Complete nonsense, this argument will hold up just as badly as it would've held up before.
Also, this has potentially far reaching implications not just for comments on reddit, but any comment made on any forum on the internet. Without a way of proving a comment has not been tampered with, how can what you write online be used against you in the court of law?
However, after looking at the Vigilant Citizen article on it, it seems like the ultimate example of false persuasion. It is super bizarre and intriguing, but obviously false.
I still don't understand why a "kid-friendly" place is posting photos on their Instagram with people engaged in sex acts on top of slices of pizza. Not to mention the references to crude sex acts, occult rituals and (objectively) creepy photos of kids.
This is --- not exaggerating --- the most batshit thread I have ever seen on HN. And I seen some shit.
I would be more surprised if there wasn't a pedophile ring in DC. But I don't think that case will be blown open by Podesta's emails and squiggles on pizza shop walls and a moon and star which is apparently Baphomet?
Every online interaction that's ever been used in the history of the internet is malleable. There is crypto technology to prevent this, but it isn't being used.
We still try people just fine, based on trust and belief. You can check to see if something's been altered.
Why are people pretending this is new or a big deal? Of course online forums aren't reliable. Of course they are owned by the administrators and can be modified at will. Did an administrator do it to mess with a bunch of screaming blubbering nasty and horrible trolls calling him a pedophile, and institute a silly find/replace rule as a kind of petty revenge? Yeah. Was it childish? Sure. But seriously, who cares? Who really believes that reddit is serious business? When online forums take your swear word and replace it with symbols do you throw a hissy fit about "freedom of speech"?
While I "get" the Maria Abramovic "Spirit Cooking" stuff qua art, it pretty clearly also shows art as "high-class trash". When people see Abramovic's art, then see pictures of her with all kinds of elites and celebrities, they're right to see the culture as decadent. But then again bourgeois decadence isn't anything new...
That's not my read. I think the art is key, but I think the majority involved genuinely believe they have discovered evidence of pedophilia, and consider the art a strong part of the evidence. Consider how the imagery in the Heavy Breathing videos would be received by the authors and target audience of this: http://truediscipleship.com/ten-scriptural-reasons-why-the-r....
One of the discussions that surprised me was genuine concern over a picture showing someone next to a cardboard cutout of the Pope. My guess is that most of the participants don't attend a lot of parties that display potentially blasphemous portraits of religious figures, and tend to make assumptions about the other amoral practices of those who do.
I think this sarcasm is misplaced given the number of scandals surrounding trust in police and the evidence they put forward.
For example, the mishandling or tampering of evidence in crimina labs:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/forensic-techniqu...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/16/sjc-hear-argume...
http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2016/03/02/new-jersey-lab-...
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/csi-is-a...
And of course there's fabricated police reports and officers lying under oath - http://www.salon.com/2016/01/06/perjury_usa_rampant_police_l...
There's also the tons of Brady violations which are lies by omission - http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/epidemic_of_brady_vio...
A lot of these situations have the same parallel of trust - we trust prosecutors to produce all exculpatory evidence, because it is very difficult to determine that they haven't(since the defense doesn't have access to the evidence like prosecutors do). We trust labs to not tamper with the evidence, because the defense does not have the resources to challenge every lab analysis. We trust police officers to not lie under oath, because they are often the sole "untainted" witness of a crime, especially in controversial police shooting cases. When that trust is broken, it is difficult to rein in the backlash - there is no way to know just how often it was broken in the past without us knowing.
The pizza-man is the 49 most influential person in D.C ? More children disappear in the US than people dying from cancer ?
This is very suspicious (considering all the high-profile cases of child-abduction coming out). NyT disappoints again with its quasi-religion.
The New York Times is only going to magnify this effect. The skeptical argument has to acknowledge the inappropriateness of some of the pizza shop's Instagram posts.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:dang%20shillage&sort=by...
There's also no way to make such an argument civilly, and civility is a basic requirement for commenting on HN.
Making arguments on HN is trickier than making them on Reddit, and you may find it's not worth the energy. There's nothing wrong with keeping your discussions there.