The edits are so dumb my conspiracy theorist brain wonders if they are doing this to pump sales. They are certainly getting headlines. Headlines mean money!
I sometimes look at left-leaning websites (other than HN) to get a broader view of the world, and the support for the bowdlerization of Dahl seems near 100 percent among our more righteous, liberal, blue-stockinged thinkers.
This is why I reflexively flag any articles I see from it on the front page. I tried taking the site seriously a few times and worked through all the assertions, but I came to the same conclusion you did. They have a certain way, and that way makes them not worth engaging with.
The way is too consistent to not have someone behind it carefully selecting writers and submissions. I think the writers think they're saying worthwhile things, and I think whoever's editing them is exploiting their good intentions.
It reminds me of how Gawker would exploit well-intentioned but inexperienced writers to drive ad impressions with poorly-argued positions on social justice. The writers didn't know they were dupes, and some of the editors probably didn't, but someone up the chain knew what was going on.
The real goal of this post is clear about half way down the page, de-funding disinformation from right-wing sources. My guess is that the group of website that they call out as problematic are actually great for getting ad viewers (older, non-tech savvy, gullible) that don't click skip. I would be less suspicious that this was a submarine article if the sites called out were roughly balanced left-right (by US standards, which are a bit different ;-).
Lately I've seen HN people linking to sites like Newswars (which is infowars rebranded, it seems) and whatnot.
> It's not in the same OMGWTF category as newsmax or OAN despite what some HN people will tell you.
Drudge has a history chock full of conspiracy theories, retractions and dirty-deletes. All of which center around attacking liberal politicians or causes to "own" or "gotcha" them.
Seriously, read the list that includes Obama birther conspiracies, Las Vegas shooting conspiracies, "immigrants setting wildfires" conspiracies (from Breitbart), and perpetuating hoaxes like "black man attacked McCain campaign staffer!": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drudge_Report
Articles like these make me wish that HN had a black-list of sites that only publish partisan politicized crap journalism (regardless of actual brand of ideology preached).
If they make a conscious decision to push one-way propaganda, they should not be linked to in polite company.
The site probably doesn't control the ads that appear, and such an ideological slant doesn't look evident looking at the titles of their other articles.
Thanks for this - that's exactly what I was hoping to find when I clicked into this.
While I didn't find a whole lot of the content I had intended, I think what I did find was interesting, none-the-less. The general opinion here seems to be "news sources suck[0]", especially if it has anything to do with politics/politics-masquerading-as-economics[1]. And community-driven sites tend to become dominated by the fringe of one political persuasion or another. HN does a good job, here, though a look at "new" yields a few headlines who's content can be summarized as "Your politician iz teh satan11", they rarely bubble up, and the ones that do -- even the ones that (headline-wise) I'd probably never click through in another context, I end up appreciating more often than not.
[1] Replace "economics" with anything else. HN's policy against political-related posts aside, I think this community tends toward skepticism and a lot of political is facts/truth twisted to fit an agenda/bias (intentional or not).
I sometimes look at left-leaning websites (other than HN) to get a broader view of the world, and the support for the bowdlerization of Dahl seems near 100 percent among our more righteous, liberal, blue-stockinged thinkers.
Example: https://www.metafilter.com/198336/Dont-gobblefunk-around-wit...
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