NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

That... seems kinda spun. The source material isn't so damning. Taylor Lorenz was on the call, and tweeted:

"@pmarca just openly using the r-slur on Clubhouse tonight and not one other person in the room called him on it or saying anything"

Then later when she was corrected that it wasn't Andreessen but someone else, replied:

"Thanks for clarifying that it was Felicia saying that word, rather than Marc as many in the room heard it. I hope you can understand how some people in the room felt hearing it"

I mean, as I (someone who reads and values Lorenz's work) read it, she was offended (more, it seems, at the casual use of "retarded" going unchallenged than at the specific speaker), and tweeted about it, but made a mistake in attribution which she recognized (while pointing out that her original offense was that the word wasn't challenged).

And Greenwald wrote like 1000 words to go after her. And his essay, not her tweet, is at the top of HN right now.

So... who's cancelling who here?

This is a strange lesson to take away, not least of all because we've seen a lot of egregious, potent, and dangerous lies from credible, verified institutions including the former POTUS, prominent newspapers, and other important cultural institutions. Further, it seems strange to suggest that "anonymous lies" are somehow more dangerous than lies by verified parties--pretty much by definition this is incorrect since a lie by some credible institution does more damage than a lie by someone with no credibility at all.

I don't know how someone can look at American politics and politicians (never mind cultural institutions) over the last ~decade and conclude that these people are fit to regulate Americans' speech. Indeed, how can anyone praise democracy without also valuing its prerequisite: free speech. I suspect people don't want a democracy, they want their own candidate to be elected--hardly a noble or democratic sentiment.

Jeez. At least give your opponents a charitable take on their argument. This stuff isn't some make-believe silencing of online Socratic circles that just happen to have "non-approved" viwes or "wrongthink". I don't think you get how scary some of these mobs are. They're online witch-hunts fueled by hate and the belief that their marks are the cause of the bad in the world. And when you add actually crazy people into the mix it bleeds over into the real world. They will doxx you, stalk you, find every public picture of you, your friends, your family online and send them to you with death threats. They will Photoshop those pictures so it looks like you're being tortured or raped and pass them around. If they find your address you'll start getting them in the mail and eventually messages with pictures of your house.

Like this problem is hard. I want free and open communication as much as the next person it's not so easy. Trading other people's safety for my liberty doesn't sound quite as noble.

She is a NYT reporter - a profession which trades on trust - and clearly uses her Twitter profile as an extension of her profession. She used that platform to make a false accusation regarding a member of an event of little-to-no public interest using details taken entirely out of context. That speaks volumes about her intent. Instead of retracting it, she posted a "clarification" and in the same post continued to grandstand about how the imagined infraction was wrong and talk down to the accused.

A post where she "owned it" would look something like this: "Earlier I said ___. I have since discovered that I was incorrect. What actually happened was ___. I'm sorry for my mistake and I will make an effort to do better going forward." What actually happened was worlds apart.