$500 billion is roughly 25% of the entire GDP of all of sub-saharan Africa. It is more than the entire GDP of the countries mentioned here.
Of course it is bogus. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...
I must say I am quite surprised to see a poorly written propaganda hoax article make the frontpage of HN. It is linked to the general decline in quality of HN? Is it a voting ring? Or is it because the headline pulls all the right triggers in the minds of bay area tech people?
I see a lot of accounts created in the last couple hours posting in this thread, so it might well be a voting ring situation.
I looked at the data and it doesn't seem to be a voting ring, though it's hard to exclude that for certain. Also the new accounts posting in this thread seem to disagree with each other.
As far as I can tell, it is mostly that a lot of users thought the article was interesting. Presumably it wasn't obviously a hoax to them.
It's a year old, I tried searching a lot of the quotes it uses and they're bunk, even in French they're bunk, all linking back to this article and its reposts.
I mean the goddamn copyedit should have flagged everyone on this to begin with. Just looking at it I'm 90% sure I just bought a sham-wow. The article is linkbait copyediting 101.
Comments
$500 billion is roughly 25% of the entire GDP of all of sub-saharan Africa. It is more than the entire GDP of the countries mentioned here.
Of course it is bogus. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...
I must say I am quite surprised to see a poorly written propaganda hoax article make the frontpage of HN. It is linked to the general decline in quality of HN? Is it a voting ring? Or is it because the headline pulls all the right triggers in the minds of bay area tech people?
I see a lot of accounts created in the last couple hours posting in this thread, so it might well be a voting ring situation.
I looked at the data and it doesn't seem to be a voting ring, though it's hard to exclude that for certain. Also the new accounts posting in this thread seem to disagree with each other.
As far as I can tell, it is mostly that a lot of users thought the article was interesting. Presumably it wasn't obviously a hoax to them.
In the end, flags defeated upvotes on this story.
It's a year old, I tried searching a lot of the quotes it uses and they're bunk, even in French they're bunk, all linking back to this article and its reposts.
I mean the goddamn copyedit should have flagged everyone on this to begin with. Just looking at it I'm 90% sure I just bought a sham-wow. The article is linkbait copyediting 101.