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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Yeah, anytime someone brags about having "proof" but they can't share it for whatever reason, the vast majority of the time they are full of complete shit. 

 

Especially if, as the author and the Escapist assert, the people whose identities it affects are willing to have it shared, but the publication has taken the higher ground of protecting them from themselves and simply making their accusations without it.

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Yeah, anytime someone brags about having "proof" but they can't share it for whatever reason, the vast majority of the time they are full of complete shit. 

Heh, in my world that's completely normal, for example when presenting some new results at a conference or in a seminar that are not yet peer reviewed. This is done to prevent other people scooping discoveries, for example. It is expected in these cases that the proof will be presented when appropriate.

Stupid bloody mindedness is also a possible explanation for the behaviour of the escapist :)

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Derek Smart's latest blog post is brilliant. Using an excessive amount of laughable strawmen...
 

  • I have never written a Glassdoor review about this or any other company.
  • I have never been the quoted source for anything written in The Escapist article, nor the other upcoming reports I have been made aware of recently.
  • I have never had any prior contact with the author of The Escapist article, let alone during the GamerGate uprising.
  • I am not involved in GamerGate and have have been. In fact, look no further than the SPJAirplay event I was invited to as a neutral party.
  • I have never made any defamatory statements (truth is an absolute defense btw) against any of the creators of this project.
  • I have never “doxed” the Roberts Family. Despite people misinterpreting what that even means, posting links to online images, is not doxing. This is not doxing.

 

...Smart basically confirms the central accusation made towards him in this whole disaster: That he went from door to door to desperately peddle his sources to anyone willing to run with the story.
 

For the purposes of full disclosure: What I did do, as I’ve been doing since July, was made contact with some mainstream (names withheld as per legal) media sources, trying to get them to investigate this project. This was as per my July 10th blog, interstellar-discourse in which, right at the top, I had called for the investigation of this project and all its creators. This was because I had already been made aware of most of what is now coming to light as portrayed in The Escapist article.

As part of that effort, I gave them some of my credible sources, along with an overview of what I had uncovered and why I simply wasn’t the one to investigate this any further, due in part by information that I had access to and which was better off being in the hands of those same people (the media) who helped hype this project to what it is today.

 

Smart claims no prior contact to Fogarty. Which is unnecessary to peddle his sources to the Escapist, of course. And some Fogarty tweets sounded a lot like those sources were handed down to her 'as credible'.

I honestly can't link to that entire blog entry though. The ridiculous punctuation alone would kill you. 

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GG is currently jumping through hoops to justify doxxing people who gave money to Randi Harper via Patreon despite their 'official' stance on doxxing being bad and nobody deserving it. So far they're at, "but she's a bad person."

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Can someone explain who Randi Harper is, the first hit I get in Google is Encyclopedia Dramatica and the rest seem to be of the same ilk.

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She's a programmer, and the maker of the GG auto-blocker (which then started their "Free speech!" and "blocking is bullying!" bullshit). She's also doing work with anti-harassment folks.

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It's so weird to me how Free Speech has gone from non censorship to "everyone has to listen to me" in certain circles. I got into an argument with a guy who was defending the doxxing and he used that George Carlin quote about knobs on the radio to justify his position. I couldn't quite express to him that the points he was making actually are stronger arguments against his conclusions than for them.

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It's so weird to me how Free Speech has gone from non censorship to "everyone has to listen to me" in certain circles. I got into an argument with a guy who was defending the doxxing and he used that George Carlin quote about knobs on the radio to justify his position. I couldn't quite express to him that the points he was making actually are stronger arguments against his conclusions than for them.

 

Yeah, it's very odd that a handful of attributed rights as consumers, especially "The customer has a right to be heard" and "The customer is always right," have bled into certain subcultures' understanding of their First Amendment rights, which are then applied not only to interactions with the government and to corporations but with individuals as well. It's all rolled up into this vague nebula of beliefs amounting to entitlement, and it's so poorly understood by everyone that it's impossible to defuse or debunk.

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I haven't really followed the Star Citizen/Escapist mess closely, but it strikes me as a little weird to position it as "consumer protection" or whatever. Star Citizen has been raising tons of money for a long time now, and it's always seemed pretty likely that the people sinking thousands of dollars into this thing are bound to be disappointed no matter what comes out.

 

Yeah, it's very odd that a handful of attributed rights as consumers, especially "The customer has a right to be heard" and "The customer is always right," have bled into certain subcultures' understanding of their First Amendment rights, which are then applied not only to interactions with the government and to corporations but with individuals as well. It's all rolled up into this vague nebula of beliefs amounting to entitlement, and it's so poorly understood by everyone that it's impossible to defuse or debunk.

 

It's not like GamerGate believes those things either, at least when it applies to anyone other than themselves. Their entire reason for being is to try to silence anyone who criticizes games for reasons they deem invalid.

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It's not like GamerGate believes those things either, at least when it applies to anyone other than themselves. Their entire reason for being is to try to silence anyone who criticizes games for reasons they deem invalid.

 

Yeah, but I think it's both malicious (they know they're doing it) and ignorant (they don't realize they're doing it) in nature, in differing amounts. I can't really comment on the maliciousness, so I comment on the ignorance.

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Derek Smart chose a really interesting name for the people who are not swallowing his and the Escapist's 'investigation' into Star Citizen.

 

It is... wait for it... White Knights.

 

Not kidding. Call Smart any names you like (and I certainly will) but he knows how to summon the gamergate crowd to his cause, that's for certain.

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http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gamergaters-are-targeting-people-who-were-victims-of-the-patreon-hack

 

Short version: douche canoe used Patreon leak to harass and threaten Randi's hundreds of patreon supporters by mass emailing/ JAQing off the most innocent questions; handing them the fairest Breitbart links you could possibly think of; proclaiming tearfully that he mayyyyy have to contact their employers because he's an ethical journalist and somesuch. He's posting his victories (i.e. the people allegedly coerced into stopping their support to Randi Harper) to his blog.

 

A number of regular KiA frequenters somehow managed to consider this to be the clear cut harassment that it is, so douche "I obviously don't intend to damage our movement" canoe isn't left with a lot of friends at the time.

 

Positive side effect: I think Randi Harper's patreon has gone up at least 10% i.e. two milestones these last days.

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A number of regular KiA frequenters somehow managed to consider this to be the clear cut harassment that it is, so douche "I obviously don't intend to damage our movement" canoe isn't left with a lot of friends at the time.

 

KiA is forced by the rules of Reddit to call a lot of things doxing that they might not necessarily consider to actually be doxing. I saw discussion of doxing documents there when I used to visit it and they were always talked about in this kind of "we can't post them here because of the rules, we don't want to get this place banned, but if you want them, you know... wink wink nudge nudge" way.

 

I don't think KiA is a great place to get GamerGate's opinion on doxing. The rules of Reddit have a chilling effect on discourse around the subject.

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More than that, firing him is the ethical thing to do because he's not a true fan/gamer.

And of course the comments later become dominated by a console vs PC battle of vomit.

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More than that, firing him is the ethical thing to do because he's not a true fan/gamer.

 

The anger wasn't simply because that the writer made a mistake indicating them to not be a "true gamer". A large part of it appears to be that the writer self-described as an "Uncharted veteran" after playing a game show demo of Uncharted 2's HD remaster, and mistaking it for Uncharted 4. Lots of angry internet people are interpreting this as a deliberate lie.

Also, the article appears to have been written by a her, not a him (Brenna Hiller).

Edit: For those interested, here's a link to a site that mirrored the article before it was taken down.

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A large part of it appears to be that the writer self-described as an "Uncharted veteran"

 

Although she didn't, she says something along the lines of "the Uncharted veteran in me immediately spots the pole as an exit and shimmies up it". Even accepting these commenters' stringent definition of "veteran" as someone who knows every inch of the games off by heart, it's quite obviously not a claim of veteranship. She's simply saying that she's played the games enough to spot a climbable thing.

 

Outside of that, she was playing the game with Japanese VO so she wouldn't have been able to identify the sequence as easily, plus she was at a Tokyo game show with non-English signage, and it's the remastered version so she wouldn't have played exactly that game before anyway. Aside from all this, she spends a lot of the review saying it feels like a rehash and that she's not convinced the graphics are cutting edge, so her critical instincts are on point despite this understandable error.

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TotalBiscuit has disclosed information from his recent doctors' trips.

 

While their targeted range for cancer was successful, it spread to his liver, and diagnosis so far is that it is inoperable. Life expectancy is 2 to 3 years right now.

 

So... As much as I don't like the guy, that's rough news.

 

Edit - Fuck cancer.

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