HN Explorer

Yesterday HN had 14 posts in 2 hours about Russia attacking Poland

6 points by unpopularopp ↗ HN
https://files.catbox.moe/w4aax3.png

Today there are 0 posts that it was not intentional and very likely caused by Ukrainian air defence

https://nitter.net/BBCBreaking/status/1592842861535526913

https://nitter.net/cnnbrk/status/1592831547228524544

HN is manipulated at its finest

18 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 54.6 ms ] thread
syzarian
It’s reasonable that people are more interested in articles about an incident that could mean a war between Russia and NATO is imminent than they are about articles that such a war is not about to happen.
lordfrito
This exactly... the moment I knew the missile wasn't from Russia, this became a non issue to me and I lost interest
h2odragon
7 min before your post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217 " Poland says missile that hit it was Ukrainian stray"

and there's others. Your counts are in error. Re-evaluate the data and see if you change your mind?

unpopularopp
Your link has 4 points. My RSS is filtering to minimum 20, the post you linked never reach the front page, not even the 2nd
melling
One story in much bigger than the other. People are posting the second story though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622330

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33622217

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33619587

So, zero posts is not correct

unpopularopp
4 and 5 points stories. They can't even make the 2nd page let alone the front.
melling
Are you moving the goal posts? Now the complaint isn’t that stories are posted but that people don’t upvote them.

I’ve already explained that one story is much more important than the other. One can cause an escalation in the war, the other will be viewed as a mistake.

blub
On one hand there’s a story which hints at an escalation that may lead to a world war which is understandably very interesting.

But on the other hand the story which would calm the potentially panicking population is not important? This is public announcement 101 and there should be huge interest in knowing that the world is not heading into a war (for now).

I personally think that the people in the previous thread are too embarrassed to post any more after they speculated and were proven wrong.

Normille 

   >HN is manipulated at its finest
It's patently obvious to anyone who is honest with themselves that all coverage of the Ukraine conflict is biased to one side or the other. And here in the west, it's biased towards the pro-Ukraine narrative.

I read a wide variety of news sites, ranging from The Guardian to Russia Today to China Daily [and several more in between] and it's striking, not how bias is shown in what's reported. But also in what's not reported or is glossed over. A couple of examples:

1: The alleged discovery of US biolabs in Ukraine was pretty much ignored by the western media but got lots of coverage on RT and was also mentioned on CD.

2: When Ukraine bombed the Crimean bridge, Russia Today led with the fact 3 civilians were killed and 2 were missing presumed dead. The fact that civiliams were killed was not mentioned at all on the BBC etc.

Conversely, when Russia started the bombardment of Ukraine's infrastructure, RT led with how the bombardments had taken out 'weapons storage' and 'communications' and didn't mention any civilian casualties. While the BBC etc. led with the numbers of civilians killed.

3: RT has been claiming that there have been videos posted on social media of Ukrainian militia flying fascist banners and giving nazi salutes. Again this has not been mentioned at all in the western press --presumably as it gives some credence to Russia's justification that it invaded Ukraine to counter Fascism and undermines the western narrative that 'Russia = Wholly Evil. Ukraine = Wholly Good'

I said at the top, I consume news from a wide range of sources, of all political hues. Interestingly, since the Ukraine conflict started, I've been finding that most of the time Russia Today is unreachable from my browser, or through VPN connected via anywhere in western Europe or the US. Yet, strangley enough I have no problem connecting to the site though VPN via Asian countries.

Odd that, isn't it? It's almost like censorship. Except, as we all know, only nasty oppressive countries like Iran, China, Russia etc. try to block their people's access to foreign news sources. It must be just coincidence.

syzarian
It seems unreasonable to me to call Ukraine fascist when it has a democratically elected government and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was a consequence of Ukrainians getting rid of a highly corrupt, dubiously elected leader. In Russia “nazism” is synonymous with “anti-Russia”. From my perspective it’s clear that Russia is the aggressor and it’s actions are morally unjustifiable.

All societies engage in censorship in one form or other.

Normille 

   >It seems unreasonable to me to call Ukraine fascist when it has a democratically elected government and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 was a consequence of Ukrainians getting rid of a highly corrupt, dubiously elected leader...
There's another classic example. In the west, the 'Maidan Revolution' is reported as a popular uprising to overthrow a corrupt government. On the Russian side the same events are reported as a revolution fomented by the CIA to overthrow a democratically elected government, because it was pro-Moscow, and replace it with a pro-western one.

Is either version the absolute truth? Is either version a total lie? I'd say, as with most such tales, the truth is found somewhere in the middle.

You've even done it yourself. You said Ukraine has a "democratically elected government" which replaced a "highly corrupt, dubiously elected leader". But the previous government was democratically elected too. And was overthrown by a revolution [popular or otherwise]. >All societies engage in censorship in one form or other.

Of course. But only the west seems to maintain this pretense that "we" don't and "they" do.

EDIT: Oddly enough, I just closed this edit window to see a submission from the Guardian:

"China circles El Salvador’s economy as country edges toward crypto plunge" [0]

with 'circling' giving a nice predatory image of a shark waiting to move in for the kill on a hapless victim. I wonder how that headline would have been worded if the US or EU was in talks to buy up El Salvador's debt instead of China?

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/15/china-el-...

syzarian
Of course there was American support for Maidan but that in no way undermines the legitimacy of the current government. Clearly, as we see from the peoples’ reaction to Russian occupation of territory after the February invasion that Russia’s actions are not popular amongst Ukrainians. Since Ukrainians are the ones being occupied their wishes on this matter take moral precedence.

The fact is that Russia has not been stably non expansionist for centuries. Russia’s actions in Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, etc. show that whenever a government gains power that they don’t or where people rise up against a government they do like they react with military intervention. And in Ukraine in particular their actions are not supported by the people being affected. They are the morally reprehensible party. In the same way American overthrow of popularly elected governments in the past have been morally reprehensible.

Normille 

  >but that in no way undermines the legitimacy of the current government...
I never said it did. But you [deliberately?] failed to mention that the previous pro-Russian government was also democratically elected. Pointing out instead that it was 'corrupt'. Well, a government can be corrupt and still democratically elected. And [cf. several previous UK elections] a government can also be 'democratically elected' with a majority of the people voting against it.

  >Clearly, as we see from the peoples’ reaction to Russian occupation...
Yes. It's amazing how, in the western press everyone in Ukraine is opposed to the invasion. Yet on sites like Russia today, we're given the impression that in those territories in the east annexed by Russia, huge numbers of the population are rejoicing at being 'liberated'.

You're 'clearly' seeing only one side of the story. I'm not saying that what's being reported on the Russian side isn't full of lies, half-truths and propaganda. But I'm cynical [or realist] enough not to take what we're being fed by our side at face value either.

As the man said "The first casualty of war is truth"

syzarian
You are being disingenuous with your quotes of what I wrote. I specifically referenced lack of support for Russian occupation in the territories conquered after February. I did not reference territories conquered in 2014.

Morally speaking there is only one view. Ukraine posed no threat to Russia and it was invaded. There is no other way to look at it. Russian forces have killed, raped, and tortured hundreds times more civilians than Ukrainian soldiers. There is no moral equivalence between the sides of this conflict. Russia has invaded or militarily intervened numerous times against its neighbors since for the 400 years. It is Europe’s last overtly colonial empire and it deserves nothing less than condemnation and ire.

There were no meaningful demonstrations in support of Russian occupation on territories conquered post February 2022.

I mentioned the current government of Ukraine being democratically elected to point out the absurdity of the Russian claim of it being fascist. Ukraine hasn’t been a fascist ever, as far as I know. So bringing up that Ukraine had a democratically elected government prior to 2014 isn’t relevant to this point.

heneryville
HN is a news aggregation site, which means what people find interesting gets posted, not every fact. An escalation of the war is a whole lot more interesting than the discovery that this is a non-event.

Western media has correctly and widely covered the correction, so this is not evidence of (or against) western media bias.

blub
The confirmation that NATO will definitely not go to war with Russia is not as boring and uninteresting as you’re making it to be.

After the original news broke out the “correction” on the source of the missile was the most important piece of information since the war began.

Western media has fallen on its face yet again and then cooly got up and kept walking as if nothing happened. Except many people saw it with their own eyes.

dang
You're right that later corrections never do as well as misleading sensational stories, but that has nothing to do with this particular topic, nor with HN. Mass psychology and media all work that way, and complaints about it long predate the internet. Here's Jonathan Swift in 1710:

It often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect. - https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

All you observed was the routine dynamics of the forum. Sensational media stories get posted all the time to HN, and get upvoted all the time. Most are off topic and get flagged by users and/or downweighted by mods.

As far as I know there was only one moderator intervention of any kind, and it went the opposite way to what you thought you perceived: we downweighted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33613278 when it was on the front page, because it wasn't in English (about that see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We would probably have downweighted it even if it had been in English, since a rushed story about a sensational event on a sensational topic makes for bad HN threads—there simply isn't enough reliable information. We try to wait for more information to emerge in such cases, as would anyone who had reflected a little on media reporting.

As far as I can tell from a quick scan of the data, that was the only submission mentioning Russia, Poland, or missiles that made HN's front page yesterday.

If you consider how easy it is to convince yourself that you're perceiving "manipulation" and to post accusations about it, and then compare that to how much harder it is to write an accurate and informative response, you might notice how your post is itself an example of the thing you're complaining about.