Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting to me that dang overrode community moderation of this story [1] yesterday. Without having first even read it. A story that was based on an unverified anonymous source, by a discredited journalist, and which as we see now contained provably made up parts.

Because dang overrode moderation, that literal fake news (fake as in actually made up) was allowed to hover on the front page for a long time and given a legitimacy it didn’t deserve. It was able to be seen by a very large audience over a very long time.

Sadly an article that counters to that fake news makes it to the front page for a brief moment and after 3 hours is no on the 5th page.

So many of those people that saw the first will never see the second and get the wrong idea. It’s the old story about a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Sadly to me that it was Hacker News that decided to actively help spread the lie.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34707305

If community moderation worked perfectly, there would be no reason to moderate. dang was clear and consistent in his moderation, even though he received the most backlash I've seen him face in the thread [1].

Seymour Hersh's stories have faced similar backlash every time they're released, including counter-statements by the US government. He has put out more dubious pieces as of late – he could be right or wrong about this – but I'd rather be exposed to his ideas than have them censored.

Anecdotally, I found the Seymour Hersh story intellectually gratifying, and was forewarned of the murkiness of its contents by the HN comments. I think all functioned pretty well on the HN side.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34712496

>by a discredited journalist

I'm French and I had never heard of that journalist. Can you share the link to the official list of discredited journalists so I know who not to trust going forward?

I think the commenter is labelling Hersh a "discredited journalist".

The discrediting part would be his recent articles on Syrian government complicity in chemical warfare attacks, his narrative of how the Bin Laden killing actually happened, and if the Russians actually poisoned the Skripals.

But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.

> But you probably knew all that and I have been concern trolled. Oh well, I try.

I think the less than hour old account with random username might've given it away. :-) Unfortunately a seemingly unusual amount of that on this story.

How do you know it's made up? None of the involved countries have blamed Russia. Reuters and the washington post have also reported on this. It is not exactly wild speculation.

Dang also constantly gets criticized for not overriding flags on stories. He has to make judgment calls and ultimately that's a flawed human process. He won't always get it right, and furthermore people will often disagree on which instances he messed up (or didn't).

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