[renewiltord]

Users here will believe any conspiracy theory so that's not really a high bar. I'm serious. There was that massive 2000 comment thread the other month about some big company doing something evil and then it turned out they didn't do it.

Everyone who was right and informed in the original thread was greyed out by users here.

[PragmaticPulp]

It's not conspiracy theories, it's any story about a big company doing something bad or evil. Or any story that confirms the worldview of the most active HN commenters.

Any story about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Uber, or PayPal doing anything negative tends to bring out the most cynical commenters. HN is usually a skeptical crowd, right until a story arrives that fits their worldview.

The false story about Apple's refund policy that garnered 2000 upvotes before being retracted is a prime example ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584 ). When it was in the #1 spot, several people tried to correct the story in the comments. They were heavily downvoted. For some reason, the majority wanted to believe a random Twitter comment over actual iOS app developers trying to correct the misinformation.

Likewise, stories about psychedelics being miracle cures tend to rocket up the front page despite deeply flawed studies (no control group, usually). Meanwhile any study showing negative effects from psychedelics or cannabis tends to get picked apart for for small sample sizes or the evergreen "correlation is not causation" no matter how good the study was.

The real problem is assuming that HN is somehow immune from the same problems as other social media platforms. HN is very much a social media platform.

[apostacy]

> It's not conspiracy theories, it's any story about a big company doing something bad or evil. Or any story that confirms the worldview of the most active HN commenters.

> Any story about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, Uber, or PayPal doing anything negative tends to bring out the most cynical commenters. HN is usually a skeptical crowd, right until a story arrives that fits their worldview.

It's these companies that are cynical, not my worldview!

Nearly every single allegation about these companies doing something sneaky, evil, greedy, and underhanded has turned out be completely true.

When Uber was doing grey-balling, it turned out to be true. When Uber had made a secret agreement with Apple to have their app take screenshots in the background, that was true. Just off of the top of my head I can think of so many preposterous sounding incidents that turned out to be 100% true.

I would assert that people were completely correct to just assume that Apple was doing something shady with the app store. I think it is kind of naive to give Apple the benefit of the doubt at this point.

[classified]

Absolutely. Being wrong in practise doesn’t matter at all as long as you’re right in principle.

[renewiltord]

Haha all too true. I say this as a user of psychedelics.

In any case, just for posterity, the actual event may well have happened, I'm just commenting on whether "HN believes it" has any impact on the truth of whether it happened or whether that company's reputation is shot.

[nrmitchi]

To be fair in that situation, despite the fact that it turned out that Apple didn't actually do the thing in question, it was explicitly in their developer agreement that they were entitled to.

Something is less of a "conspiracy theory" when there is explicit evidence written down in a contract that supports it.

[moralestapia]

It's not only a conspiracy theory. If you hear about the bully at school stealing someone's lunch, you would be inclined to believe it's true, even though you were not there at the time.

Plenty of abuse and mismanagement from these companies have affected a lot of people, to different degrees, and that sets a precedent over which we all subjectively evaluate their actions.

Just last month I had a Twitter account for a side gig banned for absolutely no reason and with zero explanation. I am more inclined to believe the "rich kid from LA" story than the "hack"/"sim swapping" whatever nonsense. Why? Because I see it happening all the time, everywhere.

[ayewo]

For anyone who missed it, here’s the original thread that made the false claim on Twitter that Apple keeps it 30% cut when a customer requests a refund: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584

Here’s the follow up retraction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23995750

[JdeBP]

So not https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506303 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506764 , and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24523901 then.

[Aeolun]

Maybe that’s because 90% of the time it turns out the company did do it?

I’d be interested in knowing what thread that was though.

[jonas21]

It seems like most of the high-profile examples lately have either been false or misleading.

Just to check, I looked at all posts with over 1000 points in the past couple of months where a big tech company is accused of doing something "evil" to the little guy. They are:

--------

1. Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com (1656 points) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24506303

The OP accused GoDaddy of registering a domain for itself after the OP had added it to their cart. It turns out that many people were searching for the same search terms and someone else just happened to register it via GoDaddy on the same day.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24523901

--------

2. Google is apparently taking down all/most Fediverse apps from the Play Store (1313 points) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24304275

The OP implied that Google was banning all Fediverse apps with no recourse for the developers. But it turned out that Google was asking developers to block logins to a set of unmoderated instances that are known to be full of hate speech. Some developers refused, but it seems like most did not, and are doing just fine.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.keylesspal...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.juggler.sub...

--------

3. When a customer refunds your paid app, Apple refunds its 30% cut [edited] (1243 points) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584

The original title and tweet said that Apple keeps the 30% cut. The author turned out to be misinformed.

https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721

--------

[jhardy54]

> There was that massive 2000 comment thread the other month about some big company doing something evil and then it turned out they didn't do it.

Can you link to this? Not trying to be meta, I just don't believe random claims on the internet without any evidence.

[ayewo]

I just posted links as a sibling comment to yours although none of the links contain a 2000 comment thread.

[smt88]

My anecdata says that HN users are among the least likely on social media to believe conspiracy theories. They actually tend to err on the side of skepticism. It's very common to see someone say, "Yes, this could be malice, but it could also be incompetence."

I think this is partly because so many of us have worked in (or with) the targets of most conspiracy theories: government and large corporations.

[renewiltord]

I think HN users are convinced in their immunity to various things: propaganda, conspiracy theories, advertising. I also think HN users are very good at coming up with reasons for why this might be the case.