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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

The very last line of your story is why the “Market for Lemons” paper (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons) remains so powerful.

If fraudsters cannot be found or punished, it is logical to assume that everyone in the field is a fraud.

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This sort of thing can be applied to other things as well. When there's a prestige or financial incentive, one can never be sure of the veracity. See literally all mainstream media.

Everything is underwritten - the writing, if you zoom in, says "our advertisers approve this segment"

So how then, can one know that they're getting actual facts or good reporting?

Find the blockheads. (From Samuel Johnson's "no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money".

What is non-mainstream?

The problem is that people (correctly) identify problems in mainstream media, then immediately imprint on a youtuber, talk radio host, or literal enemy propagandist who they decide has the actual truth.

Non mainstream are they guys who are accidentally being directly paid by Russia...

sorry for the late reply. This right here is non-mainstream. this site. I don't have any recommendations for, you know, other sources of information. I think it behooves us all to consider who underwrote the segments of news we're ingesting. By all means, listen to all the news you like. An easy question is "what stories am i not hearing because <advertiser> doesn't like that story?"

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