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Techmeme summary: Justin McCurry / The Guardian: YouTube star Logan Paul sparked outrage by posting a now-removed video of an alleged suicide victim in a Japanese forest

Could those who downvote this comment please explain why you did so? I try to provide extra context for those who come across this submission, which I get from Techmeme. (I will admit that this particular summary adds very little arguably).

You did this on 2 articles in a row that I've read. Looks like Techmeme spam.
Yeah, I submitted this article, which was linked in Techmeme. Techmeme doesn't write their own articles, they just have a feed, and they just add a one-line summary when the title is brief and/or misleading: have look https://techmeme.com/river .
Two articles in a row? Go look at the comment history, it's all this account does.
Do you know what a lot of readers here don't do? Read the article. Do you know what a lot of readers do do? They downvote an article without reading it. A summary helps with both. Moreover, some of those comments are actually upvoted because the post's original or edited title doesn't provide enough context.

Given that the people operating this site are busy, I think my approach is a decent middle ground. If you look at my comment history further, I do make comments now and then when I have something I think is interesting to add.

Edit: How about explaining the downvote here? I clearly explained my reasoning, and my approach.

The downvotes are people asking you to stop doing it.
You cannot downvote articles on HN, as far as I'm informed.
You can flag if you have a high enough karma rating I believe.
Saying things along the lines of "Did you even read the article?" is quite literally listed as what not to do if you want to participate in HN discussion among other things :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12666454#12667459

> It's important for HN to keep its distance from tldr culture. Longer articles are ok, even if many of us won't read them. It's true of any post that most people won't read it.

> Snap summaries make for reflexive reactions. That's the shallow kind of discussion we're hoping to avoid here. What we want is reflection, which is slower, takes more energy, and leads to more considered exchanges.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11607155

(turn on showdead, and read the parent comment, but also this thread).

I don't want to open the link but I presume he went to the forests around Mt Fuji (since sibling poster writes that he went to a forest).

That place is very famous as a suicide spot and it appears in many works of fiction in this context. The other famous spot is Tojimbo, a seaside cliff which also appears in many movies / TV shows.

You are correct: the article states that the forest is Aokigahara forest.
Youtube seems more and more to be turning into a kind of wasteland of unmoderated, self-published content. Apparently, and sadly, that's where the money is.
Every time an event such as the above occurs, I'm reminded of the following excerpt from a Jerry Seinfeld interview

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“The less the better,” Seinfeld said in reference to user-generated content. “I don’t want to see this crap. We have a giant garbage can called YouTube for user-generated content.

http://bgr.com/2015/04/16/jerry-seinfeld-youtube-giant-garba...

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I dunno, I mostly disagreed at first but seeing the front page and constant tweaks, I gotta wonder if it's worth it. We can easily do better than YouTube but it caters to the lowest common denominator so of course it'll be the most popular :/

> Youtube seems more and more to be turning into a kind of wasteland of unmoderated, self-published content.

YouTube has always been a mix of that and piracy, though if anything, professionally-produced, non-pirated content has been increasing over the years.

> Youtube seems more and more to be turning into a kind of wasteland of unmoderated, self-published content. Apparently, and sadly, that's where the money is.

We must be living in different universes. In my universe, Youtube has spent the last year or so purging content that isn't advertiser friendly and auto-moderating even family-friendly and innoffensive channels into oblivion. They let a lot slip by them due to their size and dint of their AI being stupid to the point of possible malice, but I'd rather have a wasteland of free expression than a well-manicured garden of corporate and MCN-driven garbage.

Haha, good one. "Why can't YouTube be filled with all the same stale, phony, mass-produced, corporate crap put out by Hollywood and network television? How could unmoderated self-published content from real people putting out honest uncensored viewpoints be more popular when it's allowed to compete on an equal playing field?"