NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #75

ceejayoz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?" article doesn't actually demand (or even propose) censorship as asserted by Greenwald, as far as I can tell. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > So what’s your take? Are you concerned? > KEVIN Honestly, not really? and > I’m not as worried about Signal. Similar to WhatsApp, Signal set a limit so that you can forward messa…

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…

Unfortunately, it's a long-standing practice in the news industry that journalists don't get a say in the title of their article. The NYT in particular has explained their headline writing process in the past (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/insider/how-to-write-a-ne...): headlines are written by copyeditors, with explicit goals to "[create] a mystery that can only be solved by reading further" and "reach and draw in as many people as possible".

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

#122

Post by astrange » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #33

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…

> Good journalism is extremely important but much of what we see today is a mix of extreme bias, outright lies and outrage manufacturing. I haven't seen Greenwald do much other than outrage manufacturing in some years. I guess it's paying the bills.

[flagged]

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

#123

Post by jb775 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

randomfool wrote: post #79

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…

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…

> protecting more vulnerable family and community members

So in other words, brainwash kids by only showing them one side of political arguments their entire life.

Then when little Jimmy starts hearing whispers about the evil Republicans, we'll tell him if he looks them in the eye he'll turn to stone.

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

#124

Post by at-fates-hands » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #98

jameslk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you take John Brennan at his word, yes, it is coming. Many powerful Democrat lawmakers are working toward allowing law enforcement (FBI, etc) to have the same tools against "domestic terror" as they do again foreign terror. Greenwald himself did a great write up about it: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-new-domestic-war-on-ter...

I'm still wondering how the incredibly large intelligence gathering apparatus in this country was unable to thwart an attack that was being planned openly on social media, in broad daylight. If you can't even stop an attack you should have known was imminent, how does giving them even MORE tools stem the massive failure that allowed the attack to happen in the first place?

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

#125

Post by throwaway20875 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #77

kevin__ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else, it shows the value of having an actual editor. I'm assuming Glenn's writing has always been this ridiculous, but that decent editors were preventing his worst instincts and tendencies from actually making it into the published version.

He literally quit The Intercept because he was furious that someone tried to give him edits. He said that he founded the site with the explicit agreement that no one would be allowed to edit his words. EDIT: Resignation letter here: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int... "The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week"…

>You can click through and the article in question was Greenwald attempting to give oxygen to GOP propaganda about Hunter Biden.

Photos of drug fueled sex romps with prostitutes by the president's son are newsworthy. Same goes for his investments and work in foreign countries. The lack of investigative journalism into Hunter Biden is the product of something far worse than what Greenwald is covering. This has zero to do with the false Democrat/Republican dichotomy - this is powerful people that are doing things that the proles cannot, while being shielded by the same people tasked with holding them accountable.

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

#126

Post by marcus_holmes » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #14

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…

The "Are Private Messaging Apps the Next Misinformation Hot Spot?" article doesn't actually demand (or even propose) censorship as asserted by Greenwald, as far as I can tell. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/personaltech/t... > So what’s your take? Are you concerned? > KEVIN Honestly, not really? and > I’m not as worried about Signal. Similar to WhatsApp, Signal set a limit so that you can forward messa…

> "While I am concerned about Telegram in general, it’s important to note that group chats there are not end-to-end encrypted. Neither are forwarded messages. So if Telegram or law enforcement authorities wanted to investigate the contents of a big group chat, they could do so, in theory. If Telegram does become the next misinformation hot spot, we won’t be helpless."

Notice the "we won't be helpless" - a clear inference that if information is published there that this person considers to be misinformation, they have an avenue to report it and get it censored.

And the whole tone of the article was clearly "the tech giants have agreed to censor the bad people, so now the bad people have fled to smaller apps where it's going to be harder to censor them". It's a discussion about how authorities can "stop the spread of disinformation" - you know, censor people.

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

#127

Post by at_a_remove » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

This sounds similar to the subreddit whose members post "CP" to subreddits they do not like in order to get them taken down. We should be talking about the false accusation and false accusations in general, but it is probably easier to talk about the messenger.

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

#128

Post by eitland » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #74

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…

> It seems to seriously scare some folks that there are places where they cannot deplatform whoever they want for anything. If it's really possible for "some folks" to deplatform "whoever they want" "for anything", why is this power not available to me or anyone I know? I know it's glib, but... come on folks. The anti-anti-anti-cancel-culture hyperbole is officially out of control. It should be possible to have a leg…

> "Stasi notebooks", really?

Hyperbole is a well known tool in writing.

Here it is obvious that he is using it and it resonates with many of the readers. I say he used it well.

When is hyperbole wrong? IMO most often when it isn't obvious. If a normally capable but uninformed reader actually believe it to be true word-by-word then it is missing its mark.

I might feel more strongly about this than you since a bunch of my friends has been on the receiving end of some major abuse of power by journalistic powerhouses around here.

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

#129

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #110

tootie wrote: post #47

Earlier 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".

"Stasi-like" is an extremely hyperbolic way to describe the situation. However, I think "big mistake, but she owned it" is far too forgiving a response. 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 e…

Additionally, this is perhaps the most overt or high-profile example of her untrustworthiness, but there's a long tail of slightly subtler and lower-profile incidents that undoubtedly factored into her termination. It's not like this was a one-off, out-of-character incident.

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

#130

Post by notahacker » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

throw14082020 wrote: post #54

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…

What makes you think the tone is atrocious? What makes you think he holds digust? He seemed to raise many separate facts and past situations to prove his point, do read the article and come back with logical arguments.

The point of the article is that journalists telling tales on dubious things semi-public figures wrote on social media is bad, particularly when they make evidence-free claims about their motives for doing it and appear to mostly be trying to encourage an enraged mob to pile on. In isolation, this might be considered a reasonable point to make.

To prove his point the author, a journalist, spends most of his article telling us a tale about a dubious thing a semi-public figure wrote on social media, claims she is "malicious, disgusting and sociopathic", suggests the only possible motivation for journalists like her investigating things which semi public figures say off the record is "to control, to coerce, to dominate, to repress"[1] and says his followers should feel "a particular obligation" to heap scorn on her and other targets of his ire.

My irony meter exploded.

[1]yes, this is the founder of The Intercept and prominent Wikileaks advocate Glenn Greenwald suggesting there's something wrong with "eavesdropping on private conversations" of influential billionaires by getting invited to their chatroom.