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> a private person can be publicly shamed in the press 15 years from now for doing something that is completely normal and socially acceptable today This indus

> a private person can be publicly shamed in the press 15 years from now for doing something that is completely normal and socially acceptable today This industry created the tools which made it feasible. Before social media, most people simply didn't have a public record of things they said years ago. This industry also created the platforms on which this sort of behavior flourishes. Journalists may have some bad habits, but the tech industry gave them nuclear weapons.

TimTheTinker 6y ago
Good point. But it takes a journalist with a specific purpose in mind, and a public that cares to be outraged in the first place about private people whose specific past behaviors have no bearing on history, to dig back into the past and bring such stuff out into the public eye, with specific names and dates attached.
- catalogia 6y ago
  I suspect such journalists have always existed and there's always been an appetite for bad journalism. Bad journalism certainly isn't new; for instance in the 19th century shitty newspapers started the Spanish-American War basically for shits and giggles. They were able to do that because much of the American public enthusiastically gobbled up the nonsense yellow journalists were publishing. I think many of the tools the tech industry has created in past years, social media and link aggregators using content recommendation systems, have thrown fuel into the dumpster fire. These tools and systems of incentives have facilitated and encouraged shitty journalism. When the tech industry itself is then the victim of this, it's sort of karmic justice. Hoisted by their own petard, as it were. But all to often the victims have nothing to do with the tech industry. Most victims are, as you say, private people; technology has made private people vulnerable to unscrupulous journalists in a way that seems historically unprecedented.

TimTheTinker 6y ago

Good point. But it takes a journalist with a specific purpose in mind, and a public that cares to be outraged in the first place about private people whose specific past behaviors have no bearing on history, to dig back into the past and bring such stuff out into the public eye, with specific names and dates attached.

catalogia 6y ago
I suspect such journalists have always existed and there's always been an appetite for bad journalism. Bad journalism certainly isn't new; for instance in the 19th century shitty newspapers started the Spanish-American War basically for shits and giggles. They were able to do that because much of the American public enthusiastically gobbled up the nonsense yellow journalists were publishing. I think many of the tools the tech industry has created in past years, social media and link aggregators using content recommendation systems, have thrown fuel into the dumpster fire. These tools and systems of incentives have facilitated and encouraged shitty journalism. When the tech industry itself is then the victim of this, it's sort of karmic justice. Hoisted by their own petard, as it were. But all to often the victims have nothing to do with the tech industry. Most victims are, as you say, private people; technology has made private people vulnerable to unscrupulous journalists in a way that seems historically unprecedented.