How to deal with multiple, factually incorrect threads?

[Poker Player]

A few hours ago I came across a post about Ukraine which stated the following:

Ukraine has legalized #Bitcoin. Really A another Good news for all the crypto communities.

Then I also found a similar statement in the WO thread, and explained why it is incorrect:

Actually, to say that Ukraine has legalized Bitcoin is incorrect, as I commented in another thread:

"Cryptocurrencies have been neither legal nor forbidden in Ukraine because there were no laws that defined them."

They have simply regulated it as a financial asset, which is what most countries in the world have already done, but they are a little late.

The bad thing is that similar threads keep appearing:

Ukraine to legalize cryptocurrencies > Bill passed 2nd reading

Ukrainian Parliament Passes Law Legalizing Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin-Hungry Ukraine Moves to Legalize Cryptocurrency

And I wouldn't be surprised if more appear. It seems that crypto news sites have taken to calling "legalize" what should be called "regulate", and here the mistake is repeated. The link I posted pointing out the error is from the Kiev Post, a Ukrainian newspaper.

I don't see this as important as the fact that similar threads are popping up everywhere. I've thought about whether to report them by unofficial rule 12: "No duplicate posting in multiple boards (except for re-posting topics in the local language boards if they're translated and re-posting marketplace topics in the altcoin boards if altcoins are accepted)."

But I understand that it refers to the same posts written by the same person, as it says "duplicate", so I am not clear how the forum proceeds in this case.

[Pmalek]

I don't think there is much you can do except make a post to correct and explain why the OP is wrong. I doubt that there are any rules against that kind of thing. Someone could even create a thread that says that Ukraine banned Bitcoin, but as long as it doesn't break any of the existing forum rules, I don't know based on what the admins could delete it.

The reason why those threads mention that Ukraine legalized Bitcoin is because one news site made an article that said that. The second one copied it from them, third one from the second, and so forth. They are just interested in getting the news out there as fast as possible. The accuracy of the information is of secondary importance. You can apply the same logic to the forum.

[jackg]

If threads of the same nature appear on the same board and are quite easily noticeable then they likely are against the rules (one could've added to the other if the topics are similar).

I don't think there's too much of a reason to care about it though too (unless to consolidate information by merging the threads).

[NeuroticFish]

it is incorrect
~snip~
And I wouldn't be surprised if more appear. It seems that crypto news sites have taken to calling "legalize" what should be called "regulate", and here the mistake is repeated.

Exactly. The problem is that the legalize word is there in the news headlines. And people will most probably use the headline as post title.
I was even pleasantly surprised by the news, implying that it was at some point illegal. (but now I know that I was actually misled).

I don't see this as important as the fact that similar threads are popping up everywhere.

A lot of (especially merit hungry) users will post those news over and over again, no matter how many times they were posted, increasing the number of threads you'll have to correct.
No. It's a job worthy for Don Quixote. And while the newspapers started/stated it wrong, fighting ok posters and shitposters together because of this doesn't worth the effort.
I'd simply wait for it to die off. In a month it won't matter anymore.

Also for those actually reading the forum this thread should be just enough to know the real status

[Upgrade00]

It seems that crypto news sites have taken to calling "legalize" what should be called "regulate", and here the mistake is repeated. The link I posted pointing out the error is from the Kiev Post, a Ukrainian newspaper.

A little deviation, but this may not actually be a mistake, manipulation of words affects how the audience view it and can cause then to read it; thinking it's a major piece of news, or to ignore it; as a report of no moment. On the backdrop of El Salvador accepting Bitcoin as a legal tender, it's understandable if they wish to build on that to gain more traffic to their reports.

But I understand that it refers to the same posts written by the same person, as it says "duplicate", so I am not clear how the forum proceeds in this case.

I understand duplicate to mean that as well, you can report the post as being low value if it's pretty much the same content on another thread, the mods would decide whether to act or not.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

If Ukraine had no laws on the books regarding cryptocurrency and didn't define it either as an asset or a currency, I can see why some people would refer to their recent pronouncement as "legalization", but for journalists to do so is absurd.  The only way something gets legalized is if it was illegal to start with--and OP, I'm sure you know that, but some folks reading this thread might not understand the distinction if there's a language/knowledge barrier.

People making multiple threads on the forum about this "legalization" are just parroting other people's posts or articles, IMO, and not thinking about what the words really mean.  That sort of thing drives me nuts; it's like when everyone was saying "When altcoin season?" in 2019-20.  That phrase has absolutely no meaning outside of a very small group of people, and I doubt even they could define it, and yet they kept using it over and over in posts in Altcoin Discussion.

But in the end, what can you do about it aside from creating a thread like this?  I'm glad you did, because you're setting the record straight for those who couldn't see the distinction--and personally, I didn't know what the status of crypto was in Ukraine, so I learned something from it.  Thanks for that.

I was even pleasantly surprised by the news, implying that it was at some point illegal. (i.e. misled).

Why were you pleasantly surprised by being misled?

[Lucius]

I would rephrase the question a bit and ask all forum members how to deal with those users who obviously have problems not understanding what they are writing about at first, and completely ignoring that someone has already opened a thread on the same topic?

My personal opinion is that such threads should be reported on a "first open" basis, which means that only the thread that is first opened should remain, and all others should be deleted. Personally, I'm not surprised when things like this are done by beginners, but Legendary or Hero members who do it just prove that their ranks means nothing👎

[NeuroticFish]

I was even pleasantly surprised by the news, implying that it was at some point illegal. (i.e. misled).

Why were you pleasantly surprised by being misled?

I guess that's bad wording, sorry. I was pleasantly surprised thinking that there's a favorable development in the matter in Ukraine.
Afterwards, by reading this thread, I understood that I was misled and the only development is regulation and probably taxation.

Thanks though. I've edited that post for making it clear.

[stompix]

When the forum doesn't ban scammers nor does it delete shady scam topics I doubt it will ever deal with topics that are "incorrect". This will simply lead to adding a ton of work on moderators, putting them in a position of fact-checking which I don't think will be that welcomed as a new assignment.

Getting rid completely of those topics is impossible, you mentioned the one about Ukraine, how about the one with the title "McDonald’s is now accepting BTC", this is also misleading as it should have added "in Salvador" in the title, obviously what followed was people posting all the possible crap in it.
Oh, I just realized, both topics are the work of the same author, one line, one pic, happy merit fishing.

I would support the idea of locking multiple topics on the same board on the same subject, leaving only one (if not moderated) open.

[Kittygalore]

From my experience, if they're all the same, they're likely to be reported and have only one of them stay. Plus there are other users that point out if there's a duplicate thread or if it's factually incorrect. But what's the status in Ukraine though? If those thread aren't factually correct then what's the right story here?

[OgNasty]

At the end of the day this is an Internet forum and opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. You would go absolutely insane trying to correct all the trolls and willfully ignorant statements here. Not saying I agree with your take on this topic, as I don’t. Just another example of my statement I guess. When all is said and done, right and wrong is about the number of people that agree or disagree with you. Nothing more.

[hugeblack]

And I wouldn't be surprised if more appear. It seems that crypto news sites have taken to calling "legalize" what should be called "regulate", and here the mistake is repeated. The link I posted pointing out the error is from the Kiev Post, a Ukrainian newspaper.

You have news from El Salvador that is a hot topic and therefore it is easy to get more visits when publishing such information.
Most newspapers care about the number of visits as long as users do not stop clicking even if the newspaper publishes a lot of misinformation.

The problem is with misinformation that managers should add a small comment if the information is so misleading that it raises suspicion.

[LTU_btc]

There is probably not much what you can do, other than post right information and and correct false things. After all, it's not Facebook and Twitter where you can report such posts and fact checkers will mark it as wrong information. In forums we can't avoid fake news and these who visit Politics and Society board will perfectly understand me .
Fake news about hot topics tend to spread very quickly. Why exactly? Many reasons - wrong translation, people don't really undertstand what they read. Often someones like in OP's example post Tweet with attractive tittle and without any source to it. And then it starts to spread. And sometimes people just want to make some hype with these fake news.

[pooya87]

Well this is not new, for years we have had similar repeated wrong topics (or comments) all over the internet not just bitcointalk. The most common one is "[blank] banned bitcoin" type news that spread quickly too.
There isn't much we can do about it either, that is how the internet works. I suppose you could still report them as duplicate topics talking about the same exact subject and possibly have one closed (not deleted) but that's about it.