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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Fact check on this brand new account?

I read the source he listed and it doesn't say any of that

Ah thanks, I think that was added after I commented.

This is the second time in 2 weeks I’ve seen a comment like this on HN. 37 years old. Been on here 16 years. Incredibly odd to me. Just announce “can someone else tell me if this is true?”

That’s what I was doing, because I don’t think assertions like “CENTCOM is blind” should just sit out there without evidence.

Then go get some! It adds nothing but spam when you to take time from your busy day to tell us what to do

Usually it’s on the person posting assertions to justify them, and looks like they’ve edited in a NYT link since then.

that's true about assertions, but blindly saying "Fact check!" is still an attempt to offload a wished-for effort onto other people while simultaneously sowing seeds of discernment and distrust into the topic.

What happens when someone yells "Fact check!" at absolutely true things constantly? It erodes confidence. That's why "Person yelling fact check" isn't a typical or generalized role in normal discourse.

Yes, it's good to correct the incorrect. How does one do that typically? A rebuttal.

A supposed 'deferment to experts' on the internet is worth next to nothing, just a way to paint yourself a bit more altruistically while producing FUD.

I asked if anyone could rebut it. Normally I'd do the work myself, but I'm not very up to speed on this stuff and I wasn't in a good place to do a bunch of research, and someone who's been following it more closely could probably do a better job pretty quickly. The comment smelled like a possible propaganda account to me, making what I thought were some pretty wild claims, and the commenters that were there were piling on because tribalism, so I was trying to act like an antibody in HN's immune system against nonsense, and flag it. Sorry if it sounded like a demand, it was probably too terse.

But look at the account's comment history since registration a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bijowo1676

I lit up at sorry (so rare), then, had to chuckle at "but..."

Haha the “but” wasn’t meant as an excuse for the terseness.

Am I wrong about the comment history? Might be biased.

And it's worse than spam when someone is posting incorrect things and people are downvoting people questioning it. As another user has already posted, the Iron Dome does not use the same radar they are talking about and is not "blind"

I watched an interview with a retired British military guy who said that the radar destruction does complicate things, but the US still has the other AWACs, so there is still early warning and visibility, just complicates things and reduced range/more risk.

The E3 fleet is aging and difficult to keep airworthy. Of the 32 or so planes the US has, it sounds as though they struggle to keep the operational number above 16, and moving more to the gulf means they have to pull them from other theaters. In short, they simply don't have enough to provide coverage of all the areas they want them.

This was completely foreseeable and is a situation that appears to have arisen entirely due to vest interests stifling procurement of a suitable replacement in order to spruik up business for their own competing, but unfinished offering. Prior to the war in Iran, total cancellation of the procurement of E7's had been announced.

https://theaviationist.com/2026/04/01/e-3-awacs-loss-saudi-a...

It seems like demoralization propaganda.

IMHO, people making claims should provide the evidence for them. One link is behind a paywall and the other clearly states that it is making informed speculations.

I could make all sorts of claims on the spot here. It doesn't create a duty for people reading this thread to go investigate them.

You're so close, just one more step, and it's easy, just have to step away from keeping it hypothetical.

<SPOILER> Then it certainly does not create a duty for people to go investigate, when the only difference is "someone replied telling someone to fact check" </SPOILER>

You're the one in this thread claiming people are responsible for "going and finding the evidence" of other people's unsourced claims. You could have just not replied since you didn't have something to contribute.

None of the words you have in quotes are in this thread. :/ Not a single one. Nor did I advance this position.

I'd wait for your apology, but I'm old enough to know I won't get one.

I apologize for not quoting you directly “Then go get some!”. That’s what you said in response to there being no evidence. Would you like a link to your comment?

"People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases of each other. They don't share a single word, or advance a similar idea. I am uncertain linking comments can change that.

Of course they’re paraphrases. And since when does 37 warrant constantly mentioning how old you are?

I'm not sure what's going on: "People are responsible for going and finding the evidence" and "Then go get some!" are not paraphrases.

Best steelman I can come up with is you're seeing deep red, so it's hard to see "Then go get some!" is suggesting he could fact-check his own question instead of asking the room to do it for him.

Which is the opposite of your characterization that I think people are responsible for investigating strangers' unsourced claims. We violently agree, not disagree.

Making this exchange all the curiouser.

Are you inebriated? I only ask because it's unusual to see someone on HN choosing to say obviously incorrect things, aggressively, on purpose, just to talk down to someone. Much less making bullying attempts based on comment history.

Relax, I was mostly asking whether someone else who already knew about this stuff could comment on its veracity. There’s obviously no obligation.

Right (c.f. the thing I am replying to)

If you spend a moment to verify the info that is the fact check.

No one can do the thinking for you.

Did a quick search, didn’t see confirmation that they’re blind/that all radars had been knocked out. Was asking whether others who know more about this topic than me would confirm.

You did a reasonable check in my opinion. Perhaps if you had said that you already did search I wouldn't have written the last part.

Also if I had an answer to your question I would say it. Hope you are able to find the answer.

Are you asking someone to fact check publicly available information for you ? Even NYT reported this

Traveling with kids on spring break, I don’t have time to read all war related news, and it tends to set off my propaganda account alarm when someone registers a new account to drop a bunch of assertions on such a politically divisive topic. So I was asking whether someone could confirm things like “The whole CENTCOM is blind basically, as well as Iron Dome which relied on these radars - all blind now, in addition to long-range early nuke detection to protect CONUS is also blind.”

There’s a good reason new accounts are colored green.

New account that only has politics-adjacent posts; worth being skeptical.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com