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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation?

You say there was zero evidence behind the article, but the evidence was your Tweet, and it was really your Tweet that had zero evidence behind it.

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Absolutely not. Should The Onion be considered fake news? It was a parody account, which was labeled as such. Journalists who can't even be bothered to tap through to the profile don't get my sympathy.

I kind of think that in the mess we’re in ‘it was just a prank bro’ doesn’t cut it any more as an excuse for something that causes harm. But maybe that’s extremist of me.

So satire cannot exist? Because anyone who might accidentally mistake it for truth can be "harmed"

Journalists have a big megaphone. Their job is to amplify truth. If I'm making jokes and being clear about my intentions, but a lazy journalist sees my content as easy clickbait, that's my fault?

What I was tweeting was never "news" let alone "fake news". It was never wrapped deceptively as truth. It wasn't a prank. Someone else took my words, which were obviously and provably not truth, and held them up under their reputation as an authority of truth. Why should I be responsible for the alleged harm that they caused?

Why add entropy to the situation? We know people mid-understand satire and sarcasm.

I do kind of feel much satire is deliberately harmful - people use it to say things and then hide behind ‘but I was just joking’ having already pushed the message out.

Something tells me you also regard stand-up comedy as harmful.

Nobody confuses a stand-up club as news - people do confuse Twitter as news.

“My use case for satire is obvious but yours is not”

And I knew folks who thought Spinal Tap was a real band. Satire is therapeutic when the crap around us gets too deep.

It's not my job to cater to people who choose to get their "news" from a website where anyone can post anything under any identity at all. There has never been any credibility to Twitter as an authoritative news source, especially from accounts that are clearly labeled as a joke. Silencing or shaming folks for being creative in public is far worse than empowering the layman (or lazy journalist) to get their news from the gutter.

People will post lies online regardless of whether the good intentioned folks self censor or not. The problem is not the satire, it's the blind trust.

Speaking of which, I've got a rich client who recent passed away and left a significant sum to one Chris Seaton. If that's you, just shoot me your bank details and I'll get the money wired to you directly.

Yes, it is extremely extremist to call for canceling all works of fiction.

Most works of fiction is labeled as such. I don't see anything against them in this comment.

Can't wait for the return of Tipper Gore and labelling anything that offends. /s

I don't call for labeling. I'm just saying that most of fiction can be easily identified and nobody in the comments has issues with that. Previous comment implied that someone wants to cancel all works of fiction.

So much ad absurdum in this thread...

I kinda love how that effort backfired, and the "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" became a fairly cool symbol

I mean are you suggesting no more jokes, parodies, or satire lest a journalist take it seriously? That would practically require a complete self censor on all fiction. I could just easily tweet a blurb from a Sci-fi novel and risk someone, somewhere, misinterpreting it. Also a prank has the intent to mislead which the poster didn’t. Don’t mean to sound inflammatory but the humorless world that would be sounds a lot more miserable than living in the mess it seeks to remedy.

"It's just a prank bro" would be inexcusable for someone mocking up a screenshot to make it look like someone was sending racist DMs to get them fired, or something on that level. But this is not anything like that, it was a funny comment in a forum where funny comments are made that was taken at face value by a credulous reporter who should've done their job better. It wasn't hateful, offensive or dangerous.

In addition, you've completely altered what the author of the blog post was saying. They're not using the dismissive "It's just a prank bro", they've actually written quite a thoughtful post explaining the context behind the incident. They didn't apologise but they didn't need to.

Ten years ago I would have agreed with you. These days I know that humans are too gullible to be able to understand obvious satire, and the consequences are deleterious for society. As someone who has long appreciated The Onion, I am now of the opinion that they should not legally be allowed to call themselves a news source, in the same way that someone cannot legally claim to be an expert in an accredited field. We don't need to censor The Onion, but we do need to establish norms regarding false advertising in journalism. I understand this won't be a popular opinion, because lots of people don't want to realize that the internet has killed the very concept of satire.

I’m going to assume you’re not being sarcastic.

At some threshold we shouldn’t need to dumb it down any further. I think journalists being able to tell the difference between parody, that’s clearly labelled as parody, and real news is already lower than I’d set that bar.

Ask yourself what’s the value in journalism if they’re just going to build a story off of a tweet with no verification/ fact checking?

So my Twitter, which does not claim to be a news source or post anything other than silly jokes, should also be disallowed because some journalists are too lazy to do their job?

No, if you're not calling yourself news then there's no false advertising going on.

That’s ridiculous because we don’t have the ability to censor the entire internet to police what websites call themselves “news”. If your solution to this is to police the word “news”, it’s dead on arrival.

People claim they are engineers/doctors/lawyers on the internet all of the time and there is no repercussion. We are only able to actually police those terms when it comes to actual business transactions.

It must really suck to be gullible. But how would they know?

Talk about self-fuffilling prophecy. It is like saying that because your legs are a little scrawny you should stay in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.

Exposing the failings of the sources of information is always a good thing. Trust is not some resource which is an unconditional good. It must be worthy of it to be any good. Otherwise it is like thinking that if you give your dog all As in premed and med school he will become a capable doctor.

"It was a parody account, which was labeled as such."

I'm looking at the page now and you use the Mountain View California city crest as the image, "MV Police Blotter" as the title, and it is described as "Keeping tabs on crime in Mountain View, Ca. Not affiliated with MVPD, see @MountainViewPD. Report all emergencies to 911."

That does not read as "this is parody" to me. You may not have intended to deceive but I would bet most people visiting would expect this to be actual police blotter information.

And yet wouldn't we expect a journalist who reads a tweet from an account that says, as you pointed out, "Not affiliated with MVPD," to do their due diligence and reach out to an official channel?

I can grant that it doesn't actually say "parody" in it's description, but we should still be expecting more effort from reporters.

One very important concept of journalism is getting a fact “verified.” Often you need either an incredibly trusted source or multiple sources. The journalist should not have reported it. But their fact checker committed a grave error by allowing a story to run with “some rando on Twitter said…” as the only source.

*some rando claiming to be a parody on Twitter

A tweet isn't any more evidence than a person you don't know and have never met spraypainting the same thing on a wall.

The problem is how news outlets that care so little about the quality of the information they present continue to exist.

Hmm, it is true. There are many such people spreading misinformation about chickens crossing roads. They have very little evidence for their assertions about said chickens but they state these things with great confidence!

Twitter should crack down on this misinformation.

> There are many such people spreading misinformation about chickens crossing roads.

Do these people explain why the chickens were crossing the roads?

“Bok-bok-bok-b’CAUSE,” one chicken said, when asked why it crossed the road.

The Register: Cause for chicken road-crossing identified

HN: Clearly the original user who purported to have recorded what a chicken said is lying. He hasn’t learnt anything from the whole thing. What a misinformer. Practically Pravda.

I would agree with you, depending on the day of the week.

> Do you feel responsible for generating misinformation?

This is a bizarre stance to take. Social media was always filled with false information. It's entirely on news outlets to verify what they decide to publish.

Why fuel the problem by seeding more false information?

Should we also remove the fiction section from libraries?

Does anyone in practice confuse books from the fiction section with news? People do in practice confuse Tweets every second of every day.

For the past few years, the best selling books on Amazon have been misinformation about the pandemic, virology, and "critical race theory" (if that even means anything anymore). Your reasoning is tortured at best.

Are they sold in the fiction section?

I feel like the actual answer really undermines your point more than you think

> Should we also remove the fiction section from libraries?

Are people confused by the fiction section?

> Well people publish weird stuff in the non-fiction section as well.

Ok... what's that got to do with the fiction section you were talking about?

Are you trying to get out of jury duty?

Why should it be socially acceptable to generate misinformation? It's in the end harmful for everyone. (I don't mean obvious parody and fiction, clearly labeled as such).

My comment is about news outlet's obligation to verify information they publish. I never said anything about posting satire by individuals.

Someone asked if thread author feels responsible. You responded with "that's bizarre stance to take", therefore implying, that it's weird to frown upon individuals posting "satire".

I fully agree news outlets should verify what they publish. Still what this guy did was kinda crappy and I fail to see any humor in that. (before someone starts implying something I didn't say - I don't call to "cancel him", "ban him" or whatever you do this days)

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