Venture Capitalists' Critiques of Journalism Secretly Leaked to Journalists (vice.com) 118
It started when...
- A luggage startup's co-CEO complained on Instagram about young reporters who "forgo their personal ethics."
- A New York Times reporter called the posts "incoherent" and "disappointing."
- Angel investor Balaji S. Srinivasan (also the former CTO of Coinbase) later said the reporter "attacked" the co-CEO, who he then needed to defend — calling the reporter a sociopath in a multi-tweet thread.
- The New York Times reporter tweeted that investor had "been ranting about me by name for months now."
The reporter and the angel investor both finally ended up on Clubhouse, an elite invitation-only audio social network popular with venture capitalists, but the reporter left early. Later Vice published leaked audio of the subsequent conversation, which included Srinivasan and several other Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalists, in which Vice says participants "spent at least an hour talking about how journalists have too much power to 'cancel' people and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it."
Then things got really ugly...
The call shows how Silicon Valley millionaires, who have been coddled by the press and lauded as innovators and disruptors, fundamentally misunderstand the role of journalism the moment it turns a critical eye to their industry. It also suggests they're eager to find new ways to hit back at what they see as unfavorable and unfair press coverage...
Then...
- Angel investor Jason Calacanis complained on Twitter about the leaked audio.
- A Ruby on Rails developer tweeted in response, "I really don't understand how nobody seems to have seen the 'this might be recorded, so let me watch what I say' problem coming."
Then David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and the founder of Basecamp, shared his own thoughts:
Pretty sure what's driving interest is a bunch of VCs plotting how to punish a journalist, musing about how the "VC model of truth" is superior to the New York Times, and other ridiculously batshit stuff. Nobody would give a damn about a recording of "5 things unicorns MUST DO...!"
Also, lol, at "secretly recorded a private conversation". Clubhouse is a damn improv stage for wannabe thought leaders in training, performing in front of an audience of people who'd like their money or access. One audience member just had enough and hit record.
And finally...
- Angel investor Balaji S. Srinivasan launched a Twitter thread in response, calling the creator of Ruby on Rails "a rich Aryan."
- Srinivasan then questioned whether Basecamp's own new Hey email service would protect the privacy of its users against journalists using leaks, promising the first person to get a reply would get $50 in bitcoin.
The story ends with David Heinemeier Hansson (founder and CTO of Basecamp) posting that it was an easy question, then asking it so that he could reply to it himself and claim the bitcoin bounty.
"I don't quite understand what it's for, though? For asking whether we'd hand over emails to journalists? Is that some sort of hard-hitting question that's reeeally going to send us tumbling?"
He then simplified the question to "Do you give people's emails to journalists (or anyone else)," then supplied the answer.
"No."
Then he requested that the bitcoin be donated to the journalism-supporting non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation.
VC's don't like the press? (Score:5, Funny)
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I guess that's ok. I wouldn't like the press either if I were a fucking douche-bag.
It's more that it's a racketeering scam like Yelp. They write shit articles of concepts, people, corporations, etc until they're paid off to write favorable articles of those same things. Not to say Silicon Valley isn't filled up the ass with shitbags actively ruining the world with the modus operandi of "what industry can we target next for consolidation," but it's more two sets of fucking douche-bags than one picking on some innocent group.
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Want to get invited to areas regular people can't go. Play ball nicely and publish unbiased reports. Want to never get asked back - write a butt hurt piece about how people don't like you when it was said outside your presence.
It's not like this is news - people on both sides of the argument have been complaining about the bias ON THE OTHER SIDE for years.So now they caught some VC dudes doi
Re:VC's don't like the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as simple as you like to pretend it is, because one side is fabulously wealthy and feels any article that says anything critical about them AT ALL is "biased". To the point they are looking for ways to sabotage the underlying system of reporting to ensure you only hear or read about them in connection with unicorns, rainbows and kittens.
It's also hilarious you bring up "can't trust the government" as I didn't even see them mentioned in the OP. Talk about BIAS.
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It's not as simple as you like to pretend it is, because one side is fabulously wealthy and feels any article that says anything critical about them AT ALL is "biased". To the point they are looking for ways to sabotage the underlying system of reporting to ensure you only hear or read about them in connection with unicorns, rainbows and kittens.
Yes, one side is fabulously wealthy and calls whatever they dislike bias. The other side is not fabulously wealthy and uses what little control over public opinion they can muster to gain wealth. His point is perfectly valid (inclusive of the bit about government you took issue with,) a more or less random source of information like anonymous social networks is accurate more often than every "official" outlet combined: information distribution channels are fucked.
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Gain wealth? You mean earn a salary? We're not talking about big name news anchors here. If they wanted more wealth they'd do something other than journalism.
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The same as everybody, including janitors, mail room clerks, and lemonade stands, right? But it was phrased like it was something slightly dirty, as if a journalist would never do anything without financial motivations unlike all the honest and upstanding non-journalists.
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The same as everybody, including janitors, mail room clerks, and lemonade stands, right? But it was phrased like it was something slightly dirty, as if a journalist would never do anything without financial motivations unlike all the honest and upstanding non-journalists.
That's because it IS dirty, not slightly but extraordinarily. Janitors, mail room clerks, and people with lemonade stands all provide a service to society which they are paid for. The media provides the service of manipulating society on behalf of themselves or a small minority of people. They're polar opposites to contributing members of Humanity.
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The news media supplies a vital service of keeping the citizens informed of what is happening around them. If you get rid of news media then it is immediately replaced by self appointed purveyors of news who will be even worse (facebook friends, youtube, twitter, etc). Being a journalist is an honorable profession, except for those at institutions dedicated to bias and click baiting (ie, OANN). For instance, you would likely have little to no information about what has happened in Hong Kong if it were no
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The news media supplies a vital service of keeping the citizens informed of what is happening around them.
Ahahahahahahahahaha...
If you get rid of news media then it is immediately replaced by...
Oh, you...you were being serious. What a roller-coaster of emotion.
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Gain wealth? You mean earn a salary? We're not talking about big name news anchors here.
Being a cheap whore doesn't make a person any less a whore.
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The MSM has been biased for decades. There's a lot of groupthink in newsrooms around the country, and now that big money players know this, it's a tug of war to see who can control which journalists. Journalistic integrity was thrown under the bus a loooooong time ago.
Re: VC's don't like the press? (Score:1)
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It's not as simple as you like to pretend it is, because one side is fabulously wealthy and feels any article that says anything critical about them AT ALL is "biased".
Any article critical of them is biased. As is any article that is complimentary of them. And any article on any other subject. All "journalism" is biased. And all VCs are greedy douchebags who would sacrifice their own grandmother to Satan for the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Anybody who believes there's a good guy in this is delusional.
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Well, the VC people have a greatly inflated ego to start with. They're used to their private PR firms saying only good things. So if they even get a hint of an unbiased article about themselves they probably go crazy because it's not all sweetness and light like they're used to.
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Play ball nicely and publish unbiased reports.
You meant *biased* reports, surely. Or what "ball playing" specifically were you talking about?
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That happens. But these VCs are accusing fairly reputable journalists from prestige bannerheads of this, and thats when it goes from plausible to absurd.
As always its usually the people loudest complaining about the media least able to recognise the actual faults that exist.
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That happens. But these VCs are accusing fairly reputable journalists from prestige bannerheads of this, and thats when it goes from plausible to absurd.
Not really, that's how the journalism industry operates. It's never been about getting the facts out to people to make informed decisions, it's been about power and control - from the low-level journalists there for their paycheck to the editors with their paying clients to appease to the managers orchestrating the racketeering campaign against individuals, businesses, and entire governments. The media exists to control people such that a subset of the population can gain power from that control, it's the
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Re:VC's don't like the press? (Score:5, Funny)
slowly playing out on Twitter
Let me do a brief summary of this for people who don't want to read it all:
Peter pulled little Susie's hair in the playground at lunchtime
Susie told on Peter to the teacher.
In the meantime, Susie's friend Lisa started a rumor that Peter has cooties.
Peter's friend Tim and Susie got into a shouting match.
Tim hit Lisa's friend Sally.
Lisa bumped into Bill and spilled his books on the ground.
Peter pulled Susie's hair again.
Tune in tomorrow for another existing episode of Five-Year-Olds Squabbling, somewhere on Twitter.
Re:VC's don't like the press? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a reality here. VC funders are not what they used to be, they are pump and dump specialists. What lie, what humongous exaggerations can be pushed about companies and they feed in millions to create an illusion of growth, so they build it up and up and up. Then comes the cash in, when they go public and dump it on pensions funds, if they can sell enough, they can use their junk bond shares to buy companies that actually make money. Keep that revenue rising on what is an illusion, now hidden over by companies they have bought it.
All this to pump and pump and pump, until the entire mess can be dumped on pension funds and then profit, big time, really big and the suckers who bought it, well, they did not buy it, their pension fund did and their pensions just got wiped out again.
This is the reality, before VC funds wanted reporters to tell the truth, the company was worthwhile and was making money. Now they want reporters to lie because those companies just lose millions, tens of millions even hundreds of millions all part of the pump and dump when those empty corporations can be sold for billions.
Re:VC's don't like the press? (Score:4, Insightful)
You LIKE Fox news and CNN? (Score:1)
> wouldn't like the press either if I were a fucking douche-bag.
Since you're not a douchebag, you LIKE CNN amd Fox News?
If I were a douchebag, I'd might want to be part of the popular press.
Re: You LIKE Fox news and CNN? (Score:2)
If it isn't that one, then it must be "the other one" ... Cause you limited mind cannot handle any more than two rigid static oversimplified caricatured extremes on a one-dimensional axis? Or what are you getting at?
You're like "So, you're not a Nazi? Then you MUST be 'The Jew [startpage.com]'."
--- Thread ends here ---
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Journalist will rarely ever put you in a positive light. Unless they are paid to advertise you. Eg. An actor being interviewed for a new film, showing off a new product release, propaganda engine for a political party...
Now real Journalist will be truthful (Check News Websites Legal section to see if they marked Entertainment Only or not), however they are going to be bias, hence why it is important to gather news from many sources, as multiple points of view you will get the real picture. Also you should
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Just as long as they don't fill the other half with lies, that is progress.
Most of the time, Journalism has half truth with commentary. This is fine, as you can find additional sources with different opinions and make a good picture.
What is not fine. Is how some sources are outwardly lying. So we are trying to understand a claim, and we are getting facts that don't mix together. Basicaly forcing us to decide what is true and not. Usually from our own personal Biases.
I don't mind being wrong. When people gi
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For example back during the G. W. Bush administration I got a story about how the GOP was Giving Tax Breaks to Hummers. Which didn't make much sense at the time. So after some checking with other sources I had found that it was for companies for buying larger trunks over a particular weight (box trucks was the intent) to help businesses expand, and at the time be better environmentally as you can carry more product per gallon of gas than smaller cars. However the Hummer being a heavy personal vehicle seems to be a loophole in the law. Where Company owners will buy big SUVs like hummers and get tax breaks on them. After digging around further with multiple sources I have uncovered that it wasn't an evil plot by big oil or Hummer. But it did uncover how the tax system is greatly flawed.
Hey, lobbists for GM worked hard to create that flawed loophole that drove their H2 sales for years. Give the devil his due. If you think that flaw was an accident then you are very naive.
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The only side to root for on this one is the giant meteor hurtling towards us with apocalypse on its mind.
A pox on all their houses.
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So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:5, Insightful)
So we're back to Peter Thiel's concerns about digital journalism exploiting the Internet without limits.
Same story, different cast, now we call it cancel culture.
Amazing where this conversation started and where it ended. On the one hand, if Silicon Valley VCs had the power to do something about it, they would have. Market forces drive the worst excesses of digital journalism, the need for attention is essential to their business model. In most cases, distribution and persistence are more important than accuracy.
OTOH, this somehow morphed into a discussion about criticism of VC capital. That tells you just about everything you need to know about journalistic ethics right there, any form of introspection is seen as an attack that gets quickly derailed. Examining this with a critical eye and pushing for fundamental changes goes against their business interests. And journalists are fiercely protective of this model.
This problem isn't going away. An ad-supported business model driven by attention will seek it in the most efficient manner. There are no new channels for finding customers willing to pay for quality content, the opportunity for that was shut down a long time ago and the people pushing for it were exiled from the industry.
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It's basically sociopaths complaining that people reporting the shit they did is making people not like them, and that's now how the game is supposed to be played.
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Would be true if it was limited to VCs and such other "elites". But the press nowadays attacks even complete nobodies, ruining lives of random people who made a stupid 30-second mistake, or even did something that was completely reasonable in the context but looks really bad when taken out of context.
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Defending actual journalists is easy. Defending activists in someone's media department is not a simple task.
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Activists are not journalists. Full stop.
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That's been going on for decades, at least in the British press. Not the respectable parts, mostly the newspapers.
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By press you mean "twitter brigade".
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By "press", he just means "anyone I don't agree with".
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It's basically sociopaths complaining that people reporting the shit they did is making people not like them.
You are only partially correct. It is basically sociopaths in one field complaining that sociopaths in other field exploit gullible people to make a living. In 2020 you have to be living under a rock to not realize that balanced and factual reporting is dead, that all that is left is agenda-driven click bait and outrage porn.
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In 2020 you have to be living under a rock to not realize that balanced and factual reporting is dead, that all that is left is agenda-driven click bait and outrage porn.
If you believe that then we should probably ignore anything you say because by your own admission you know nothing. There is no way you can get facts about any situation so you are just picking whatever "alternative facts" you prefer.
Actually a lot of people do that but the premise is still wrong, the truth exists and isn't even that hard to get hold of. There are plenty of reliable sources, you only have to look and accept that the facts may be upsetting to you.
Re: So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:1)
What news sources do you consider reliable today?
Who are these magical flying unicorns?
Re: So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:4, Insightful)
Well there are a few sources that are pretty much just dry facts. Reuters and AP both specialize in that, news for markets and people who just want raw info. AP does carry a bit more editorial type content than Reuters but both are pretty dry.
For a little more context and depth The Guardian is probably the best commercial operation. BBC News is okay, particularly for non-UK news but unfortunately the quality of UK stuff has declined a bit. NHK is good for stuff about that region of the world, although like the BBC it does sometimes fail to question statements by its own government properly.
I'm sure you can find examples where all of them have failed but on the whole they are good and do issue proper corrections.
So where do you get your factual news from?
Re: So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:2)
Bias is a funny thing... it often isn't what they say but what they don't say that is important. By hiding key facts they twist a story without ever actually directly lying, per se. miles through omissions.
Point being that all of your listed sources do that. So what I do is read numerous known biased sources about a story of interest, some of them often quite out there and put the story together myself by cross checking "facts" and story arcs until something that makes sense emerges,
This takes a lot more
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I actually said in my comment that no source is perfect, but the bigger issue is your appeal to authority with "mediabiasfactcheck.com". If we look into that site we see it is an amateur effort with dubious methodology.
The reports are dubious too, for example he lists some examples of claims that were challenged but doesn't differentiate between sources that publish corrections and those which don't.
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Your fact check source is pretty questionable. To save everyone else the clicks, I decided to deep dive into one of the bias examples. One of eight for the Guardian. It called a statement false because it stated government support of an agency went down by more than it did. Why? Because it used government budget numbers from the actual government budget, not counting the emergency funds allocated by the government. Why were funds allocated? To make up for less revenue from the public than expected.
I'
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I'm not sure which is more honest. If my DMV's funding is cut by 50%, and then the government has to write a check to bulk up their funds because people stop renewing licenses cause they're staying home with COVID, I don't see how that doesn't make the 50% reduction still true
I asked ten people to pay $10 each, which I wanted to use to fund you. Your budget was thus $100.
Only five of them paid up, so I've given you $50 that I've managed to find from other sources.
Has your budget dropped by 50% or are you actually getting the same funding that you were promised?
You're definitely getting the support you were promised, so claiming otherwise would be a lie.
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Re: So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:1)
There are several. Fareed Zakaria comes to mind.
Re:So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:5, Insightful)
And one of the keys that I look for are citations of real people, not unnamed sources. Some editors are ethical about such citations, requiring that there actually must be beating hearts who are the "unnamed sources" while others do not.
Actual people cited in controversial articles are often then categorized as being pro/con $citation, leading to things like being fired, doxxed, or social media-bombed by both real and imagined humans. Makes for a great day if you're a named source. The temptation (to save your job, reputation, etc) is therefore to be unnamed.
Investors don't like things they can't control, and only rarely can they control the press. No coder wants a variable called $things_go_random_from_here.
Re: So we're back to Peter Thiel (Score:1)
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There oughta be a law [aclu.org].
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In 2020 you have to be living under a rock to not realize that balanced and factual reporting is dead, that all that is left is agenda-driven click bait and outrage porn.
To the extent that this is true, it has always been true. Everyone has a bias, everyone has an agenda. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about the origins of news (town criers, for example) or the supposed golden era (whenever you think that was) or today, news is always sensationalized in order to get attention, and reported with a slant in order to appease whoever is in charge of the news.
Another thing that's true is that vulture capitalists have exacerbated this situation by investing in media [monetizingmedia.com] out
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"Balanced and factual reporting" is impossible. Honest reporting isn't. If I catch a source lying to me, I stop trusting it. But this definition of lying is pretty strict, and doesn't include "not telling the whole story". Usually the news I've been able to check has been honest in that particularly restrictive sense. You still need multiple sources to start to understand the whole story, and many sources are so narrowly focused that it isn't worth the effort. This is probably one benefit of libel law
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It's basically sociopaths complaining that people reporting the shit they did is making people not like them, and that's now how the game is supposed to be played.
We saw it in action during gamergate. Gamers literally started off by complaining about journalist's ethics, and the gaming press responded with how gamers are harassing people.
After their advertisers gave them a hiding, the gaming press took heed and wisely decided to not pursue the issue any more for virtue points. I expect them same to happen here: if the journalists go too far in their attacks, advertisers might step in again and pull the money.
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I can't believe that after all this time people still think that GamerGate was about "ethics in games journalism", especially since the claim at the base of it has been so thoroughly debunked. That's why I'm going to assume you are just pushing that lie for your own sinister reasons.
It's interesting how the attack in ad revenue failed so quickly and completely. Advertisers apparently understand the market better than some people thought.
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I can't believe that after all this time people still think that GamerGate was about "ethics in games journalism", especially since the claim at the base of it has been so thoroughly debunked. That's why I'm going to assume you are just pushing that lie for your own sinister reasons.
What lie? That gamers started off by complaining about ethics in journalists? That's completely true - the very first thing was a complaint about ethics. Or do you have a link to something older than the complaint about ethics? Yeah, I thought so.
It's interesting how the attack in ad revenue failed so quickly and completely. Advertisers apparently understand the market better than some people thought.
They did indeed - see how quickly the gaming press had to fall in line once the advertisers pulled the money
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I'm not getting into that one again, she has suffered enough. Turns our shitty ex-boyfriends are not reliable sources of information.
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I recall that people were being harassed on all sides.
I've also noticed many of the people trying to pretend gamers are misogynist harassers have since been found guilty in court of predatory sexual offences.
In hindsight I've concluded that most of the criticisms of gamers came from people projecting their own abusive nature onto others.
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Or they are people who aren't terribly sociopathic by themselves who are just playing the sociopath game as they understand it. the venture capitalists merely think that is how the game is played.
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Thiel does have a beef with journalists. The fine people over at Gawker outed him as a homosexual while he was in Saudi Arabia. Thiel then gave Hulk Hogan a blank check to bankrupt them over ignoring a court order to remove his sex tape. The same Gawker who claimed that looking at leaked celebrity nudes was the same as sexual assault.
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I'd like to point out at this juncture that so-called 'cancel culture' has never actually cancelled anything. You see some people get 'cancelled', but they're usually STILL on social media complaining about it. They still have their platforms, they still get interviewed by newspapers. It's just some weird label that gets attached to them that sloughs off in a couple of weeks, maybe a year. There's no repentance or apologies, and a bunch of stans carry water for these people until the whole thing blows over.
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Tell that to Alec Holowka you fucking cretin.
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A guy that had mental disorders and depression throughout his life? He wasn't 'cancelled', he was exposed, and he made his own decision to end his life. That's a tragedy, but nobody 'cancelled' him. If he'd had better access to mental health care, maybe he'd be here today, who knows.
And if he hadn't killed himself, I'm sure he'd still be making games today, and selling them, just like 99% of game developers that are revealed to be rapists and scumbags.
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Nobody cancelled him? He was named on multiple media sites, harassed on and offline, and former colleagues publicly disowned him.
Fuck you and your victim shaming. Fuck your malicious self-imposed ignorance. Cancel culture does exist, and you're a cunt for pretending otherwise.
What to do about it? (Score:3)
and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it.
Sounds like a conspiracy, getting together the heads of anti-social media to go after a particular group. If the object was to shoot yourself in the foot at the same time you're dancing about trying to defend yourself you don't need more regulation, congratulations. You succeeded.
Rich powerful elites hate being exposed? (Score:1)
Who would have thought it.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re:So has /. become Jezebel? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: So has /. become Jezebel? (Score:2)
Well, this IS a news site, and we ARE techies that use financing.
So VCs are like rhe vultures always circling above us. And the news is our shaded glasses that let us see them.
Sure, they won't go down on us as long as we can walk on our own. But we still would like to damn know what it is exactly, that we have to deal with when we will happen to be in a pickle with no oasis for another day's walk.
Not Press, not journalists, not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are some actual journalists out there these days. e.g. read Matt Taibi's stuff.
This is a case of Trotskyite activists who on one day will champion "privacy", but on the next steal people's private information in an attempt to get clicks. It's not journalism, it's not news, and it's not The Press. They view themselves as warriors and are using advertising dollars to fund their little war. They will dox people, they will out people, and they will leak private conversations that were obtained more illegally than anything Assange is accused of doing.
Beware - they are calling people who are prominent in tech and asking for information "on background" and then immediately turning around and publishing that same information. Some of 'our' people have recorded calls to confirm this.
Make no mistake, these agitprop media types are in a war for power and playing the "all is fair" line in their heads.
They can't survive in this game without cooperating sources. Freeze them out. If they call you and you're not one of the Trotsyite activists, then you are a target. Don't let your ego trick you - you have a whole Internet to express your voice and you don't need these cretins to amplify your voice.
Re:Not Press, not journalists, not news. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's frustrating because we have three general 'news' strategies:
-Legitimate, thankless journalism where people go and explore massive volumes of boring data that has been overlooked or unavailable looking for data that is relevant for a wider audience, and then fleshing it out.
-Commercial pass-through 'news'. They just take money and a press release and publish it without any investigation or fact checking.
-Looking to fuel extreme reactions without regard for the whole story. Bonus points if the industry can play both sides of a controversy exacerbating each side's negative feelings to escalate conflict using incomplete stories, heavily editorialize 'facts', and total guesses about behind the scenes motivations dressed up as facts.
The latter two are so massively more profitable for the effort required (almost no effort, high revenue) that the first becomes more rare as it is the domain of only truly passionate journalists with dwindling investment to enable them to do their jobs.
Re: Not Press, not journalists, not news. (Score:2)
Don't forget that you need a publisher too. And like all corporate heads nowadays, they are spineless ballless pussies nowadays, that bend over backward at the slightest threat of being sued or not making a profit.
So the first group can do the greatest of jobs ... they are still being shot down and told to "keep it light and fluffy", if it's not "airtight"... which it somehow never is. (Who knows. Their own shadow might sue! ;)
I know, because that's basically my dad's situation, who regularly went undercove
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Back in the days, news companies had a lot of laywers
Reminds me of the joke:
There is only a picket fence separating Heaven and Hell. And it is in disrepair. One day, God calls the devil over and says, "We've got to fix this fence. How about splitting the cost?"
The devil replies, "You can go ahead and fix it. But I'm not paying anything."
God says, "If you don't, I'll sue you."
The devil laughs. "Don't be ridiculous. Where are you going to find an attorney?"
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.....to take on the psychos and assholes of the world...
The few news outlets that there are with budgets like the NYT have become that, looking out for their agenda more than reporting actual facts. Look at the slander they regularly put out e.g. The Covington Kids and the outright historical dishonesty e.g. the 1619 project.
That's the real problem here. It's no longer news, and it's worse than "yellow" journalism.
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It doesn't seem too hopeful, given the drastic devaluation of news in the internet era. It just doesn't seem that hard journalism can compete. I've been thinking, hesitantly, about the need for regulation of some sort. As much as it sounds like a bad idea, I can't think of anything else that could bring back the old standards. But even then, the real money was in "bait", so maybe our nostalgia is too rosy.
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I think more data about the consumption of the media has shaped strategy. Before opinion on nuance of what made good news was largely shaped by few passionate people without a lot of precise data on exactly what motivates customers to purchase or abstain from your content.
Now they know precisely how many people spend how much time and/or money on each little article or clip. Despite high ideals espoused by passionate journalism enthusiasts, the reality is that people love the low effort content just as much
Oh, you don't know what you were doing (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, yes they will. Just like they told you they would. I'm confused, are you also upset that Facebook sells your personal information?
I usually sympathize with people making poor decisions because they literally don't understand the question being asked. I make an exception for tech VCs who make all their money exploiting the fact that people don't understand what information they are agreeing to give away. Especially because this also involves people agreeing to give away information.
For the record, "on background" is not an agreement not to publish information. It's an agreement to only publish the information but not use quotes or identify the source. It's about making it easier for you to supply information without being outed as the source.
Recurring theme in journalism (Score:1)
Someone criticizes journalists and they circle the wagons, defend each other and dogpile on the critic. Queue a string of "news" articles attacking them. Defending their noble profession justifies any means.
Remember when CNN doxxed someone for a meme? "forgo their personal ethics" indeed.
Ironically the journalists are once again proving their critics right. What a bunch of petty narcissists.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nope, don't remember that. However, I did see over the weekend the Fox tabloid deliberately altered a picture of Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell [gizmodo.com] and Melania so it did not include the con artist.
Then there was the manipulated image the Fox tabloid ran about the protests in Seattle in which they were eventually shamed into retracting [forbes.com].
So yes, you are correct. These journalists are once again proving the crit
Re: (Score:1)
Sadly, Fox is not the only one. All of the big news media do this type of manipulative "reporting." MSNBC is just as bad, if not worse, on the other side of the isle. CNN is almost as bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Recurring theme in journalism (Score:2)
Fox is priding itself in "keeping the balance" (of that manipulating sort of thing) all by itself though. They openly told that to Jon Steward, about a decade ago.
Re: (Score:2)
I would have loved to dig down and read both sides of the Fox News story. But:
Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.seattletimes.com/" on this server.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny thing, all we keep hearing is, "But Obama!" "But Hillary!" Apparently that the best defense people can come up to protect the con artist.
Re: (Score:2)
deliberately altered a picture of Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell
I don't know what I'm supposed to see here. The video shows two shots of Epstein and Maxwell. One with Trump and one without. But they are clearly different photographs. Would it be too much to assume that Fox simply chose the one without Trump in the frame to publish? It's not like they had to edit anything (both photos have been published).
Making a mountain out of a molehill perhaps?
Re: (Score:2)
They are the same photo. Stop making excuses. The tabloid even admitted they deliberately altered the photo [rawstory.com].
Or are you going to call them a liar as well?
Re: (Score:2)
In a statement on Monday, a Fox News representative said: "On Sunday, July 5, a report on Ghislaine Maxwell during FOX News Channel's America's News HQ mistakenly eliminated President Donald Trump from a photo alongside then Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell. We re
Got (Score:2)
Neojournalists need some big gotcha to raise their image from the crowd. So whenever someone new gets their 15 minutes of fame, it's an Oklahoma land rush to scour their twitter for some off-color tweet from 10 years ago.
If they're lucky, they get to be a talking head that evening on CNN.
This is all before day one of hitting someone for political reasons.
Translation (Score:2)
"angel" (Score:2)
Can we stop raping that word?
"Leech" is a perfectly fitting word, for a lifeform that does not work or produce anything of their own, but uses the work and products of others to feed itself.
Preparing a nice bait is not "work". Because what is that bait made of, but the products of the work of the last victims. And the goal is to get it back and then a lot more, anyway. That is the only reason they keep doing that.
Venture capitalists fighting with journalists? (Score:2)
Not a story. (Score:2)
None of these people are interesting at all. Hard pass.
"Luggage startup" (Score:2)
I'm curious as to what this "luggage startup" has to offer. I could think of a few things I could improve in luggage, but something tells me they'd either be illegal or have no market. I want to be amazed by this luggage startup, but something tells me they don't have much to offer.
what to do about it (Score:2)
The question being asked by these investors is what to do about reporters who are critical of their CEOs in a "cancel culture" environment.
Well, it's not that hard. First, try to be better,use criticism to fuel improvement. Second, don't put undue pressure on or fire a CEO for being criticized if you feel it's unfair. Support your people if you believe in them.
Last, consider discouraging running PR/marketing/company culture via social media.
Easy enough (Score:1)
All they have to do is buy up the NY Times and other news organizations and fire the staff. Then put in real journalists instead of brain washed leftist activists. You know, publish real news again. Show the Presidents achievements and not publish outright lies about him.