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Comment by cen4 | Hacker News Reader

Just go to Google News and search of Japanese turning to resignation agencies.

All it takes is one news org doing a small story a month ago and now we get hundreds of stories from news orgs around the world with all kinds of opinions and mutations to the original story. Its like watching bacteria reproduce. Soon we will see antibiotic resistance.

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Churnalism.

More than a decade ago I saw a story about what happened to a "Swiss National" who was jailed in the UAE for three poppy seeds on their shirt. It was quite a disturbing story and was reported around the time some more high profile cases of people being arrested in UAE for what would be normal things in western countries. I saw the same story with the same language appear in dozens of news sites I read and then got suspicious that the wording was near identical and the individual never named.

search for "swiss national jailed UAE poppy seeds" and you can still see some of the articles

Anyway, I contacted the NGO (who it seems does good work, btw!) and asked who this person was and what happened to them. I got a response that during an interview about a more prominent case they told one journalist that it was just a rumour they heard and the story snowballed from there. Nobody contacted them to get more details.

The point I took is not that anyone is malicious or has some sinister agenda but that budgets in newsrooms had been so cut to the bone and "content" needed to be produced as fast as possible to get the clicks, to churn out those stores, and get that ad revenue that nobody had time to do basic fact checking. They were incentivised by the system not to.

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” Mark Twain

While it’s a good statement, there's no evidence Mark Twain made it.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-read-newspaper-...

Is this a problem? Every time another one comes out, more people learn about this interesting thing for the first time.

YouTube pushed a video about it to me a few days ago - I guess it’s an algorithm driven story.

The one with the red haired woman? I was just telling my friend about that one the other day.

For reference, https://youtube.com/shorts/BH5eC5aqtEI?si=X-5Rb_j3NNG2Nsnx

why do her videos have 18M+ views? Is there something special about her "day in the life of" vs everyone else's? Or did the algorithm just decide to highlight her?

I think they're just short, punchy, and about an interesting subject matter (being a schoolteacher in Japan). The algorithm just fed the cycle once it got going.

Not surprised the story is being spread around. I'm sure that a lot of corporations would be happy to amplify a story that will make workers in other countries feel better about not being treated as badly as Japanese workers are by their employers, but I hope it just gets people thinking about how given the chance employers will abuse us to whatever extent we allow them to. Maybe it'll get people thinking about what can be done to improve things where they are or at least make sure things never get as bad.

"Media Magnification" - There's a word for it :)

Maybe the japanese ftc-equivalent should require one-click resignation.

(see, now the ftc subscription story is breeding with the resignation story)

In Austria you can eg end your Apartment lease via a specific court form that removes all ambiguity to wether they have received this in time or whatever. It cannot be refused since it is not filed with the landlord directly but served to him by court. Since Austria requires you to specify a known address to the government it is basically your problem then if you are not present. It is mostly used if your rental agreement contains language in conflict with the law about when you can end the lease. It basically reverses the roles since they cannot refuse the cancellation only appeal it and companies will obviously not do that based on leases that contradict law. You pay 100 EUR so you don’t have to communicate any more about it with the landlord which can be quite the good deal

People are curious beings :), I find a culture that requires these agencies and love learning more.

It isn’t clear that the culture does actually require these agencies (at least in a common case).

It is clear that people love reading/writing articles about it though.

Need is not a matter of my or your opinion. The fact that they exist shows that they are required. Have you heard of similar agencies in other countries?

The fact they exist only shows that someone makes money or benefits from them existing. Customer need is only one way that manifests nowadays

Sounds viral.

Congrats, you figured out how all internet journalism works.

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