[HN Gopher] People are pretending to be laid-off Twitter employe...
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People are pretending to be laid-off Twitter employees carrying
boxes outside HQ
Author : mikece
Score : 99 points
Date : 2022-10-28 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| JohnDeHope wrote:
| "That didn't stop multiple outlets, including CNBC and Bloomberg,
| from running headlines Friday saying that laid-off Twitter
| employees were leaving the building carrying boxes."
|
| This is the part that scares me. It feels like a lot of news
| media outlets will publish just about anything. It feels like
| they have no interest at all in whether or not what they're
| saying is true, or even likely to be true. That's the part that
| worries me.
| uoaei wrote:
| Now imagine what happens when anyone, anywhere has explicit
| endorsement from the owner of a public Internet forum to post
| completely unfactual claims on that forum, under the specious
| guise of "free speech". Or when "reputable" "news" outlets get
| to use forum posts as sources for their breaking news (they
| already do). Imagine how this might revise societal norms also
| around specious, unfactual claims about racial groups or other
| segments of the population, to the point where instances of
| "hate speech" are adjudicated only in the court of public
| opinion (on a private platform no less, ha, ha).
|
| The best outcome for society is for people to stop blindly
| trusting, or at least be much more skeptical of, what they read
| on the Internet. This is probably unlikely to happen.
| acdha wrote:
| One thing to remember here is that Twitter is
| disproportionately popular with journalists and other media
| figures. The idea of major changes where they spend a lot of
| time is going to cause concern, much as HN would freak out over
| major changes at GitHub.
| millzlane wrote:
| They both corrected the articles after 3 hours. Gotta give
| credit where credit is due. But it shouldn't scare you that
| peoples lies are taken at face value. We see it everyday. Hell
| some politicians are lying right your face.
| Alupis wrote:
| Journalists are supposed to have more credibility than your
| friend's gossip though...
|
| While retracting and/or correcting the articles is a step
| towards journalistic integrity, it should be very troubling
| these articles were published in the first place.
|
| After all, how many people bother to go back and review past
| articles just on the off chance some piece of information was
| corrected? None...
| yeuxardents wrote:
| Honestly it troubles me that anyone believes 'journalists'
| from any of the major corporations have _any_ credibility,
| even going back to the 1990s with censorship of stories
| have been rife within the corporate 'journalism' industry.
| There are very few journalists that deserve real
| credibility.
| Alupis wrote:
| Journalists should not be afforded legal protections for
| publishing un-verified, demonstrably false information.
|
| We need a system where it's dangerous to not thoroughly
| vet your story before throwing it over the fence.
|
| Currently, they just say "oops" and move on like it never
| happened... but the damages caused to the public and it's
| discourse are permanent. The past decade has shown us
| that much at a minimum.
|
| Years from now folks will still howl about Musk marching
| loyal twitter employees out the front door with boxes
| full of their belongings... despite it being completely
| untrue. Heck, there are still folks that feverishly
| assert the "OK" sign is racist...
| nradov wrote:
| Journalists don't have any special protection under US
| federal law for publishing false information. Anyone can
| sue them for libel. Although it's difficult for
| plaintiffs to win such cases, regardless of whether the
| defendant is a journalist or anyone else.
| Alupis wrote:
| It does not need to be libel to be permanently damaging
| to the public.
|
| The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great
| example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by
| the reporting... but the entire story was made up and
| never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly
| is a symbol of "white power".
|
| Libel is also notoriously difficult to establish grounds
| for, and be successful with a lawsuit. Intent is
| difficult to prove - yet I would assert a journalist that
| does not thoroughly vet their story before publishing has
| a malicious intent, even if it was indirect.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great
| example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by
| the reporting... but the entire story was made up and
| never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly
| is a symbol of "white power"._
|
| This is strange - the OK symbol was definitely co-opted
| by white nationalists; it started as a "media troll",
| then people started to do it non-ironically. It served
| it's purpose and to say it was "never true" is at the
| very least controversial. I had personally seen it spread
| on /pol/ months before it got any mainstream coverage.
|
| While I believe the story may have been overblown, I
| think it stands it would be very difficult to sue a
| journalist that this was libel or even untrue. At the
| very least the memes had to have started from _somewhere_
| and that posing with the ok symbol wasn 't a particularly
| popular thing to do until after the memes were created.
| drekipus wrote:
| I think half the population has already long-ago lost trust
| in media and journalists, and now the other half is
| catching up.
| trendroid wrote:
| For some reason many of these people that lose trust in
| traditional media immediately start trusting "independent
| media" on YouTube that happens to agrees with their views
| or ways of seeing the world.
| bhaney wrote:
| > They both corrected the articles after 3 hours
|
| Because they got caught. How long would those articles have
| remained up if nobody else had done the journalists'
| investigation jobs for them and then reported the incorrect
| story? Would the journalists who "broke" the story ever have
| bothered to verify it themselves? Would they have issued a
| correction at all if it didn't quickly become public
| knowledge that the story was fake?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| People still think that police were murdered by the
| protesters on Jan 6 two years after being told that every
| police officer who died on that day died from causes that had
| nothing to do with the protestors and everything to do with
| going up a flight of stairs under the influence of donuts.
|
| It's not good enough to print a retraction which no one sees
| and pretend it's solved the problem of spreading lies.
| yarg wrote:
| I don't see why anyone would bother to target Musk with a false
| flag attack; he's been doing a fine job of shitting the bed all
| by himself.
|
| Let it play out.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| These are the comedians we are looking for
| whateveracct wrote:
| there's something truly fun about people joking around in society
| sharksauce wrote:
| Ligma/Johnson.
|
| And they were taken seriously by the assembled press.
| all2 wrote:
| Ligma? As in that age-old "ligma balls" joke? Did no one catch
| that?
| Alupis wrote:
| I suspect confirmation bias, and a desperate desire for these
| events to be true (the Musk takeover of Twitter _must_ be
| bad) led to overlooking an obvious prank seemingly designed
| to invoke this very reaction from the media.
|
| Hook, line and sinker.
|
| However, the real damage is done. How many people saw the
| headlines and now will forever assume this event actually
| transpired?
| thomond wrote:
| Well Musk also said he'll layoff 75% of staff so it
| wouldn't be too surprising that he'd layoff staff. He's
| backtracked on that but he's still laying off staff.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2022-10-28 23:01 UTC)