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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

Before anyone asks "Why is a Canadian law firm concerned with the USA?", the headline by Vice is hideously misleading: "Feds" as in the Canadian federal government, not the US federal government.

Writing like this is one of many reasons I despise "journalism" now.

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That all headlines are not contextualized to the US is why you hate journalism?

Journalism has its flaws but my experience is that some people just want to hate on journalists and will use every excuse.

Edit: it's also a little funny to see people who work in tech throwing stones at journalists

I have some empathy because a lot of "journalists" writing the news aren't actually journalists by trade or training, but rather marketing or "social media gurus" or similar nonsense that hasn't taught you how to judge source material, and because they are under immense pressure to do more with less than their ancestors, so nearly every article is just someone else's press release with a little flair added. In many ways, journalism of today is empirically worse off and less useful than journalism of yesterday, simply due to it's seeming takeover by marketing types who have a lose understanding of what we should consider "truth" because they like to make money.

But it's so insane when people act like we didn't go to war with spain in 1890s over a supposed attack on our warship that DID NOT HAPPEN, and then didn't increase our involvement in war with vietnam over a supposed attack on our warship that DID NOT HAPPEN, and then we didn't go bomb the desert for two decades because they were full of supposed WMDs that DID NOT EXIST. Yellow journalism is older than your grandparents.

No, I hate headlines that are unnecessarily vague or misleading.

"Canada wants to ban the Flipper Zero" would have been the same word count and infinitely more descriptive.

Also, I'm not going to read the contents of every bloody article. Especially if the contents don't particularly interest me. Headlines exist for easy and reasonably accurate summarization, which this one fails to do.

You don’t have to read the article. The sub headline includes the context of the country being Canada. “Canada is moving to ban the TikTok-famous Flipper Zero, claiming that it contributes to car thefts. It doesn’t.”

The least you could do is refrain from commenting on articles that you haven’t even clicked on.

The least the article could do is make it clear before I click, that I don't need to click on it because it's the same news I already read days ago... especially since I am passingly familiar with Vice and know they have a significant amount of US coverage as well.

But then they wouldn't get clicks that are ultimately worthless to literally everyone involved except for them!

Yeah, but by being vague they don't lose the clicks from anyone who would think "Not my country so no need to read about it!" - this way they can instill a sense of panic/indignation in everyone no matter what English speaking country with "Feds" they are in.

This is vice.com not vice.ca. If Vice.ca said the feds I'd assume Canada. A .com I shouldn't know at all what it refers to, but given that almost nothing is in .us I generally assume .com means US.

Context is very important, and the context implies US so it is important to specify.

> given that almost nothing is in .us I generally assume .com means US.

Wait, that doesn't follow. All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares. In fact, most rectangles aren't squares.

.com is used in Canada and the entire rest of the world as well. It doesn't belong exclusively to the US by right or by custom.

By custom other countries use their own country code much more often. You are correct .com does not actually belong to the us.

That headlines are purposefully vague to generate more clicks is why he hates journalism.

Canada also has a federal government. The USA is not unique in being made up of smaller units with their own governments with an overall federal government at a higher level.

Yeah but a US website saying the feds totally implies the US government. I assumed the feds were the US and I'M CANADIAN.

And I mean it's not the only stupid thing that journalists do. I just so happen to live near the capital of the country. I'll see articles that say Ottawa wants to ban single-use plastic bags. The city of Ottawa, or the federal government by using the capital city name as shorthand? Then you read the article and it is often impossible to find clues to indicate which organization wants to do the thing.

That's just because you're used to a US-centric view of the internet from all the other Americans who perpetuate the silliness.

It is vice.com, not vice.ca

> hideously misleading: "Feds" as in the Canadian ... not the US

This seems like a picayune complaint, especially when the article has one the most responsible observations possible.

      where the Canadian government claims, without any evidence

I appreciate providing the context. however the overgeneralization and emotio al excursion on "journalism" is missing the point of thinking the implicit context of a world wide forum is the usa. the headline per se isn't misleading, not is journalism. what's misleading is the implicit bias in our heads.

Wouldn't you assume that the implicit context of a non-world-wide forum such as a news site was the USA, if almost every article you had previously seen from that forum was covering social or political issues in the USA?

Here's their top (place-specific) headlines right now: Tucker Carlson+Putin (US/RU); Alejandro Mayorkas (US); Trump/Taylor Swift (US); Neo-Nazi concerts (EU)

you describe implicit bias and it's effect and it's cause.

GP is surprised the article doesn't confirm their implicit bias.

and then GP misattributes the surprise to "today's despicable journalism"??

nono. tons of quality journalism is fine. please go and think about your implicit bias.

just to be sure we talk about the same thing

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtest.html

Ok, that's great that you're using a word for it. I could not possibly care any less.

Why is it bad to assume that a US-centric site is writing a US-centric article when they put "feds" in the title?

Why does there being an implicit bias towards expecting a US-centric site to produce US-centric articles, mean that the journalism is not misleading?

It doesn't. It is misleading. It is clickbait. You are defending the indefensible.

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