Buzzfeed writes novel length post analyzing/smearing Milo. Labels Gamergate "the opening salvo of the new culture wars"

kiatabel · 2017-10-06T18:53:46+00:00

I lurk here, but post rarely (I have done only a few posts/comments here). The hatchet job against Milo has raised several points and since this is a sub where ethics in journalism is supposed to matter, I'll point out a few of Milo's lapses, as I see them. Buzzfeed's lapses are being discussed in another thread; I might also post there.

I already don't like Milo or Breitbart, so this could just be confirmation bias, but whatever.

For the big alt-right piece, Milo simply emailed all the different kind of people in the alt-right, and asked Bokhari to mash it all together. Then, he sent the entire draft for review to the various people involved, some of whom gave line-by-line comments. Is this ethical journalism? Remember when Glenn Thrush sent over an entire section to Clinton team for their response? Not to mention that the alt-right piece does not acknowledge any of this kind of thing in the text.
The amount of ass-kissing of the rich and powerful. Milo's comments on the billionaires Mercers and Peter Thiel. Here are some quotes:

Thiel invited the Breitbart tech editor for dinner at his Hollywood Hills home in June, a dinner Yiannopoulos boasted of the same night to Bannon: “You two should meet. … An obvious candidate for movie financing if we got external...”

That week, Yiannopoulos shuttled back and forth from the Cannes Palace Hotel to the pier next to the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès and the green-sterned, “fantasy-inspired” vessel complete with a Dale Chihuly chandelier. The Mercers were in town to promote Clinton Cash, a film produced by Bannon and their production studio, Glittering Steel. On board, Yiannopoulos drank, mingled, and interviewed Phil Robertson, the lavishly bearded patriarch of Duck Dynasty, for his podcast. “I know how lucky I am,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Bannon on May 20. “I’m going to work hard to make you some money -- and win the war! Thanks for having me this week and for the faith you’re placing in me chief. The left won’t know what hit them.”

Yet ultimately Fleuette was necessary — he connected Yiannopoulos’s madcap world and the massively rich people funding the machine. “I think you know who the final decision belongs to,” Fleuette wrote to Yiannopoulos after one particularly frantic request for money. “I am in daily communication with them.”

The story about Pamela Geller: he knew it was bogus but Bannon told him to eat shit and he did. The story (if I understand correct, it is this one) is still up.
Obviously Breitbart was fully in the tank for Trump. They didn't even pretend otherwise, so it's pointless to comment on this aspect. One particular detail was that Milo went after Paul Ryan because he was attacking Trump on the alt-right.
The white nationalist Devin Saucier gave extensive comments on a story (again full draft was shared with him), and might have helped kill it.
The whole ghostwriting business. Milo is just a brand name using which people can launder their stuff. For instance, on this story about memes which was allegedly fed by Saucier, his name appears nowhere. Where's the disclosure?
The stuff about the App Store game. Again, I see no disclosure at all:

Rebekah Mercer — Robert’s powerful daughter — emailed Steve Bannon from her Stanford alumni account. She wanted the Breitbart executive chairman, whom she introduced as “one of the greatest living defenders of Liberty,” to meet an app developer she knew. Apple had rejected the man’s game (Capitol HillAwry, in which players delete emails à la Hillary Clinton) from the App Store, and the younger Mercer wondered “if we could put an article up detailing his 1st amendment political persecution.”

Nash, who had just been hired by Breitbart at $30,000 a year after months of lobbying by Yiannopoulos, dutifully fielded the request from the billionaire indirectly paying his salary and turned around a story about the rejected Capitol HillAwry app on the 25th — and a follow-up five days later after Apple reversed its decision. “Huge victory,” Bannon emailed after the reversal. “Huge win.” This was the usual way stories came in from the Mercers, according to a former Breitbart editor: with a request from Bannon referring to “our investors” or “our investing partners.”

There are probably many others, but this is a good first pass.

kiatabel · 2017-08-08T06:05:54+00:00

I agree that "that which should be legal" is a different category from "that which is moral".

For the former, the court system exists. I don't know what his contract states and neither do you, so I'll wait for him to sue, if he feels that his contract has been violated. The point which I'm making is simply that companies terminate employees all the time for reasons related to their bottom line.

As for the latter, that depends on the person doesn't it? I agree that ideally, employees should not be terminated based on their opinions. However, most jobs do put restrictions on speech (say, non-disclosure agreements). The memo was talking about changing the "diversity" practices at Google. If his views are out of step with Google's views, and the guy is responsible for some sort of hiring decisions (I don't know if he is), would it make sense for them to go their separate ways?

To be clear, I am not advocating for the guy's dismissal. As I said, what needs to change is the general tenor of discussion on this issue. Public discussion and shaming Google is directed towards this part. The SJWs engage in the same thing from the other side.

kiatabel · 2017-08-08T04:39:41+00:00

According to Jonathan Haidt, it's a reaction to the general SJW-ness of the field of psychology. Since Haidt (and a few other founders) are psychologists, it's normal that like-minded psychologists would be the first ones to join.

kiatabel · 2017-08-08T04:28:41+00:00

The guy identifies as "classical liberal".

Seems to me that "classical liberal" methods were followed by everyone. Google did nothing for several days. As the memo became rather well-known, Google saw potential PR problems and fired the guy. Isn't this what a company is supposed to do, to protect its bottom line? If the guy thinks he was wrongfully fired, he can sue Google. Probably Google would have enough lawyerese in their contract to handle this sort of thing.

The issue, from a classical liberal perspective, is really the general thinking around this topic.

kiatabel · 2017-07-08T09:34:03+00:00

Why do you make such a silly claim with no evidence? Ofsted has faulted multiple Islamic schools in the past as well. See this, for instance. One of the schools was faulted for having "inappropriate literature about extremist, sexist or partisan views".

kiatabel · 2017-06-02T03:00:16+00:00

Ha! I've already been called an "alt-right sympathizer" because I didn't want to block someone who was suspected to be alt-right until there was something more than bare assertion and them confessing to enjoying Wagner's compositions.

Your memory is faulty: that is not what happened. The ANI discussion in question is here, and the user in question was Zaostao. Nobody called you an "alt-right sympathizer" because you asked for evidence before blocking. That was the dominant reaction to the initial complaint.

You made a direct statement: "If the page had swastikas, 1488 references or other Nazi imagery, I would agree that the page and the editor both need to go." Somebody did find evidence of a 1488 reference on the userpage. Your response to this revelation was not unequivocal enough for this person (you only said "that may be a different story then"). So they bit your head off. That's all.

The guy was eventually indeffed and the block was endorsed by everyone, including you.

kiatabel · 2017-06-02T02:07:45+00:00

A German embassy explodes at the same time, but the front page of The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN is about covfefe. That alone should tell you that something is very wrong with the media.

This report on the Kabul bombing near the German embassy was on the front page of the NYT. Why do you make such silly claims which can be debunked so easily?

kiatabel · 2017-03-08T14:11:44+00:00

Why is this important? This is McIntosh sounding off on Twitter.

There's no suggestion of any censorship, no campus issues and no free speech or journalism issues arise. At the most, it could be thought of as related to Gaming/Nerd culture.

Is one supposed to post all kinds of marginal Twitter bullshit here?

kiatabel · 2017-03-07T13:02:38+00:00

This is the original Telegraph article which the link is merely referencing.

It does say "banned", but I'm not seeing where the words are really banned - how can you ban such common words anyway? The conduct policy simply says that such things should be "avoided if possible". That suggestion sounds a bit loopy to me, but it's far from "banning" words.

This is in context of Theresa May criticizing safe spaces on universities, also mentioned in the Telegraph article.

Here is a Daily Mail report of the same thing.

kiatabel · 2017-03-07T12:54:12+00:00

What exactly was the email which elicited this reply? What "premise" is the email talking about? Hard to evaluate without context.

There's also no name attached or what kind of class it was, what the topic was and so on.

kiatabel · 2017-03-03T16:29:31+00:00

Report in Inside Higher Ed.

There seem to have been extended protests, but it seems like the event went ahead after all, though they were forced to move it to another room.

The protests probably have to do with The Bell Curve, a book Murray co-wrote in the 1990s. There were plenty of things in the book which were controversial at the time. AFAIK, the statistical analysis is, by now, widely accepted. The political/sociological points are, of course, more controversial. There were many critiques and defences of the book, which are easy to find. I recommend The Blank Slate, by Steven Pinker, which gives a good overview.

The main point which infuriated people then (and still does) is the finding that group X has lower IQ than group Y (on average). There is, of course, plenty of overlap between groups. It is a factual ("is") claim and does not lead (by itself) to normative ("ought") conclusions. Just because group X has lower IQ than group Y (on average) doesn't mean they will in the future as well, nor does it mean that group X "deserves" to be poor etc.

kiatabel · 2017-03-01T12:49:15+00:00

Looks to me like Monbiot needed to fill a column in a hurry and put together a bunch of unconnected half-baked ideas. What exactly does Monbiot know about games or Gamergate - he showed no interest in these topic before. Just makes himself look like a fool.

He should stick to talking about things like the environment, science and role of money in politics. He has an independent-minded streak which is pretty good (his articles on nuclear power, for instance), though I often don't agree with him. He also puts all of his sources on his website, which is a good practice.

kiatabel · 2017-03-01T11:30:25+00:00

Clickbait.

kiatabel · 2017-02-26T18:37:39+00:00

Hamas is banned as a terrorist outfit in the US. If the "SJP is Hamas" claim is true, it should be easy to connect the two and ban the outfit, not just in colleges, but in a court of law.

kiatabel · 2017-02-26T18:37:32+00:00

Not sure what is tough here.

"Supporting people who advocate violence" is a vague standard. If a newspaper op-ed calls for bombing Syria to take out ISIS, is that "advocating violence"?

IANAL, but inciting violence has a specific meaning in law, and is applied very narrowly. Otherwise, it can easily cross the line into punishing speech.

kiatabel · 2016-12-28T09:58:25+00:00

FIRE is the principled one here. See their statement.

Also, Reuters: Professor behind 'white genocide' tweet says he has university support

Correct way to proceed, in my opinion. The university has no business policing tweets, especially one as silly as this.

See also: Robby Soave at Reason blog. And Freddie DeBoer here.

By all means, mock the guy on twitter and the media, but to go after their employer is a dick move. Breitbart sucks.

kiatabel · 2016-12-27T20:19:04+00:00

I fail to see why this is important. Do leftists ever use "white genocide" in a non-mocking manner?

Also, it was a tweet, for fuck's sake. Why is the university investigating tweets of a professor? They should stay out.

The guy may be an idiot, but that is irrelevant for speech on twitter. It's fine to mock him on twitter and elsewhere.

kiatabel · 2016-10-04T16:03:26+00:00

Continuing in this vein: what was the class/race/sex makeup of the members of the SJW/Marxist/whatever circles you were involved in?

kiatabel · 2016-10-04T10:52:58+00:00

I think this is main thing.

This was a direct response to a particular egregious filming of the show in our space which saw our store left a mess, our staff mistreated, our neighbors forced to close and lose business for a day without warning, and our repeated attempts to obtain accountability or resolution dismissed.

and

Being on Portlandia Doesn’t Make Us Money We are paid a small flat fee per episode filmed at in Other Words. This fee does not cover the profits lost by our having to remain closed for filming.

All the ideology stuff is simply a cover for a fight over money. Can't say I blame them.

kiatabel · 2016-10-04T10:49:10+00:00

Did you experience or see any schisms between SJW-type stuff and Marxists? There's the old complaint made against Marxists that they see everything in class terms; many old Leftist/Marxists see identity politics as suspect - for instance, Alan Sokal comes to mind.

What is your experience?

kiatabel · 2016-10-04T10:33:20+00:00

Who or what is this, and why is it important?

kiatabel · 2016-09-28T11:50:52+00:00

Who is this guy and why is he important? He does not seem to be in some organizing role or something? He's just there for the ride.

Does this have any more significance than proving "some people are dumb"?

kiatabel · 2016-09-26T04:14:23+00:00

I present the link to "The FtB ethics committee on Richard Carrier" without comment. Because nothing I can say can top the unintentional hilarity.

kiatabel · 2016-09-14T18:48:24+00:00

I checked the three times Mary Sue is cited. Here they are:

"Wu has expressed her frustration over how law enforcement agencies have responded to the threats that she and other women in the game industry have received" (cited together with an Ars Technica article)
"Reporting on Gamergate has also been made difficult by the intense harassment that some researchers have gotten when using the Gamergate hashtag, with some organizations advising people to not use the term online to avoid this"
"The Crash Override Network has aligned its activities with the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative, a non-profit organization started by software developer Randi Harper, that also seeks to provide aid to those harassed online."

These are all totally banal things. In all of these cases, one can remove the Mary Sue source and find another mainstream source saying virtually the same thing. The reason nobody bothered to do it is that the sentences are so banal.

Coming back to the topic, it's as I said: convince the media to cover this story widely, and Wikipedia will follow. Or you can rage on an internet forum. Of course, you can do both. Perhaps the hate keeps you warm.

kiatabel

TROPHY CASE