I have trouble understanding why the above comment was downvoted, especially here of all places.
In contrast, the original comment (@zaptheimpaler) convincingly argues that the NYT has made a moral error in this case, regardless of where you stand on the ideological issues clouding it. It makes a strong argument by sticking to the facts, carefully avoiding appeals to emotion or bundled claims that could undermine the central point. That is what makes it such a good argument, and it's probably why it's the most upvoted comment here.
It is used that way by many people though. Downvoting out of disagreement is certainly something that happens on the internet.
> The comment from DarkWiiPlayer was very weak
Yes, the original comment already did a good job at presenting the case against the NYT. That wasn't really my intention.
> by making unprovable assertions about their motives
Well, yes, because it is simply impossible to make any provable assertion about anybodies motives. Unless you'd prefer judging actions without consideration for the actors motives (in which case there's no meaningful distinction between murder and a deadly accident), there will always be some degree of speculation about intent. In this case, there is two options: Either the NYT is utterly incompetent at basic text comprehension, or they deliberately lied about the opinions expressed on several blog posts. Assuming the NYT wouldn't have made it to where they are if they were so incompetent, there's only one possible conclusion: They intentionally spread lies with the goal of retaliatory defamation against a blogger that didn't dance to their music.
> It actually weakens the case against the NYT
Did I refute any of the arguments of the original comment? If not, then I couldn't possibly have weakened the case.
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And what's more, your criticism only really addresses the first sentence in my comment.
The second sentence is just a moral judgement of the events. I shouldn't have to point out that this is my personal opinion, as an intelligent reader should just understand that implication.
My third point is: this behaviour ruins the reputation of journalism as a whole. I do consider the reasoning for this thought trivial. If you think it is fallacious, please point out why this is.
My last sentence, again, is simple because it's trivial. Trump is known to repeatedly call media liars on camera. The NYT article is misleading at best, and most would probably agree that it lied by omission in on several occasions. I also imply that I generally don't agree with these populists, hence the "the saddest part". That's two provable factual statements and one completely subjective opinion.
Except my comment had nothing to do with downvoting on HN, nor was it a general attack of "the left" (fuck, I am on the left myself) so it isn't really proving anything.
Unless, of course, this the NYT staff raiding HN downvoting comments, but something tells me that's neither the case nor what you're talking about.
This is what I was referring to. The NYT used doxxing to bully him because of how they perceived his views. Much of HN uses downvotes to bully and silence anything that criticizes the left.