Some people are still used to the Reddit rules where editorializing (changing titles) was banned.
Okay, fair point.
I still think poal should be above repeating the bs titles though. This is actually a pretty wild story, and I think the title should have been more like "Police raid suspected pot farm, turns out to just be bitcoin mining operation <sad trombone.wav>."
The original headline was carefully worded by some corrupt fucker so that a casual headline-jumper has another reinforcement that "bitcoin mining is illegal." I put that level of perception-manipulating up there with having multiracial couples crammed in to every advertisement. It is designed to chip away at the weak-minded npc's subconscious views of society, and I think should be pointed out when it happens.
Plus, it is literally junior high school level writing: "If the title is ambiguous, it needs re-worded" used to be shoved down every student's throat when we started writing reports or themes. Most critical thinkers know "Illegal" and "bitcoin" are both separate adjectives that describe the subject "mine." But as written, it is easily misinterpreted (I still maintain on purpose) that the adjective "illegal" points to the subject phrase "bitcoin mine." That subtle rearrangement of adjective/subject makes a huge difference in the reader's interpretation.
The loudmouth baiter saying "but is was an illegal bitcoin mine, because they were stealing electricity" would likely have a completely different argument if it were, say, a church that was stealing electricity for their nursery. "Huge illegal Christian nursery raided by police" would be "correct" by their logic, but obviously that kind of wording is simply wrong (assuming it was not an article from Iraq, but I digress.)
I had not considered the reddit "headline must not be altered" habit. But on here, I would think that we would want to be better than that.
I completely agree with everything you've said. The lügenpresse takes every opportunity they can to sway opinions to their side, including with outright fabrications. The fact they've used a misleading headline in this case is no surprise at all.
The problem is that there's no guides for posting for new users, not even a "don't post spam, headlines should be related to the content, have fun". The welcome guides have nearly everything else, but not posting and commenting guides.
That could be because those guidelines are up to each sub, but there's only a single tiny snippet on that fact: "Each sub community has their own set of themes, rules, moderators, etc. [...]". On top of that most subs don't even have rules posted outside of the base Poal rules.
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