Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

> Companies saying "trust us, we have the data to prove it" while keeping that data secret should be ignored.

While true, I do not think this is a great heuristic. How would the average person know whether the "data" is available? Most people don't even know what "data" really is. They have never heard of CSVs or SQL. We need a better signal for consumers to know what they can and can't trust.

View on HN

An average person doesn't need to directly access the data. As long as journalists or researchers can, an avg person could rely on their analysis/opinion instead.

I would certainly not rely on journalists' to actually have a look at the data, let alone to have the technical skills to analyze and report on it. As it is, reporters don't bother mentioning / linking to the data, or mentioning the lack of publicly available data.

It's OK to expect better from both journalists and companies.

Data-journalism is actually a thing, and bigger organizations like the New York Times have done some pretty impressive work building tools and training programs for their reporters.

https://open.nytimes.com/how-we-helped-our-reporters-learn-t...

Here we are in the comment thread of an article of a journalist reporting this very analysis.

A good journalist will include that context in a story. I know I read at least one article that included these safety claims while also noting that the data was private and unverifiable.

I think it's a good default to assume any self-beneficial corporate message is false, absent evidence to the contrary.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com