Announcing your bare opinion at someone, then dismissing their post as an opinion, is a weird way to try to convince the HN community that these unethical actions were ethical.
It's also a weird way to try to get a seat at the table in one of the communities that was deciding between comms platforms.
While I understand the purpose of HN is to have meaningful and in-depth discussion, and simply stating an opinion doesn't really contribute much, this is something which is so obviously bad and gives such a visceral reaction that the negative opinion outshines anything else I could say about it.
There's a lot going on in these comments, but it's worth noticing the breach of trust which occurred. Person 2 is trying to uphold the tradition of trust and charity which is a large part of what makes HN as successful as it is. Person 1 can "see the pixels" and wants to call it out. Person 1 was correct and Person 2 was charitable but wrong, and of course that counts for something. But if you look beyond that fact for a moment, I think there was real damage to the community of trust within HN. The OP acted irresponsibly by posting the article at all. That he used the trust of the HN users to prove his point doesn't matter at all.
> I had a lot of fun doing this experiment. Some people will probably get mad at me for tricking people, but whatever.
OP even recognizes the externalized cost of their actions, "but whatever", as they say. What they did by posting fake content to prove a point was wrong, betrayed everyone's trust, and was completely against the spirit here. And as a community we could say that we don't support this behavior. I think that's a good idea.
It is both a violation of HN guidelines and reason to assume that the person you are simply disagreeing with is an industry shill rather than simply someone you disagree with.
it's just a way to wishy-washy other people opinions because they disagree with what they have to say. I personally don't like these kind of discussions in HN, most are personal opinions and rarely backed up by statistics or official sources.
It's a concise reduction to the absurd that doesn't leave room for conversation. It's a flat statement of "your wrong" that adds nothing to the conversation, with the subtext of "I'm too lazy to actually put together an argument with a claim and a few premises and a bit of explanation to flesh things out".
It's the opposite of constructive. It's combative and inflammatory. HN, unlike many other venues for discussion, is a halfway decent community precisely because such comments are in the minority and tend to be quickly downvoted.
I'm not supporting their views at all. You said someone's comment was garbage, I asked whether that was a constructive contribution and you assume from that that I'm taking sides here, which is an example of what I'm calling "taking it personally".
Civil and open dialogue on HN is important. We can disagree about things without using dismissive language of that kind.
> It might not be the biggest community, but it is influential, and many people bypass visiting blogs/sites and come directly here for their news.
So then what does this have to do with "questioning ethics in any kind of journalism"??
I am a commenter on HN and a redditor and am in no way related to the "clickbait media", so how are my contributions to this thread "explained through the lens of questionable media"?
The problem is the deflection. It started as a discussion about the actual situation, but apparently "everyone needs to be much more sceptical about what they read in the press and there motivations", and is now about...biased HN posts? I really have no idea.
If you were worried about that, you should have discussed the actual situation and addressed what you thought were misrepresentations, not going off on some tangent about media ethics.
If it's not a stretch, why mention it at all other than to muddy the waters by injecting additional politicization to the HN community? If it's worth mentioning in this case, it's worth backing up that it's substantially different from other posts on HN, which requires more than an opinion.
> you should feel ashamed for it. If anything you should feel shame
Trying to guilt-trip or shame people on HN for their views is absolutely against the HN guidelines[1] - "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation" "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive" "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument" and so on.
Given that HN contains the antithesis for every single argument that has occurred to mankind, I was especially curious to see if anyone would justify the behaviour and business ethics of Gamma, Hacking Team, etc. Lack of opinions seems weird indeed.
It's also a weird way to try to get a seat at the table in one of the communities that was deciding between comms platforms.
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