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NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

greenwald.substack.com

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Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#21

Post by redis_mlc »

filoleg wrote: post #8
jamestimmins wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm dense, but what is he alluding to? Beyond a communist/1984-like system where everyone informs on each other?

I don't think you are missing anything substantial. While you might have missed the actual historical names and details, you got the idea right. Stasi is just a commonly used name for the Ministry of State Security in Soviet-occupied East Germany post-WW2. Which was known for creating those kinds of systems where it would be commonplace for people to snitch on their family and friends for as much as wrongthink. On a…

Almost every family in East Germany had a Stasi informant reporting on their fellow family members. In return, the informants received a pair of jeans.

The only thing different today is that the SJW informants do it for free. :)

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#22

Post by eachro »

eitland wrote: post #6

>the Times’ tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram. This week they asked: “Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?” One reporter “confess[ed] that I am worried about Telegram. Other than private messaging, people love to use Telegram for group chats — up to 200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram ch…

If people actually read that Chen/Roose piece they'd see that the conversation being had was much more tempered. I saw the point as about the dangers of being in a large echo chamber.

For ex: on twitter, if a non-private account shares an article that completely misrepresents some statistc, there's a reasonable chance someone will swoop into their replies and push back on it. We see this all the time with both right leaning and left leaning pundits. Does this dynamic go away in large telegram chat rooms? My guess is it still happens in some form (give people some credit, most people are not blind fools). But then again, who really knows unless you're in the private group?

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#23

Post by babesh »

TameAntelope wrote: post #9

The tone of this article is atrocious, if Glenn had a point it was completely lost when he peppered this article with snark and derision. He clearly holds disgust for his subject, which ruins his ability to speak impartially about this topic. This is an attempted hit piece and he's not subtle about it, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he's never been very adept at objectivity or impartiality. I'm honestly surpri…

A classic strategy is to attack the messenger instead of the message. You are doing this. There isn’t one fact in your statement. Pure opinion and feeling. Greenwald peppers his article with disgust but he also backs it up with facts.

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#24

Post by stonogo »

motohagiography wrote: post #7

He's right. When I started writing in the 90's, there was an idea of journalism as telling stories in the principled defence of minority interests and as a public check on institutional power, but it has mutated into the unhinged and corrupt prosecution of deviance from official narrative lines. Social media is just a way for neighbours to denounce one another in a new snitch culture that rivals any 20th century syst…

That's funny, because what I remember about journalism in the 80s was a common sense of confusion and dismay that the job of a journalist had mutated from "reporting facts" to "telling stories" -- specifically I remember polls of graduating journalism majors; for the first time the claimed motivation for choosing the field was "changing the world."

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#25

Post by jamestimmins »

1. Greenwald weakens his point by conflating different types of reporting as one type of "hall monitoring". First he focuses on journalists who write about disinformation. For example, he links to a piece discussing how InfoWars and similar outlets game the social media algorithms to get views and how they aren't stopped at all.

But to compare that type of journalism, against disinformation sources who have repeatedly and purposefully put out fake news that has lead to considerable harm and even death because of the number of people that believe the falsehoods, with telling on Marc Andreessen, is a strange argument.

The second part of his argument is quite strong! There is a weird obsession with finding and calling out people whose opinions and words are out of line with accepted mainstream beliefs. But I don't understand why the first part was included in this piece. It makes the whole thing come across as petty, despite the valid arguments.

2. He condescendingly uses "millennial" as a pejorative, which is unnecessary and exhausting. It's also bad writing.

3. This line, "Jezebel (which really ought to just change its name to You’re a Misogynist, since it has no other content)", is objectively hilarious, regardless of its accuracy.

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#26

Post by verall »

I'm gonna be honest, I don't like "tattletale media" either, and I wanted to read this article, but, wow. Other comments are calling it "subtle", I'm finding it pretty hard to read:

> primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power

Primary objective is clicks/outrage, "WHO said WHAT?" is a big driver of outrage/"angry media"

> The little crew of tattletale millennials assembled by NBC — who refer to their twerpy work...

Wow... A lot of vitriol here. No attempts at nuance or any understanding of why lies and misinformation can be dangerous, or how to respond to misinformation with discussion and correction rather than censorship. Just anger.

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#27

Post by ravenstine »

7174n6 wrote: post #2

Almost as an aside, he mentions the need for "content". The 24 hours news cycle and proliferation of Internet based news sources has created an insatiable need for content. These media personalities are so desperate for something to "report" that they will literally do anything to create it. The derogatory use of terms meant to slur a person with limited mental capacity is obviously poor taste and maybe offensive, bu…

News for the most part is a scam. Yes, I'm using the word "scam" in its loosest sense but, depending on the news outlet, the intention is to commit a borderline scam. Just live a month never reading or watching the news and you'll realize how worthless most news actually is. The scam is to churn out tons of content so that more ads are seen, and the "news" has to actively convince its readers to take poorly-developed news items very seriously so they keep coming back. Focusing on petty drivel like something offensive someone said achieves this end very easily, as was demonstrated by Facebook's own A/B tests. In essence, the news must incorporate exaggerations and misrepresentations in order to make the kind of profits they want to see. That's only the layer we can see. What we can't see are the incentives that entertainment giants place upon their news outlets to publish the "accurate" truth.

The problem with economies that value growth over almost everything else is that the constriction you refer to is much less likely to happen. When currency is flying, insolvent or barely solvent businesses such as the news industry can continue to plug along seemingly indefinitely. That notwithstanding, the news is a loss leader for much more powerful entities that need to shape the hearts and minds of the public to their benefit. I don't see much constriction happening any time soon beyond some companies being sold to others.

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#29

Post by [deleted] »

jameslk wrote: post #10
eitland wrote: post #6

>the Times’ tech team quickly donned their hall-monitor goggles and Stasi notebooks to warn that the Bad People had migrated to Signal and Telegram. This week they asked: “Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?” One reporter “confess[ed] that I am worried about Telegram. Other than private messaging, people love to use Telegram for group chats — up to 200,000 people can meet inside a Telegram ch…

I wonder what Telegram and Signal are hosting on? Is it one of the big cloud providers? Could they be deplatformed for harboring "terrorists" on their platforms?

[deleted]

Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

#30

Post by vippy »

endymi0n wrote: post #15

It's interesting how polemic Greenwald has become, bringing with it the same magnitude of reality denial as the actors he is going after. A title like "The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows" coming from an investigative journalist like himself really sounds like a sore loser's version of "investigative journalism needs to die if it doesn't share my narrative and polit…

It fascinates me how we've gone from the web as a tool for resisting censorship to the point where we recognize the need for guardrails because of how dangerous information tools can be made in the wrong hands.
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