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by schiffern 356 days ago
Before you claim there's nothing happening and The Guardian didn't mean it, check social media comments elsewhere to see how many people misinterpret this news item into "DOGE/Elon did it."

I would bet you, but that money's too easy. :)

Again, this exact conversation is the genius behind 'lying _without lying_.' You can always claim in high-literacy communities like HN that no, nobody would ever be silly enough misread it like that, all while watching your misinformation spread across the low-literacy communities like facebook and reddit.

The Guardian et al has done this too often for plausible deniability. Even I can pick up on the pattern, and that's without access to the big boy's social media engagement and sentiment tracking tools.

2 comments

>check social media comments elsewhere to see how many people misinterpret this news item into "DOGE/Elon did it."

No, post news sources and researched articles. Your vibes about the Internet are irrelevant

>[How real people actually interpret the article] is irrelevant

I don't think that's true, and I don't think The Guardian is so naive and/or innocent.

I love how people are simultaneously replying to my comment with "of course The Guardian didn't mean to say X, you're lying" and "of course X is true." Really proves my point, thanks.

> high-literacy communities like HN [..] low-literacy communities like facebook and reddit

I see this sentiment a lot lately, and I see your HN join date is similar to mine. HN is more mainstream than it used to be, for better or worse. There is a lot more overlap between commenters on HN and Reddit nowadays, especially in certain categories of subreddits.

Personally, I lament the web being a high-literacy community.