I think in this particular case the story title applies. The part of the story that is interesting/important to HN users is about WhatsApp's compromised encryption, not so much the arrest and charges. Perhaps a nod to the article's title would be better though; something like "Suspects Arrested in Probe Based On WhatsApp Eavesdropping". That covers both aspects of the story.

Noted, and if that's the site's rules, so be it. I certainly wouldn't have bothered with the article or the discussion if the HN headline had been the same as the article headline, though.

Caveat: It's a guideline, not a rule.

Nonsense. The spirit of the guidelines is what matters. That post would never get on the front page of HN, and the current title is far from clickbait - it's the very reason it's of interest to the community.

EDIT: For reference, the original title was something to the effect of WhatsApp - so much for end-to-end encryption.

Then they should write a story about it, because Bloomberg did not write the story their title claims they wrote.

> Investigators said earlier they had detained 16 people in the anti-terror raids after working with U.S. authorities to monitor suspects’ communications on WhatsApp Inc.’s messaging service.

I'd say that paragraph made it "close enough" to the original title, myself.

https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/en/general/21864047

http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/18/7239221/whatsapp-rolls-ou...

> "End-to-end" means that, unlike messages encrypted by Gmail or Facebook Chat, WhatsApp won't be able to decrypt the messages itself, even if the company is compelled by law enforcement. The company will set up the key exchange between users, but only the two users will have access to the conversation itself. There are other end-to-end encryption apps on the market — most notably Cryptocat, Silent Text and Telegram — but with over 600 million users across the world, WhatsApp is by far the largest platform to adopt the system.

Its pretty clear their claims of end-to-end encryption are BS and since they can gain access to the keys.

Then write the article analyzing their article and drawing that conclusion. They didn't write that. Submissions are community property; the person who submits an article does not get the privilege of summarizing it for the rest of the site, or of drawing conclusions for us. If you demand that privilege, you have to do your own writing to get it.

Maybe Whatsapp is just helping them connect who talked to whom, without actually being able to look at the contents?

Additionally these points are excellent as well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9685977 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9685827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9685801

Why should someone have to write a blog post that adds little more but what is already implicit in the title?

EDIT: The only reason I can think of is that someone might think Bloomberg wrote the title (because of bloomberg.com and possibly Google results). If that's the real reason, then fair enough. Otherwise it seems awfully silly.

So, at this point a could recommend twitter ? It's pretty nifty to make short statements and include a link to the article ? :D

Ultimately they did, but perhaps unintentionally.

Yeah but OP is trying to point out a specific piece of information that's relevant for hacker news users. It wouldn't have been read through otherwise.

OP has no information other than that Whatsapp was used. The title is not appropriate.

Arresting terrorists operating in Belgium isn't a good enough lede?

Not to me. Absolutely would not have clicked on this had the title been about terrorists in Belgium. I use Whatsapp so I am glad the OP used the title he did.

No, it isn't.

It's good enough when Bloomberg submits it to its own site because that lead is the primary information.

ON HN, where it is submitted because of WhatsApp being mentioned it's not the `lead' at all: it's a detail of the whole story.

I clicked because I found the headline too distant from HN's usual political submissions and I couldn't understand at first why there were so much comments on that particular rather common and not news worthy (at least not until we have more details that would show it matters more than the other fighters who come back) event

I live in Belgium so I thought it was weird it was on HN and that I didn't hear anything of that story that might have interested HN and made me go "I should submit this to HN".

edit: borken english is broken

It is a failing of a vote-based ranking system that a comment with nothing but a complaint about the HN title remains at the top of the discussion, after the title has been corrected (http://i.imgur.com/fItX7pd.png).

Perhaps moderators should take the time to cull/derank these comments when they fix the titles.

I agree.

Unfortunately that title would not be very descriptive why the story is relevant on Hacker News.

To be fair, that doesn't shed any light on what the submitter is trying to point out.

Mod FTFY

and note taken