorities and the press constantly lie about even the little things now. Why should we trust anything they have to say?

Most of the US didn't even vote for Trump, so I doubt most of the US believes the Trump camp line that the press fabricated poll and vote data in order to "rig the election." An inability to predict the future is not evidence of fraud.

And believing the press and authorities constantly lie about everything, even small details - things which they would have no practical reason to lie about - is going well past practical skepticism. You're not even accusing the media of getting details wrong here, or failing to properly research, but constant, pathological, willful malice.

That level of extremist paranoia might be fine for T_D or 4chan, and it's uncomfortably common here, but most of the US actually doesn't agree with you in this case.

You can try to make this about partisan politics all you want. It doesn't apply here. The polls are either right or they're wrong. And they were wrong. So massively wrong that Hillary supporters were blindsided on election day. That sort of thing shakes even the most steadfast authoritarian.

edit: This cracks me up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20688904

You made it partisan here:

>Most of the US disagrees with you on that one. They have since the polls predicted Hilary would win in a landslide.

The implication, given the context of the rest of your comment and the subthread (that the media always lies and is covering up the truth about the Epstein incident,) is that the media falsified the election poll results.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time election polls were wrong. That's been a thing since at least "Dewey Defeats Truman." You could have picked any number of incidents to illustrate media bias or the media getting something wrong, but you fixated on something directly out of the Trump playbook.

>That sort of thing shakes even the most steadfast authoritarian.

Who's an authoritarian? Do I hear a dog-whistle?

> You made it partisan here:

No, I didn't, nor did I implicate anything near what you're suggesting. I'll thank you to stop putting words in my mouth.

> Do I hear a dog-whistle?

Thank you for reminding me why I stopped posting here.

4chan is too low status for what their posters do to count as journalism /how authorities actually reason

This surely won't fuel the theories that powerful politicians killed Epstein.

That was happening all on it's own. This is an attempt by the authorities to paint 4chan (and by extension, 8chan and the rest of the internet) as unreliable, not worth paying any attention to and even dangerous (gasp!). It won't work, but I'll give them a B for effort.

The title is wrong according to their erratum footnote:

> The FDNY conducted a review of the the 4chan post. A previous version of this post said FDNY conducted an investigation.

I too would investigate an extremist site such as 4chan.

> "There's serious consequences for those violations. Discipline. Suspensions. Civil penalties"

Too bad there will be no consequences to folks who took the guy who _attempted suicide_ once already off the suicide watch, turned off the cameras, and left him alone for an hour.

Nor for the mainstream press who will memory hole this story by Friday.

Sometimes I wish America could be more like Hong Kong.

Sometimes I wish America could be more like America, the idealized version. HK has plenty of corruption of its own. Chances of survival for someone like Epstein are markedly lower there.

I meant just in terms of protesting.

I can't recall a recent (within my lifetime, actually) case when protesting (here or anywhere else) has accomplished much.

The HK protests quickly succeeded to stop the proposed law.

It's too early to say if they "succeeded to stop" anything. Could be that they just postponed it.

It remains to be seen. What you described is exactly what happened though, that's just truth. Whether someone murdered him, or he was conveniently allowed to commit suicide, it's just as bad, and just as much a sign of corruption in the government. I keep seeing people argue that if it turns out that he really did just commit suicide, then the conspiracy theories about murders must not be true. But that's completely false. Epstein simply being able to commit suicide is every bit as much of a sign of corruption and criminality within the government, as someone sneaking into his cell and murdering him.

Shout out to you: "TrUmP DeFeAted IsIS" well the pentagon says otherwise.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/08/06/...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com