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

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

#231

Post by skinkestek » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #202

betwixthewires wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be much easier to take this argument seriously if the most recent example of "deplatforming" (and the prime example in the very article we are discussing in this thread) wasn't a bunch of well funded publications coming to the defense of hedge funds and calling meme culture aware day traders evil Nazis. Seeing as of late the only prominent examples of the terrible behavior you describe are by exactly the peo…

You know these things are allowed to be something other than all or nothing, right? You can hold the stance that WSB fiasco is idiotic scaremongering while also acknowledging that there are other internet mobs that do real harm. Because when it comes to WSB I completely agree with you.

> You can hold the stance that WSB fiasco is idiotic scaremongering while also acknowledging that there are other internet mobs that do real harm.

You mean like that group that has torched neighborhoods, shot polive officers, shot other protesters, thrown rocks, use baseball bats on police and civilians etc etc?

Or do you mean the really really scary ones like the ones that walked into Capitol Hill and had four lunatics with strips along with them while the rest were busily taking photos?

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

#232

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #168

S_A_P wrote: post #68

Greenwalds tactics aside, do we really consider someone saying the word "retard" in a private discussion newsworthy? More importantly it wasnt even reported correctly and appears to be the result of Taylor Lorenz having an axe to grind with Marc Andreessen.

AS far as I can tell, it wasn’t even a news story. It was a tweet. And then later clarified after brought to her attention. I find it hard to believe that it justifies this long blog. This is the first thing I’ve seen him wrote in years. And it is horrible.

[deleted]

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

#233

Post by mongol » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

One of the best Swedish journalists I know is not on Twitter. I found it annoying at first as I wanted to follow him, interact with him and so on. But I now think it adds a lot to his credibility. It seems however quite rare. Every journalist seems to build a personal brand and gather a following that follows them to wherever they write.

In the same vein, I really appreciate The Economist for it's unsigned articles. Basically, I trust journalism more when the journalist does not put themselves between me and the subject of their writings.

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

#234

Post by dwaltrip » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

dogman144 wrote: post #174

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…

God I'm pretty lefty but "problematic" is becoming... problematic. On top of that, just completely asinine tech reporting is becoming problematic. Bloomberg supermicro? Never retracted, lead reporter on it is now BBG's cyber reporting czar. NYT's NSA hacked Baltimore author? Came out with that smooth brained "Jetbrains == SolarWinds" story. The wear and tear from a complex field only getting more complex, it governin…

I have no idea where I first saw this but it's the perfect video for this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-peZ7IeD2w

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

#235

Post by throwaway894345 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

thesteamboat wrote: post #183

throwaway894345 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I used to be a free speech absolutist myself back in Snowden times, but having seeing the flip side of anonymous, unverified, amplified and maliciously orchestrated communication of lies by unknown actors myself over the past few years 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 PO…

I think this is missing the point of the no-longer-free-speach-absolutist sentiment (henceforth NLFSA). You note, correctly I think, that > 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. The NLFSA notes that we've been seeing a new attack on free speech and free thought emerge,…

> The NLFSA doesn't necessarily want speech regulated, or regulated by the government, or by corporations. They may not have any particular solution in mind (though some might think they have one). The NLFSA sees a problem without necessarily seeing a solution.

It seems like the appropriate posture is being positively in favor of the best thing we've got (free speech) while acknowledging the limitations. Which is a long way of saying the appropriate posture is that of a free speech proponent. After all, free speech proponents aren't arguing that free speech completely solves the speech quality problem--only that the best we can do is allow debate to select for the best speech.

Note also that the soft restrictions and political tests we've put in place in our epistemological institutions have predictably degraded public trust in those institutions and the void is being exploited by different and often worse authoritarians.

Even if, like me, you think conservative ideas are generally worse than liberal ideas, you should want conservatives to rally around the best, most respectable conservative ideas rather around the worst ideas. They aren't going to convert from bad conservative ideas to good liberal ideas by way of coercion or suppression; rather, the best hope is for conservatives to see their best, most respectable ideas face off against the best, most respectable liberal ideas so that if/when they lose, as many as possible feel that their side's ideas were given a fair shot and they perhaps leave with a changed opinion (even if only incrementally).

Instead, we're building a system that regards all right-wing positions (and a fair number of moderate liberal positions) as uniformly "far-right" such that there are fewer incentives to hold a respectable position and instead we get dishonest extremists on either side. It shouldn't surprise us that abandoning objectivity and neutrality for relativism and activism in our epistemological institutions would degrade trust and result in a rise of extremists; this is not only intuitive, but it's a historical pattern.

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

#236

Post by S_A_P » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #168

S_A_P wrote: post #68

Greenwalds tactics aside, do we really consider someone saying the word "retard" in a private discussion newsworthy? More importantly it wasnt even reported correctly and appears to be the result of Taylor Lorenz having an axe to grind with Marc Andreessen.

AS far as I can tell, it wasn’t even a news story. It was a tweet. And then later clarified after brought to her attention. I find it hard to believe that it justifies this long blog. This is the first thing I’ve seen him wrote in years. And it is horrible.

You are correct in that, but I don't know that there is much difference any more. Tweets are in TV news/News websites all the time. The fact that it is a pretty well known journalist will likely hold much more weight with some folks.

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

#237

Post by TheJoYo » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

Person5478 wrote: post #205

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…

I don't know your age, but I suspect it's more likely you're finally reaching the point of realizing how shit everyone and everything is. My experience was stupidly believing the idealistic crap I was taught when young only to eventually be forced to realize we're not much better than the ones we villify. I guess my point is that you should consider whether journalism has really gone to shit or if you're less idealis…

The longer I live the more comfortable I am with my inevitable death. At the very least it will mean that my disappointment in sapiens will someday have an end.

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

#238

Post by dogman144 » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:35 PM UTC

horns4lyfe wrote: post #224

dogman144 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I'm pretty lefty but "problematic" is becoming... problematic. On top of that, just completely asinine tech reporting is becoming problematic. Bloomberg supermicro? Never retracted, lead reporter on it is now BBG's cyber reporting czar. NYT's NSA hacked Baltimore author? Came out with that smooth brained "Jetbrains == SolarWinds" story. The wear and tear from a complex field only getting more complex, it governin…

While these reporters no doubt identify with the left, and I certainly don't, this "I can't handle people talking about things in places where I can't hear and record them" attitude is one of the least progressive mainstream ideas in recent memory and is not something I associate with progressives at all. Feels a lot more like small-mindedness.

What's hilarious to me re: Clubhouse getting this negative attention is that platform trends towards the very worst type of insular SV mutual pleasuring.

If groundbreaking free-speech is going on in there to drive the conversation forward, I haven't seen much of it yet.

I listened to about 40 minutes of a chat on SolarWinds from a lot heavy hitter defensetech people start with:

-> how do we feel about this level of compromise v. encryption access laws (not totally related but yeah good topic, let's go there!). This was asked by a pub policy devsecops rep at GitHub, so she knew her stuff.

answered first with (and I swear this is a close quote from a thought leader, startup founder and ex-Marine named "Marvin")

-> freedom of expression, leads to freedom of thought, which leads to freedom of innovation, which leads to freedom of minds, which leads to...

leading to:

-> clubhouse uses NLP, so of course if it's free you are the producing

and end somewhere far, far away from anything meaningful on SolarWinds while producing the worst type of verbal fluff from people who generally are there to self-promote their startups. I raised my hand in there to see if I could get in a question re: "hey that engineer asked a solid question 20 mins ago, I'm not sure it was ever answered." Moderators then disabled hand-raising.

Half of Clubhouse is SV founders practicing their pitches on each other, and the other half is entertaining discussions of the somewhat raunchy type, i.e. "Gain your empowerment, no more casual sex!" Additionally, although this is my take away from a casual scroll of profile pictures, clubhouse has a massive diversity footprint. Finally, we have minority techies congregating in numbers, talking about their stuff!

If tech reporters are really spending their time digging for the next GRU disinfo campaign there, then NYT needs its $70k a year back from those reporter salaries and should sub to FEYE's campaign reports instead.

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

#239

Post by Lammy » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #53

Lammy wrote: post #3

> Like some creepy informant for a state security apparatus I really admire his restraint with what he’s trying to convey here despite how many people will miss reading between the lines.

That's the first time the word "restraint" have appeared near Greenwald's name in a long, long time. Given that he's accusing NYT reporters of being the Stasi, I don't think that "restraint" is the word I'd use to describe him.

I didn't get the impression that he was trying to subtly accuse any reporters of being directly involved in anything like that, but if the incentives of modern journalism align to create the same outcome where inconvenient status-quo-doubters are silenced, why does it matter how we got there?

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

#240

Post by S_A_P » Mon, Feb 08, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #190

S_A_P wrote: post #68

Greenwalds tactics aside, do we really consider someone saying the word "retard" in a private discussion newsworthy? More importantly it wasnt even reported correctly and appears to be the result of Taylor Lorenz having an axe to grind with Marc Andreessen.

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…

You raise some good points here, and this is a slippery slope were standing upon. I found it to be a little be gross to see the tweets where Taylor L was taunting Marc A to try and block her out of the chat since she got a burner account. Is that what we are trying to do? The press ABSOLUTELY should be able to find corruption and keep it in check, but this doesnt feel like that. It was a personal abuse of a platform by that journalist. Im familiar with Greenwald because of Snowden, but I agree that he is a bit jaded/angry now. Im not really 100% clear on why he lives abroad now, but Im sure that transition was not easy and may have something to do with it.