NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

> 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?

I think this is a good microcosm of a broader trend. Is it itself indicative that the sky is falling? No, of course not. No single black man getting shot by the cops in murky circumstances is itself indicative of systemic racism. Rather, those cases, and the Lorenz case serve as useful foci for talking about what I think are real problems with society.

I do think that journalists aligning themselves against privacy and free speech in the name of fighting "misinformation" and "hate speech" is a real problem. This case is not what makes it a problem, but it is a good vignette demonstrating it.

Am I supposed to believe he’s speaking truth to power by having constant rage fits on Twitter and appearing on Tucker Carlson?

Naked Capitalism.

I think I disagree with the statement that misinformation causes real and demonstrable harm. The vast majority of misinformation does not. Saying that we faked the moon landing, or that the sky is a layer of impenetrable foil, while silly, is ultimately inconsequential and does not cause harm.

There are of course rare cases when someone acts on misinformation to do something harmful. I can easily think of several examples of bad reporting from supposedly reputable media outlets that caused a ton of damage over the last year.

Conversely, most true information does not cause harm either. But some true information does cause harm.

In that sense, I think the veracity of the information has little to do with the risk of harm, and that we should not allow this trojan horse for free speech regulation to take hold. For whatever problems free speech has, trying to stifle it is just not going to provide the benefit that people think it will.

The Iraq war was based on misinformation. It did cause perhaps the greatest harm in the last several decades. However, that was “officially sanctioned” misinformation directly from the government (whether they believed it in good faith or not). I think before doing anything to limit the flow of information, consider whether the proposed framework for suppression of misinformation have caught this. Worse, if someone knew that the WMDs were not there, and could have corrected that disaster, would they have been considered misinformation?

We have already seen this in action with the tech companies giving very loose directives to their content moderators to remove certain types of misinformation. A popular youtuber was censored for telling people that masks are a good idea back in March. The official information at the time was that they do not help. The truth was that they obviously do, and now you get censored for saying that they don’t help. If someone asks honestly about something suspicious related to the election, or believes a voting rule change was procedurally unfair, without paying any mind to the weird conspiracy theories, they get moderated. Because it sounds like “claims of election fraud” and the 3 seconds that the moderator spends on it don’t allow for nuance. Or the hunter biden “misinformation” that wasn’t. That basically means that the word of the US Government (particularly the Democrats) is the “true information” and anything else in conflict with that is misinformation. And that’s a pretty bad place to be. In practice, this just doesn’t seem to work, and does more harm than good.

I think you're asking the wrong question: I might not care if someone says the word, but if their employer, or their employees or college or investors or political party or anyone else cares then that's a problem for that person. And it keeps going: their employer might not care, but the employer needs to wonder if their clients, friends, partners, or dog cares. And whether they will care in 10 or 20 years time.

That's the reason this is so insidious. It forces people not just to comply with current social standards. But to comply with the highest possible standard that might just be applied in their lifetime.

10 years ago, it was OK to say "retard". Today we're not quite sure are we. How would you feel if you got gotcha'd in 10 years time with this comment?

Now, as everyone is racing towards to most banal and inoffensive positions, you find that today's social attitudes are changing purely out of fear of tomorrow's. People hesitate to say retard, others notice and hesitate too, as fewer people say it it becomes offensive not because it is but because no one else is saying it.

I think Greenwald leaves a lot to be desired. But I think with this issue he (and others) are well ahead of the curve: a significant minority are hell bent on dumping freedom of speech and they have the leverage to do it.