Hacker News Reader

Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

Give me a good example, and I'll give you an example in that instance where you're wrong. If sites are not currently contaminated by fake and staged content, I guarantee you they soon will be.

News sources previously reporting on and praising crypto companies and coins that have now been exposed as scams (now gone bankrupt) is a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.

Many influencers pushed crypto heavily in the past years, leading to huge money losses for people who follow them. There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.

View on HN

> Give me a good example

I already gave you one: this very site.

> a troubling sign that even journalism is relying on likes for reputation more than properly checking sources.

So-called journalism has been in that mode for decades, if not centuries. If anything, the Internet makes it harder for them to keep it up, because there are so many more ways for their practices to actually be exposed so people can see them. That might make it seem like journalists do more of that kind of thing than they used to, but it doesn't; it just means that they get caught at it a lot more than they used to.

> There has still never been proper public account for how this social media content cycle mentally manipulates people regularly.

Social media can only mentally manipulate you if you're naive enough to (a) use it, and (b) believe what you see on it. No amount of "public account" is going to fix that problem.

> I already gave you one: this very site.

Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing, and has been from the very beginning. The whole point is to push Y Combinator the angel investment company.

> Hacker News is almost entirely influencer marketing

Really? That's what this discussion is? Or, for that matter, every discussion I have participated in in the 10 years or so I have been posting on HN? Are we both posting on the same site?

I get that the existence of HN gives publicity to YC, and that every so often pg or sama posts a new essay and those always make it to the front page. But to call the site itself "almost entirely influencer marketing" seems to me to be, to say the least, highly inaccurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com