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Ask HN: How to promote the truth?

10 points by jerryji ↗ HN
The latest Twitter XSS (StalkDaily/Mikeyy) attack might be over (though the current fix from Twitter is still lame -- just try add some <> in your profile).

What concerns me more is the half-assed verdicts/advices/comments filling the various leading online media, which range from:

  * Don't visit StalkDaily.com, it will infect your Twitter/browser/computer. (TechCrunch, Marshable, etc)
  
  * How to clean your infected Twitter account? Change your Twitter password! (eHow, etc)

  * It only affects Windows. (TechCrunch comment)
In an age where online media care only about time-to-market more than anything else (kindly reminds me of the recent financial industry... but I digress), what can we do to promote the truth?

15 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 55.0 ms ] thread
pclark
i think the closest thing you can do is show all sides of a story and let the community make a collective decision.
ScottWhigham
Exactly what one would expect from the person who brings us http://www.simplyhappynews.com/ :)

Sorry - I'm not taking the piss - really, I'm not. When I read your comment, my first thought was, "How Mary Poppins!" I then clicked on your profile and saw "simplyhappynews.com" and laughed out loud at the coincidence.

zcrar70
I don't actually think that's an invalid comment, or particularly Mary Poppins for that matter - that's the premise behind 'crowdsourcing'.

The idea that truth will prevail in the end seems to be likely overall but, in the same way that markets can remain irrational longer than an investor remains solvent, we may not live to see the day a particular truth is accepted for what it is.

pclark
Heh. Observant :)

Simplyhappynews is actually an experiment for my full scale startup, Broadersheet. I'll write a blog post discussing news misinformation and how we can overcome it.

slater
maybe what's needed is a digg-style site that tracks headlines & the body of a news article, and rates the truth of said articles according to what the users vote.
pclark
social news sites are notorious for being crowd opinionated
slater
Well, that's not exactly what I meant.

What I mean is a site that ONLY cares about the truth of a linked news item, and has options that warn ppl of what the OP was talking about, eg. "This article is one-sided, see comments"

zitterbewegung
Put postings on hacker news saying that the online media is full if it? What you did here is probably the best.
domnit
If you figure out the answer to this, politicians, PR people, and journalists will be knocking down your door. Once misinformation is publicized, it is very hard to correct. This can only be assuaged by making the public, through education or experience, less naïve and more likely to seek out the truth.
anamax
> If you figure out the answer to this, politicians, PR people, and journalists will be knocking down your door.

Huh? Which of those groups have any interest in promoting truth?

Oh - I get it. We're talking about "the truth", aka misinformation, propaganda, etc,

TomOfTTB
I can tell you how to do it. I don't think it's that complex an answer. But first you have to understand the one caveat which is this: most people don’t want to hear the truth.

The current "Twitter Worm" story is a perfect example. The worm really doesn’t cause any damage. It doesn’t hurt anything. But you have all these terrifying claims coming out of the tech media.

Why?

Because people like a crisis. It gets their heart pumping a little faster and they vicariously make themselves a part of it by following the coverage. That’s why news agencies devote every moment they can during things like hurricanes. Because they know people will watch.

This exists in pretty much all things. Truth is complex and by its nature contains both sides of the story. While most people want to react to things as Good or Bad, Dangerous or Safe, and so on.

That said, promoting the truth to those who want to hear it is pretty simple. Just put up a web site, publish only when you know you’re being accurate, and wait. You’ll probably have to wait years for people to stumble upon your site but if you dedicate yourself to telling the truth and then do it consistently for a period of time you’ll eventually amass an audience.

Aeon
We can Collaborate. I have a platform I will open for you to promote the truth. Contact me at aeonpi.com
Sephr
It makes no sense that they double-escape < and >. They also replace every instance of < with > (wtf?)
nickfox
The best way to promote the truth is to always tell the truth yourself.
known
"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." --Oscar Wilde