<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>dougweltman</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a gap, between admitting to downing a plane and &amp;quot;admitting liability&amp;quot; for it, in which the US places its downing of Flight 655.&lt;p&gt;But the parallel you would need to draw here is of the former: admitting to downing the plane.</text><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we&amp;#x27;d see a lot of conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts, questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.&lt;p&gt;The US never did admit liability for shooting down an Iranian jet in similar circumstances: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Iran_Air_Flight_655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Iran_Air_Flight_655&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>marvin</author><text>Just an ancillary point: this highlights that free access to group messaging apps makes it much harder than before to suppress facts about what has happened somewhere. Especially if there&amp;#x27;s video. The Iran regime of 1990 would have had a much easier time keeping this mistake under wraps.&lt;p&gt;I think the whole &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; and related propaganda strategies we see in the West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality, by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>How The New York Times Verified the Iran Missile-Strike Footage</title><url>https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/new-york-times-iran-ukraine-flight.php</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>loufe</author><text>For flight 655, while they never admitted guilt, they did settle paying the victim&amp;#x27;s families &amp;quot;ex-gratia&amp;quot; a non-negligible sum. While it is not the same as directly admitting you are responible, espcecially to the victims, for most intents and purposes that counts as an admition in my books.</text><parent_chain><item><author>pjc50</author><text>Yes. Rather than attempt to suppress it in the West, we&amp;#x27;d see a lot of conflicting reports, allegations of fake news, unrelated smear attempts, questioning of loyalties, and attempts to arrest whistleblowers.&lt;p&gt;The US never did admit liability for shooting down an Iranian jet in similar circumstances: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Iran_Air_Flight_655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Iran_Air_Flight_655&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>marvin</author><text>Just an ancillary point: this highlights that free access to group messaging apps makes it much harder than before to suppress facts about what has happened somewhere. Especially if there&amp;#x27;s video. The Iran regime of 1990 would have had a much easier time keeping this mistake under wraps.&lt;p&gt;I think the whole &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; and related propaganda strategies we see in the West are what happens when people in power try to adapt to this new reality, by attacking at the weak spots of the new information infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>How The New York Times Verified the Iran Missile-Strike Footage</title><url>https://www.cjr.org/q_and_a/new-york-times-iran-ukraine-flight.php</url></story>