I used to be a free speech absolutist, but after seeing just how a massive number of people can be convinced of some seriously dangerous but factually incorrect political ideas off of nothing more than memes, it changed my view. It was time to admit that social media wasn't a simple town square. People engaged with millions of other people need to be treated with even more checks and balances than a journalist with a fraction of that engagement.
NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
81–90 of 368 posts
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why this comment is getting downvoted and flagged. The point is valid. This is an ad hominem attack with non sequiturs too like "He clearly holds disgust for his subject, which ruins his ability to speak" It's contentless and cheap. I'd like to hear some counterarguments to Glen's points instead.
It's only an ad hominem if I say he's wrong because of who he is. This can't be an ad hominem if I don't actually address the argument he puts forward, which I did not do (for better or for worse). The content I've added is, "This article is hard for me to read because of its tone." Agree or disagree, I found it difficult to get through, and hard to see what Glenn was trying to point out as a result of the tone he ch…
> he's never been very adept at objectivity or impartiality.
> I'm honestly surprised more folks haven't seen through his shtick yet
In these you attack the author rather his points.
Being hard to read for you doesn't discredit the article's arguments either.
I'd rather hear what you dislike about the points being made rather than how they read, because the former is more important to having an actual conversation.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless of substance, journalists should have enough integrity to not title an article "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?". "Misinformation" is among the list of grossly overused words in online discourse. It has no meaning, other than to exist as the boogyman. "Hot Spot". Another sensationalist phrase used to scare readers into thinking anyone that even slightly disagrees with their poi…
> Regardless of substance, journalists should have enough integrity to not title an article "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?". How about this one: "The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows"
From a substack? That's perfectly fine by my standards. You hold Glenn Greenwald's newsletter to the same standards as the NYT?
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#84It must surely be some Internet Law that people who spend most of their time in bubbles where they converse with the worst of their opponents make the worst arguments to people outside the bubble. So, if you take an otherwise decent smart person and place her in a spot where all her enemies are vitriolic morons, she will start to apply vitriolic rhetoric. Bring this person out of that universe and into the normal wor…
"He who battles with monsters must take care that he does not become one..." - Nietzsche
Social media incentivizes controversial takes. Real people tend to be more in the middle. Never confuse social media for real life.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#85He'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…
> has mutated into the unhinged and corrupt prosecution of deviance
You realize all those criticisms apply very well to this very piece, right? Just read it again. The hook from the lede paragraph invokes, literally, an:
"[...] unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power."
I mean, the point is well taken, but the call is coming from inside the house.
And, FWIW: the whole thing is about how Taylor Lorenz dinged Andreessen for using the word "retarded" on a call. And it turns out, I guess, that someone said it, but not Andreessen. Is that really worth this screed?
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'm honestly surprised more folks haven't seen through his shtick yet, as they saw through Taibbi's. They're right though. One-eyed men in the land of the blind. Being right matters more than a politely crafted message. Further, you're attacking the messenger and not the point/substance of the message. Weak.
Being “right” but unconvincing because of abrasiveness is just screaming into the void, or worse, into an echo chamber. If he can’t create an article that wins people over with reason then why write the article at all? I’m sympathetic to some of his points but this article by itself is not convincing.
>Being “right” but unconvincing because of abrasiveness is just screaming into the void, or worse, into an echo chamber. If he can’t create an article that wins people over with reason then why write the article at all?
Good question. Perhaps the answer is that we're beyond convincing at this point. A product of dispersion. We Americans all drifting apart economically, politically, and in how we perceive reality. As to where that leads us - likely chaos.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
He has absolutely always been like this. His rambling screeds used to be posted to reddit pretty constantly long before he published Snowden. This NYT reporter made a mistake and posted an incorrect accusation on her twitter, that she later corrected. Big mistake, but she owned it. And here he is calling the situation "Stasi-like".
There's a difference between making a mistake and not having journalistic integrity
Yeah, and I'm pretty sure this was squarely a mistake. I'm not sure you can even assign journalistic quality controls to a personal twitter.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#88>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…
One side of it is deplatforming, but the other side is protecting more vulnerable family and community members. The fact is that there are pied-pipers of disinformation on these platforms leading vulnerable members of our communities down rabbit-holes to who-knows-where. Normally we would address this with in-person confrontation but I think people are struggling to find the tools to protect their friends and familie…
> the tools that we may have once used
There were tabloid magazines full of "fake news" sold in supermarkets throughout my entire childhood. People would shake their heads and laugh at the silly headlines, but nobody, ever, talked seriously about censoring the tabloid newspapers just because they didn't believe what they were saying.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regardless of substance, journalists should have enough integrity to not title an article "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?". How about this one: "The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry Suffers Several Well-Deserved Blows"
From a substack? That's perfectly fine by my standards. You hold Glenn Greenwald's newsletter to the same standards as the NYT?
I do think Greenwald should follow the standards he wants to enforce on fellow journalists, yes.
Re: NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur
#90It'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.
Downvote me all you want, I'm not wrong: information defenses are a matter of national security. https://www.hsdl.org/c/tactics-and-tropes-of-the-internet-re...