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by scotchio 2561 days ago
To be fair...

The front page of Hacker News is pretty much a Google hate hangoutfest -- so maybe cut some slack on this one...

I'm sure the NYT reporter was not acting malicious.

Maybe they will even issue correction or update in time. No one would argue that speed of social media and corrections is not ideal, but I would bet they are trying to be accurate and transparent with their readers.

I just seriously doubt the reporter and editors who published this info did so solely with the goal to attack Google by "promoting" a questionable study.

Wrong/Lazy/Dumb != Evil

4 comments

No, but they published something that confirmed their priors, and didn't due their due diligence on it because it confirmed their priors and was the kind of story they wanted to write. They have to be held to account for that.
Agree. Just don't see it as malicious
Perhaps not malicious, but publishing a more or less BS story to fit a narrative is not far from malicious on the spectrum of intention (especially if the narrative is in the NYT's business interests).
Malice is completely unnecessary for the world to go to shit. Very few people are actually malicious in any meaningful sense of the term. Most bad things happen when generally good people cut corners.
I think you can assume "acting maliciously" was intended to be a catch-all for something more general, like maybe "acting in a grossly disrespectable manner", regardless of whether the intentions were actually malice or not.
The old question is if it makes any difference if you're dumb on purpose or just inherintly ignorant. It makes little difference at the end of the day, it's still your fault to not take steps to correct your ignorance and it doesn't matter for the effects of your actions.
It's also important to remember that social media and tech firms like Google are a direct threat to their long term survival. YouTubers offering low budget news is eating them alive.
So you’re degrading the charge from maliciousness to incompetence?
>The front page of Hacker News is pretty much a Google hate hangoutfest -- so maybe cut some slack on this one...

HN is not a newspaper. HN is an opinion-fest. NYT purports to be the "Newspaper of Record." Requiring NYT to publish corrections to factual error is utterly reasonable and has nothing to do with HN or Google in any way.

Oh, and Google are evil. There are more tech-literate people around on HN to have noticed and understood this. Google have become utterly hideous.

The NYT should publish corrections for factually incorrect reporting because it is what separates them from fraudulent pretend news sources such as Fox and CNBC which are simply garbage to be treated as lies until proven otherwise by anyone sane of any political persuasion. The NYT wants to be better than that.

HN shouldn’t be held to the same standard as NYT for journalistic integrity
Agree and wasn't really saying that
Unpopular opinion: Bashing google is the new cool and easy way to victimization.