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Comment by nekitamo | Hacker News Reader

One of their journalists also doxxed Naomi Wu, intruding on her personal life, making her lose her income, and possibly getting her in trouble with Chinese authorities: https://x.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1209815150376574976

The journalist themselves is a real piece of work: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/463503-sarah-jeong-out-at...

Kinda goes to show you the kind of people who write these stories. Ethics haven't been on their mind for a long time, and them preaching to anyone about ethics is rank hypocrisy.

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> A third tweet posted by Jeong in 2014 said, “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.”

It's not like she's any browner..

I moderated a large Reddit community (circa 2014). She threatened to have articles written about how we were racist/misogynistic, unless we removed comments she didn't like.

Her being nasty elsewhere doesn't surprise me...

Incredible, some people think that minorities can't be racist, by that definition Japanese weren't at all racist in 1937 Nanjing.

There’s a context to that you’re missing. The people saying that are usually using the formulation that racism = prejudice + power. So can black people in the U.K. be prejudiced? Yes, definitely. Racist? They’d need to be in a position of authority for it to matter.

Other people use the formulation racism = prejudice about race, and end up talking past each other.

There's a term for that: systemic racism. The redefining racism thing just comes from a bunch of people who wanted to be racist without admitting racism -- often, ironically, from a position of power.

Systemic racism is something different. It's the legal system being set up in a way that favors/disfavors certain groups. It's not something a person does.

Yes, it's power + racism, which is the idea that the "power+prejudice" redefinition was getting at with the added clarification that the power has to be real rather than in the eye of the beholder. It achieves the stated purpose of the redefinition but without providing cover for people who want a reason why their racism is good while yours is bad.

Racism has multiple conflicting definitions, and indeed “a system of oppression based on race” is a classic one.

“Systemic racism” seems to a modern answer to this vagueness. I suppose the other side would be “individual racism”.

You are correct that there are multiple somewhat-conflicting definitions of racism but “taking past each other” isn’t really what’s happening.

The “classic” definition of racism is something like “a system of oppression based on race”. People pull that out to explain why “[minority] people can’t be racist”, but that that definition isn’t about people. It’s about systems, so if we take that definition, no individual can be racist. Most of the same people who trot out this definition will still call majority-race individuals racist (clearly using a different definition). It’s a rhetorical sleight of hand to swap definitions in a self serving way like this.

> racism = prejudice + power

This seems like an oversimplified perversion of the “systemic” definition and doesn’t make sense if you actually consider it. By this definition a poor white woman basically couldn’t be racist, while a rich black man could.

the prejudice + power statement while still ascribing veing racist to individuals is a definite motte and bailey tactic in my eyes.

Honestly these loudmouths are usually quite privileged themselves. These theatrics are either to deflect from themselves, or they are delusional about how tough their life is.

I agree with your first statement. However I wouldn't dismiss them just because of that: as an analogy, most of the most effective campaigners against slavery were not slaves themselves.

I do agree that in this particular case the lady in question seems rather nasty, and the whole woke movement seems to be quite the circular firing squad.

for a good counterbalance to those just finding out the nyt is a state dept mouthpiece at best, read about real journalists and why there seem to be so few of them, read Pegasus by laurent richard. Spoiler alert, real journalists who expose powerful peoples' wrongdoings simply get killed.

One of the journalists was Jason Koebler who later cofounded 404media. That is imho pretty legit outlet which uncovered many pretty damning stories about tech.

404media is good stuff, one of the few news outlets I pay for. I didn't dig too deep on the above comment because I have a deep respect for journalists despite admittedly many of them servicing things I dislike by choice or coercion or for remuneration or fame, etc. Reading about journalists in more authoritarian countries was seriously depressing

Yep Googlers... Metans... don't throw stones.

Reminds me of a related principle:

“How do you know if a conspiracy theorist is really on to something?”

“Check the missing persons list.”

Glen Greenwald is alive and kicking.

Along with his zero credibility. Dude torched his career just like Taibbi.

Sure but releasing the Snowden files wasn't what did that. He did that all by himself cozying up to Russia.

when journalism is a business, stuff like this happens...

They deliver what readers what.

That would imply that the readers are the customers.

They are in a business relationship.

Just like Knight Rider and Matlock had to deliver enough entertainment to keep you from switching channels and instead have you watch the next beer ad.

And it's always been a business.

but there's also state funded journalism, so they are not forced to do whats commercially viable

And then it's a business that is funded by political patronage.

okay so the police is a business too? Just like private security firms?

The point is that, just like journalists if they are paid by the government, the police also have biases regarding which laws to enforce. I suppose you consider the BBC a shining example of unbiased reporting?

Btw I don't know how closely you follow Naomi Wu, but take that with grain of salt. (def. not defending bad journalists)

Naomi has huge youtube and she is very public figure in Shenzhen.

She has very weird opinion on Chinese government, she acts to like it but on the other hand with her sexual orientation (which was public knowledge, plastered all over reddit, twitter etc. way before any articles) and her admitting to bypass Chinese firewall etc. which is illegal.

Kinda weird, to do this, when you're public person.

And weirdest of all, she has/had Uyghur girlfriend and she basically said, that because of us (US/EU people) boycotting China for Xinjiang concentration camps for Uyghurs, nobody in Shenzen wants to hire Uyghur people, so WE are to blame.

I don't know if she really meant it, or she'd post it to twitter to suck Chinese government, you know what.

Imho, with grain of salt too, I think she was partially managed by Chinese agency way before any articles, and they got angry because she was unable to steer the article to "China great, West is bad".

Because I have experience what Chinese agencies are willing to pay for mediocre influencers in my small EU country (10mil. people) just to visit China and make videos how they're "great". And they have 1/10 following of what Naomi has.

I am not sure this is that clear cut. Naomi Wu agreed to interview then didn't want to answer some of the questions - instead of just saying no… she wrote social media threads and blogposts about how she can't talk about this because it's big bad china and all these western journalists are unprofessional not knowing her risk. For some reason then she tried to actually dox one of the journalists in her video.

Unfortunately looking back it seems pretty plausible that chinese gov censored her exactly because of her blogposts about how she is in danger in china.

How do you "dox" a journalist? Are they writing under anonymous bylines now?

By releasing personal information which a reasonable person would expect to be private? I don't know the specifics of this case (only responding to the overly vague question) but information like address, private contact info, details about their families. Anything you would not immediately expect to become public knowledge simply by writing about topic(s).

In the US at least owning a residence is public record. It can be obfuscated with shell companies and things like that but most people don’t do.

Putting home address of one of the journalists in a video when you have milion subscribers (many of which know about your beef)... that's not fun.

The journalist knew what she was doing. Naomi was in China, agreed to do an interview about her self & her work, then the journo tried to drum up clicks by putting her on the spot about politics.

Real consequences for the interviewee, all for some clicks. That's not journalism.

I've read the original article again and I don't think people read it. The whole interview is very supportive and based around how much shit she is getting. How she is hated for he appearance, how people don't believe she is technically skilled, that people thinks she is a fake persona or that some male is designing her whole career. Also that she gets many personal threats.

This is just her talking about herself and I am not sure how this is about chinese gov politics or how it is damning/doxing her.

Anyway her response was to find home address of one of the editors and put it in her next video. If i would be journalist and somebody did that to me i would expect my company to use their lawyers.

> “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” Jeong said in one tweet from 2014 that has since been deleted.

You weren't messing, she seems lovely.. /s

Are you able to explain in 1 short sentence what Vice did wrong to her? Because I can't. I remember reading Wu's explanation and couldn't find anything in there, like at all. It was filled with prejudice.

They outed her as lesbian, in a country where this is increasingly unacceptable.

> Kinda goes to show you the kind of people who write these stories.

People can opt to not read and pay such people.

Funny enough in her own words, they don't much care..

> You’re wrong. NYT does pay attention to subscriber cancellations. It’s one of the metrics for “outrage” that they take to distinguish between “real” outrage and superficial outrage. What subscribers say can back up dissenting views inside the paper about what it should do and be.

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