'Fake news' stopped being newsworthy to anyone in tech probably many years ago. I find the following HN guideline to apply well to this:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
To phrase it a different way, I'd say the topic is about information integrity, which would not be off topic.
It just so happens to involve some politics - an area rife with potential case studies on this. I think articles like this influence the reader to question how information is obtained and validated, even the larger philosophical questions regarding the definition and identification of truth. Since all technology deals with some form of information, thinking about this subject can be beneficial to understanding their use, particularly if they involve human interaction or decision making, such as ML.
Yep, that and it's all about money, which means ratings in this case. You get ratings by giving people what they want to see and supporting their existing views to avoid creating cognitive dissonance. The more passionate the content, the more validation the user receives. That's why the majority of the programs on news channels are not actually news, but rather lively opinion pieces or talk shows.
Your opinion of HN and what deserves to be on here is what I take issue with. It felt initially like you argued that because Fox News was the subject of the link, it would start a shitstorm of garbage talk and therefore shouldn’t be on here. While it may start a shitstorm of garbage talk (it totally would, no doubt), I think this particular headline is interesting because it’s a move made by Wikipedia, one of the most widely used references on the internet.
I would argue that despite the shitstorm, we should still be allowed to talk about it on HN because it’s relevant to policy makers at various internet companies. We can see that Wikipedia did something they haven’t done before, and it might influence how others move forward. i.e. “If the good folks at Wikipedia doubt Fox News’ credibility as an information resource, maybe we should too? Let’s talk about that.“
It wouldn’t matter to me if it was Fox or CNN or MSNBC or what have you. What matters (to me) is that it’s Wikipedia, and I would love to know what people smarter than me think about this situation.
But how can I get their opinion if posts about this get flagged to oblivion?
Edit:
For example, if I could poll what information overlords at companies thought, here’s what I’d ask:
- At what point does a particular information resource deserve to have its reliability status revoked?
- What is a good summary of some of the internal discussions happening at Wikipedia regarding this problem and it’s surging importance?
- How do you, as a company, respond when the mob attacks with something along the lines of “Leftist/Rightist bad people at company XYZ told me my favorite news entertainment network wasn’t truthful, let’s cancel them!” (Personally, my answer to this one would be: nothing.)
- What do sociologists say about this, given historical context of misinformation and the cults that grow to protect it? How do we bridge existing knowledge about combating bad info with the instant-communication age we are in?
Honestly, I could go on forever. Might not be the kinds of discussions you personally want to see on HN, but as a long time lurker, these are exactly the kinds of discussions I’m looking for, and it’s disheartening to see that other people think they shouldn’t happen just because it ruffles feathers.
Why not write a blog post about this yourself? It would be well received over here. It is obvious this is a topic you care about and have thought about through different angles, which is the type of thing HN folks love.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. [...] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.