Keith Olbermann Thinks I'm an Idiot | Hacker News Reader

Keith Olbermann Thinks I'm an Idiot

20bits.com

29 pointsjfarmer17 comments

It's cliché at this point to say that people like Keith Olbermann and the bloggers who first broke this story aren't interested in the truth, but instead their own aggrandizement.

It may be cliché, but it's important enough to say, and to repeat.

This could also be a story about how I met my co-founder at Everlane (http://www.everlane.com), oddly enough.

I suspect that anyone who Keith Olbermann thinks is an idiot, is actually a genius...

Well sure. If you have the same news as everyone else, there's competition. If you want eyeballs, you have to have news that no one else has!

As for the fallout, Polls was down throughout this episode. Because it spread virally by posting people's votes to their newsfeed, the three or four days of down time halted all growth. Traffic dropped to nothing and never recovered.

This is really interesting. It makes sense the way you described it, but I didn't realize how fragile growth can be. So much for "any press is good press."

> This looked less like someone earnestly plotting to kill Obama and more like a bored kid phoning in a fake bomb threat to their high school.

It doesn't matter, they take all threats seriously. Two children in a UK school sent death threats. The US secret service tracked them down, and sent English police to see them.

At the bottom:

>I'll stop myself from commenting on the "state of the media" and such. It's cliché at this point to say that people like Keith Olbermann and the bloggers who first broke this story aren't interested in the truth, but instead their own aggrandizement. (Oops.)

and the next paragraph:

>The four of us shut down Bumba about a month later. Matt, Joe, and Aman, along with Jared Kopf, went on to start HomeRun. It was at this time, too, that Matt introduced me to Michael Preysman, a friend of his from CMU. Less than a year later Michael and I started Everlane.

fuck off

I'm telling a story; am I supposed to leave out the ending? Michael, my eventual co-founder, was peripherally involved in this whole episode.

And trust me, neither HomeRun nor Everlane need the pitiful traffic my blog post will send them ;)

If you're ever in SF look me up. I'll buy you a drink. jesse@20bits.com

Since there is some confusion on Twitter[0], perhaps you'd like to clarify wether you did, in fact, disclose information on a 14-year old girl to the government, without the presence of a subpoena asking you to do so?

[0]: http://twitter.theinfo.org/190203402284834816

I do not know how you blame Keith Olbermann here. You published a threat to the President of the US. It was not a credible threat but people reading your poll do not know that. They do not know whether the poll was started by a 14 year old girl or a neo-nazi group.

Furthermore, you had a very glib comment where you blamed things on people being upset over the poll instead of taking responsibility for the poll. It is not unreasonable for Americans to be upset at death threats to the President. Again, they did not know at the time that the death threat was not credible. So you blaming people for being upset was a stupid thing to say and Olbermann was completely justified in calling you an idiot.

(I am assuming here that Olbermann quoted you accurately, as he did quote a published source and you did not complain about being misquoted)

What? If the people who publish user generated content (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc) are responsible for what their users say, then the internet as we know it is over. There are thousands of comments on Reddit, Facebook, et. al. that could be considered threatening or libelous defamation of character, but Reddit is not responsible for that. If they were, the very fabric of free speech on the internet would decay, as any user made comment could bring on a lawsuit.

I agree with that but that does not excuse those comments. If the original poster would have explained or at least made it clear that other people publish the polls automatically and that they are not individually vetted and that there is a complaint mechanism, that would have sounded better. But again blaming people for being upset is the wrong thing to say here and fully deserves being called an idiot.

I think it was pretty obvious from the article that the poll content is generated by the users, not the developers. It's pretty much stated or alluded to in every paragraph.

That is true but that is not the relevant article here. KO responded to some Politico interview the original poster did.

Heh. You should read the Q&A I did on DailyKos that Monday evening.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/09/28/787366/-Facts-from-...

If you're ever in San Francisco, look me up. I'll buy you a drink and you can call me an idiot as much as you'd like. ;)

jesse@20bits.com

I appreciate the drink offer. Your DailyKos Q&A looks perfectly fine, but KO was responding to something completely different -- something you said to Politico. And if he quoted correctly (and Politico quoted you correctly) he may have been justified in what he said about you.

But I have to note that I do not think you are an idiot. I am sure that it is very easy to get excited and start going off tangents and get misinterpreted when you are suddenly the focus of media attention.

So please do not take any offense from anything I said. I just hope you realize that what the statement quoted by KO was not a nice thing to say.

Well, drinks are still on me, your vaguely condescending commentary notwithstanding. :P

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