NYT reporter falsely accuses tech investor of using a slur

You really should read it, because the article takes the opposite conclusion. "Are you concerned?" "Honestly, not really?"

> It’s interesting to note that WhatsApp has restricted message forwarding for exactly this reason [preventing false information spreading like on social networks]

We can all agree message forwarding limits are a good idea - no one like spam. The bailey is implied to be that we should keep tabs on identified extremists even in encrypted platforms.

> I share your worry about the encrypted apps becoming, essentially, huge shadow social networks.

> there’s now this debate about whether it’s good that all these unsavory characters from the dregs of the internet are disappearing from big social platforms, or whether it’s dangerous to have them congregating in spaces where researchers, journalists and law enforcement can’t keep tabs on them as easily.

The authors (or speakers, as this article is a dialog) never make the bailey argument. Instead they make arguments that would naturally lead to the bailey, if taken seriously. Private messengers could become "shadow social networks"? Well if they do, they must be policed like social networks. Also note in the second quote how the speaker distances them self from the argument with "there's this debate". They don't mention the alternative to the current situation, so it is left to the imagination of the reader - should we allow "unsavory characters" back on social media platforms? Or is the alternative that we continue keeping tabs on them on the encrypted messaging apps?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

"Beyond all this, what if he had used the word “retarded”? What would it mean? If someone uses that term maliciously, as a slur against others to mock their intellect, it is certainly reasonable to condemn that. Used with that intent and in that context, it is unnecessarily hurtful for people who suffer diseases of cognitive impairment.

But that is not remotely what happened here. Anyone who spent any time at all on the sub-Reddit thread of r/WallStreetBets knows that “retards” was the single most common term used by those who short-squeezed the hedge funds invested in the collapse of GameStop. It is virtually impossible to discuss the ethos of that subculture without using that term. This was one of their most popular battlecries:

“We can stay retarded longer than you can stay solvent.”

And the use of that term in the sub-Reddit was not just ubiquitous but fascinating: layered with multiple levels of irony and self-deprecation. Sociologists could, and should, study how that term was deployed by those Redditors and what role it played in forming the community that enabled them to strike a blow against these hedge funds. It reflected their self-perceived place at the bottom of social hierarchies, expressed the irony that they as unsophisticated investors were defeating self-perceived financial wizards, and marked their culture and community as transgressive. Did some use it with malice? Maybe. But there was vast complexity to it."

Okay, Glenn, we get it. You don't like -- say it with me in your spookiest voice, everyone! -- CAAAAAAAANCELLLL CUUUUUUUUUUULTURRRRRE. I mean, sure, it was fine when they were cancelling Bari Weiss, because he was on board with that, but then they came for him! (And by "they," I mean fact-checkers, or as I believe Greenwald refers to them, Paramilitary Death Squads.)

I'm just saying, maybe we should stop treating "but he's the guy that Edward Snowden worked with!" as some kind of Get Out of Making Sensible Arguments Free card.