Good piece on internet-driven harassment by ⁦@lyzl⁩ (with ⁦@chick_in_kiev⁩).
I have three thoughts.
1) Harassment is a very different experience for harassers, especially online. Toss some death threats in an email, click send, you’re done. lyz.substack.com/p/when-the-mob…
1 cont) But for the harassed, it’s an unyielding flood. Social media becomes hard to use, as normal notifications get drowned out. Email too. They go after family and coworkers, so even if you can take it, others in your life—who didn’t do anything—often have trouble with it.
2) “No one has to work in journalism.”
That’s true, of course. But we as a society don’t want journalism controlled by harassment mobs, where only the people they leave alone, or those with especially thick skins, can do it. Gives them too much power, bad for media and discourse.
3) “X has it worse, so stop complaining.”
True, but asinine. Someone always has it worse. Genocide exists, but that does not somehow make assault ok. Harassment is bad because it’s bad, even though some harassment is worse than others, and there are things worse than harassment.
In case it isn’t clear, this isn’t about me. I’ve gotten hate mail and mean tweets, sure, but I wouldn’t call that harassment.
A bunch of people sending death threats and threats against your kids with pictures of your house, however... That’s over the line.
Last thought: Many of the people who pooh-pooh stories of harassment cast themselves as victims and would scream “cancel culture” over a fraction of what some of the harassed experience, so take their attempts to dismiss these concerns with a grain of salt.
(END)

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More from @NGrossman81

1 Apr
Why is anyone surprised Trump didn't get infrastructure done?
He was an incompetent president, he's lazy—watched a lot of TV, got energized for little besides showy fights—often thinks very short-term (eg COVID), and corrupt. So he managed to cut his own taxes and that's about it
An infrastructure bill is hard. You need to balance various interests. You need to get it through Congress, leaning on spending-skeptical Republicans. Competent White House staff helps.
"But he's good at building things!"
No he's not. That's just more image creation you fell for.
If you honestly assess Donald Trump, you recognize that he was way more motivated by making money for himself than by helping the American people (including his voters).
Once it was clear an infrastructure corruption-fest wouldn't happen, he dropped it.
Read 4 tweets
31 Mar
QAnon believes *people in power they don't like* are engaged in sex trafficking. When people in power they like are caught engaging in it or similar things, they come up with convoluted explanations about how he went undercover to stop it, got framed by the real perpetrators, etc
QAnon diverged from Pizzagate & other antecedent conspiracy theories about secret cabals of powerful pedophiles by making up saviors—in particular Donald Trump—who were supposedly fighting it from the inside.
To maintain the theory, anything bad those saviors do must be dismissed
Despite its many strands, QAnon has a core of political/cultural tribalism and Trump fan fiction.
If there's a good "us" fighting an evil "them," no evidence of malfeasance by a prominent member of "us" can convince believers, because it would lead them to question core beliefs.
Read 5 tweets
18 Mar
Don't change the filibuster to allow the majority to legislate, Dems, or Republicans will go all-out on the judiciary, which is a thing that hasn't been happening but could, or has been but it's Harry Reid's fault, or... look there's no real argument, but I don't want you to, ok?
Saying that a GOP-run Congress will be able to pass legislation isn't a threat if:
1) You're pro-democracy and think GOP electoral victories should allow them to pass legislation.
2) You've watched the GOP change rules and push things through by bare majorities when it wants to.
The argument is not "we reluctantly accept that you get a minority veto in exchange for us getting a minority veto because a minority veto is inherently good." It's "we can do what we want with bare majorities, and want to be able to stop you from doing what you want regardless."
Read 4 tweets
17 Mar
*cough* New York Post *cough*
Sorry. Had something stuck in my throat.
The NY Post's October story about Hunter Biden's laptop smelled from the jump. The main source was Rudy Giuliani—whose story of how he got the info changed a few times—and Steve Bannon also helped.
Multiple NY Post reporters refused to have their name associated with the report.
It wasn't the first time the NY Post published questionable info about Hunter Biden.
In December 2019, I mapped out a smear campaign that ended up in a NY Post article, tracing the origins to something an American (not Russian) private investigator made up
arcdigital.media/revealed-new-d…
Read 4 tweets
17 Mar
A lot still unknown about the tragic shootings in Atlanta that killed 8, including 6 Asian women. Could've been targeted because they're Asian, because they're women, or because it was a massage parlor. Nothing is lost by waiting for more info before drawing conclusions.
1/2
But whether or not the Atlanta attack was driven by anti-Asian bigotry—we'll likely learn more soon—anti-Asian violence rose substantially in 2020 relative to 2019.
That's a serious problem, whatever the motivations for the massage parlor killings.
2/2
AP: apnews.com/article/victim…
UPDATE: Atlanta killer's statements make it seem like his attack was more about sex (women, massage parlors) than race (Asians).
His word is not the only piece of evidence, so still worth waiting. And as noted above, anti-Asian violence an issue regardless
Read 5 tweets
16 Mar
I'm pro-accuracy & glad WaPo issued a correction.
Yet how different is meaning of "fraud" from "dishonesty," or "national hero" from "most important job in the country"?
If article said investigator recounted it, rather than attribute to Trump with quote marks, would've been ok. Image
Putting words in quotation marks that are not confirmed as accurate quotations is wrong, no question. WaPo deserves criticism for that.
The corrections just don't strike me as changing the meaning of the article nearly as much as those trying to discredit it claim.
Important to note that WaPo's correction concerns a conversation between Trump and Georgia's election investigator, not the long recording of a call with Trump pressuring GA SecState Brad Raffensperger to change the state's vote, despite efforts to use former to discredit latter. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets

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