Hacker News Reader

Comment by cirwin | Hacker News Reader

I agree that this behaviour is quite objectionable, though for a subtly different reason.

In particular it's not a case of malicious spreading of misinformation, it seems that in the case that the hoax worked the lies were deleted.

Rather it's a case of abusing a public resource. It feels to me somewhat like training a group of school-children to play Rugby on a village bowling green. Sure the damage to the grass will be undone over time, and sure the chance of knocking over any real old ladies is very small; but it's still an irreverent gesture that shows a dangerous lack of respect.

In the real world we have checks to make sure this kind of behaviour doesn't get too out of hand; on the internet we've so far managed to avoid the need. I hope that continues.

View on HN

That certainly makes sense. But hopefully, since he is in some sense a public figure, we rely on him to make sure the good done is in excess of any damage caused, since he would be censured if that were not the cases. For example, if he had got students to break into museums and make actual changes to historical documents with bleach and ink, he'd make the cons more believable but the harm would be too great.

I don't think he did cross that line though. Some solutions if he did: what if he escrowed (and set a time to release) the pranks in case they aren't caught? What about donating to wikipedia, since it's their green they are mainly playing rugby on?

Yes, I can relate to that but I think the quaint imagery of a village green does not nearly capture the insiduousness of this. He enourages his students to do their best to make the hoax work. Deleting the lies later, while laudable, does not undo the real (intended?) damage to the reputation of the internet.

I really struggle to think of positive educational outcomes from teaching students to pull off successful disinformation exploits.

> Deleting the lies later, while laudable, does not undo the real (intended?) damage to the reputation of the internet

Your problem is that people might start to mistrust things they read on the internet? That's surely the opposite of a problem.

Yes, call me old-fashioned but I just don't like the idea of the internet becoming totally discredited and useless.

You're setting up a false dichotomy. You seem to feel that either the Internet is a place that is 100% trust-worthy (so much so that you can take off your critical-thinking cap), or it's a place where everything is a lie. The point here is that people should learn that they can't blindly believe things just because they read it on the web, not that lies on the web will render it completely useless.

I suspect this professor is one of those people with an axe to grind against Wikipedia and other resources for not being trustworthy enough. Problem is, these kind of tactics would apply to old-fashioned print publications just as well. In the end it all comes down to a matter of trust: the reader has to trust a publication, the publisher has to trust an author, &c. Teaching people to violate that trust can only do harm. His exercises are probably more exciting and sensational this way, but if you ask me it would be more constructive & useful if he asked students to track down and correct surprising inaccuracies for example.

From the article:

> There's also an interesting coda to this convoluted tale. The group researching Brown's Brewery discovered that the placard in front of the Star-Spangled Banner at the National Museum of American History lists an anachronistic name for the building in which it was sewn. They have written to the museum to correct the mistake.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com