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This article is emblematic of everything wrong with "journalism" today. Regardless of what Garry wrote on Twitter (which I'm not defending), he didn't send the

by timr 3y ago

This article is emblematic of everything wrong with "journalism" today. Regardless of what Garry wrote on Twitter (which I'm not defending), he didn't send the letters in question, which are the core of the incident. So some lunatic prints out a tweet and mails it to politicians at their home addresses, and the "journalist" spends a couple thousand words focusing on the tweet, and how the guy who wrote the tweet is rich. Also, featuring the price of his liquor bottles (prominent in the first article about this by the same writer) is indicative of the level of pettiness involved. Maybe there's an actual story here, but this isn't it, and it's not clear that the story is more than "someone said something regrettable on Twitter".

Tarragon 3y ago
"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur... Stochastic terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism
- concordDance 3y ago
  I doubt this CEO had any intent to actually cause harm to these people, which is often what's implied by stochastic terrorism.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    Yeah, he merely quoted a diss track that famously escalated a previous grudge to murder. Who could ascribe anything but jovial intent to that? Why should somebody as famous as Gary Tan expect to have unhinged followers who could be inspired to act?
  - jmull 3y ago
    Seems like he was hoping to get his twitter followers to harass them in a manner similar to the way he did -- otherwise why tweet it? Probably receiving death threats causes a lot of real anxiety (not just the PC snowflake kind). That's a lot better than an actual assassination, but it's not nothing either.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      > Seems like he was hoping to get his twitter followers to harass them in a manner similar to the way he did -- otherwise why tweet it? People often say things just to express themselves rather than for any planned and considered reason. I greatly doubt the plan was to cause harassment. The gains are extremely low and this could cost him his job.
      - jmull 3y ago
        > People often say things just to express themselves rather than for any planned and considered reason. Sure, but you don't have to express yourself on twitter... you do that when you want to communicate something to all your followers. > ...The gains are extremely low and this could cost him his job. That's true of the tweet by itself. If sober reason was going to hold him back there would be no tweet at all.
        concordDance 3y ago
        > you do that when you want to communicate something to all your followers. Or you do it automatically and habitually. The brain to mouth filter and a brain to keyboard filter are similar, many people don't have either.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I doubt this CEO had any intent to actually cause harm to these people He expressed a strong desire for these people to die a slow death. How is that not intending to cause harm?
- lupusreal 3y ago
  "Stochastic terrorism" is just an excuse to crack down on free speech by conflating harsh criticism with violence because deranged idiots exist who might take any criticism of anybody as divine inspiration to commit crimes. The standard for free speech in America is that if you're not calling for imminent and specific violence, then you're in the clear. The stochastic in stochastic terrorism does away with both the imminence and specificity; with a large enough population you'll have enough nuts that some of them may take even the most mellow criticism as a call to action.
  - jmull 3y ago
    Calling something stochastic terrorism is speech... by your own logic, shouldn't you be defending their free-speech rights to use the term stochastic terrorism? You say "crack down" but it's just an online comment here, which should be protected, right?
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      I have not advocated for people calling something stochastic terrorism to be brought up on charges, so blow it out your ass.
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      Free speech doesn't imply not being questioned or corrected, but I understand that some have that impression in these times. But that is exactly what free speech is, you speak, someone replies, you may have more to say, and so it goes. "Die slow" or "I hope you die" are not threats. It's unconstructive venting.
      - jmull 3y ago
        > Free speech doesn't imply not being questioned or corrected Right. That's why the post I responded to shouldn't object to calling this "stochastic terrorism" on the basis of free speech. In the immediate discussion the argument is inherently self-contradictory. It also muddies the meaning of free-speech from a profound principle to a cheap argument to club people with online when they criticize something in a way you disagree with.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  Stochastic terrorism is such a dangerous and nebulous concept. It itself can be considered stochastic terrorism. People become afraid of stochastic terrorism and start to terrorize people whom they don't like. Or can't we say that Garry Tan wrote his tweet only because of what the politicians had done? Aren't they also stochastic terrorists if he is?
  - OkayPhysicist 3y ago
    You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. It's not nebulous at all, it in fact describes a very specific approach, to the point that it might as well be a playbook. Part 1 is a radicalization chain, where you have several layers of public figures with varying levels of public-facing support for your cause, who guide people down the chain by platforming people with more extreme public-facing views. So maybe a talk show host who mostly just points out obvious problems in our society, who occasionally brings on guest speakers who have slightly more specific framings, who themselves occasionally publicly support YouTube channels that pitch potential solutions. Part 2 is consensus building. As people trickle down the radicalization chain, it's important to introduce them to new social spaces that present your ideas as obvious truths. This normalizes your radical ideas in the minds of your newly radicalized cohort. Casual "joking but not joking" comments are a basic staple of this, with guillotine memes and blackpill posting and Boogaloo jokes all serving to make the appearance to their community that their extreme views are normal, acceptable, and widely held. Part 3 (which is somewhat optional) is targeting. Some prominent figure (likely one of those public figures on your radicalization chain) paints a far less vague target than usual: casually calling for people to kill all landlords is one thing, mentioning one specific landlord is a clear escalation from that. Ideally this is done without making any incriminating statements, which at least in the US is easy: as long as your don't make a specific plan, it's typically considered protected speech. Part 4 is, to borrow some specifically leftist terminology, "propaganda of the deed", "direct action", or just "terrorism". With a sufficiently large pool of radicalized individuals, you'll have people all across the radicalization and "unhingedness" spectra. The "extremely radicalized, completely unhinged" corner is where you find your martyrs, freedom fighters, etc. They hear the targeting speech from part 3, and decide to take it upon themselves to do something about it. They commit some act of violence, and probably end up facing some extreme consequences for it, whether that means death, imprisonment, etc. Then, your entire movement needs to achieve 2 things: outwardly distance themselves from the "lone wolf" to avoid unwanted scrutiny or consequences, while privately lionizing them as someone who "did what needed to be done" in order to encourage the next one. The elegant thing about all this is that what it lacks in cohesion, it makes up for in robustness. Since it's not a rigidly fixed organization, individual parts can take a fall without crippling the effectiveness of the whole. One lone wolf doesn't incriminate any other members, except maybe the person who announced the target, if they were sloppy about how they worded it. And if someone along your radicalization chain loses their seat in the public eye for whatever reason, you have plenty of redundancy to fill the gap, and they can probably find a comfortable position somewhere further along the chain once things cool off a bit. Playing whack-a-mole with the people with enough prominence to plausibly select targets is probably the most legally justifiable way of suppressing a standalone complex like this. Most people along the chain, both participants and consumers, are pretty clearly practicing free speech and assembly. They make perfectly legitimate targets for rival radical movements, but the State needs to uphold basic human rights, so it takes a more precise approach. Focusing on the shotcallers, it's easier (not necessarily easy) to get creative with what constitutes a non-protected "true threat", rather than crack down on civil liberties as a whole.
noelwelsh 3y ago
No. When people with power stay things, other people take it as permission to do things that are said or implied in that speech. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
- timr 3y ago
  This is a fairly standard and boring way of dressing up censorship as something high-minded. It's nice that you're familiar with a story from England in 1170, but no, you don't just get automatically blamed in the US when crazy people do things in response to dumb things you said on Twitter. Regardless, even if you did get blamed, missionlocal is not the impartial jury who gets to decide whether or not quoting 2pac is incitement to violence.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    It's not some obscure story. T.S. Eliot wrote an entire play about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_Cathedral
    - ahonhn 3y ago
      Indeed, though I suspect many might first have learnt of it watching Blackadder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNopZDwahg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNopZDwahg
      - jhbadger 3y ago
        Or the Richard Burton/Peter O'Toole movie "Becket" (1964) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    Sigh. Please read the article more carefully. missionlocal explicitly says it is not incitement to violence. Here are three paragraphs from it: --- But tying this potential legislation to the message Tan communicated to his 408,000 Twitter followers would appear to be a serious legal challenge: Half a dozen lawyers and judges told Mission Local that, however ill-advised, Tan’s comments do not rise to the legal definition of a death threat. Under Penal Code 422, a person making a criminal threat must harbor “specific intent that the statement, made verbally, in writing, or by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat…” “It is offensive, but it is speech protected by the First Amendment,” said Berkeley School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It does not meet the standard for incitement.” --- "This is a fairly standard and boring way of dressing up censorship as something high-minded." Do you think that speech is not an act? That speech does not have any consequences in the world, and so should be free from all restriction? That's certainly not the law in the US, and you seem to be aware of incitement to violence. "missionlocal is not the impartial jury who gets to decide whether or not quoting 2pac is incitement to violence." Please quote where missionlocal decides that is incitement to violence. You are accusing missionlocal of hack journalism where it is simply reporting what happened. You may not think Garry Tan should get heat for doing what he did, but you should not place your ire on the journalists who are reporting what is by any reasonable definition a story within their purview.
Arthanos 3y ago
This comment is everything wrong with media literacy. It's absolutely worthwhile to cover highly public calls to violence of government officials by respected individuals with lots of power and the article makes it clear he personally did not send the letters. But denying that public calls to violence spurs actual violence is denial of basic cause and effect.
- timr 3y ago
  > It's absolutely worthwhile to cover highly public calls to violence of government officials by respected individuals with lots of power I mean, sure...who are you arguing with? I didn't say nobody should cover this. I said this article is terrible. > But denying that public calls to violence spurs actual violence is denial of basic cause and effect. Yeah, except we have laws around this concept, and even if what you're saying were true in the US (it isn't, thankfully), it doesn't magicaly make hack journalism good. Said differently, "incitement to violence" doesn't mean that missionlocal is high-minded and mature for spending two articles talking about the price of his liquor.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    > Said differently, "incitement to violence" doesn't mean that missionlocal is high-minded and mature for spending two articles talking about the price of his liquor. Garry Tan chose to flaunt the high-end liquor bottles and "Twitter menace" plaque ahead of his sort-of-apology, not missionlocal. Only one of the articles (not the one linked) refers to them at all. The other one focuses more on the hate mail some idiot decided to send being a screenshot of Tan's original tweet, and both of them are pretty clear about it being a rap lyric. Kind of hard to argue with a straight face that the real problem with the YC CEO acting like a not-very-smart bro influencer even in his sort-of-apology is that some local rag journalist didn't spare the embarrassing detail. Sure, Tan was probably more interested in highlighting the "twitter menace" plaque than the fairly expensive liquor and unremarkably-priced wine, but celebrities flaunting wealth with a laughing emoji as a "fuck you" to their critics is a well established trope, and I don't think high-minded, mature journalism is about taking the most sympathetic interpretation possible of bro silliness.
softwaredoug 3y ago
I think the point is when prominent figures say these things, whack-jobs feel emboldened. It happened with Trump, who more or less seemed to know he was provoking something dark. Other public figures ought to have more care with their language.
tootie 3y ago
The article is perfectly clear about what happened.
jakewins 3y ago
If you are a leader in some capacity, you have degrees of responsibility for things that happen because you rile up your followers. Clearly Garry’s fans are threatening violence here as a direct consequence of Garry’s intentional targeting and signalling here. I don’t follow at all how the journalistic angle is problematic
- klyrs 3y ago
  > I don’t follow at all how the journalistic angle is problematic People of a certain political bent are eager to throw journalists under every available bus, even if that means denying history and common sense.
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  I mean this is what is being litigated in court wrt Trump.
deleted 3y ago
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elpakal 3y ago
Came here to voice my frustration about the muddying of the waters and the quality of this article. Took me a few minutes of cynical reading to understand that he did not send the letters, someone else did.
- hobs 3y ago
  If your very public words can be mailed to someone and mistaken as a fairly death threat to them do you A) Rethink your life or B) Retreat to how this is not technically a death threat and you did not technically send it to them?
  - mwigdahl 3y ago
    Por que no los dos?
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    In America, it is a legal and popular pass-time to wish politicians would die.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - hobs 3y ago
      You've chosen option 2, good for you!
      - lupusreal 3y ago
        If I say that your argument is counter to the principles of a free society, does that count as a death threat because some unhinged militia type might agree with me then shoot you down in the street?
        hobs 3y ago
        There's no argument, just a moral judgement, that's the great part. So, in that case, no!
COGlory 3y ago
What part of the article isn't factual?
jacobolus 3y ago
> everything wrong with "journalism" today Mission Local is one of the best sources of local San Francisco news, especially anything directly relevant to the Mission District. If rich jerks don't want to be called out by local journalists, they shouldn't post unhinged public death threats, even as a "joke" or "song reference".
- lupusreal 3y ago
  If local politicians don't want jerks (rich or otherwise) talking shit about them, they picked the wrong profession in the wrong country.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Publicly wishing death on people is a whole different category from "talking shit about people".
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      It isn't. It's crass but constitutionally protected political speech.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        I never said it wasn't constitutionally protected. That status isn't relevant to the point.
- timr 3y ago
  > Mission Local is one of the best sources of local San Francisco news OK. Maybe their coverage of potholes is fantastic, but this article is a terrible, obviously partisan hack job. Both things can be true.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    It isn’t a partisan hack job, the facts are just bad for Gary.
deleted 3y ago
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bdcravens 3y ago
I'm not certain that Twitter is an exempt place when it comes to threatening statements. You don't have to send it to the person in question in many cases.
LeifCarrotson 3y ago
Society and the victims are lucky that the letters are the core of the incident. Tan incited some lunatic to send IRL mail with a printout of the tweet to their home address, we're fortunate that he didn't incite some lunatic to send IRL bullets to the home address. A wealthy, powerful, influential celebrity figure saying something 'regrettable' on Twitter often has real-world consequences. If he'd posted a tweet that read something like "Upload a picture of you assassinating so-and-so and a Bitcoin address and I will send you $100k" and someone followed those instructions, that would be conspiracy to commit murder. If he'd posted "I feel that so-and-so's politics are misguided" that's totally reasonable free speech. There's also a question of scale or exposure. We legally define rights by qualitative analyses. I feel strongly that as technology increases the power of an individual that quantitative analyses are relevant too. If someone's speech will be broadcasted to 400,000 or 40,000,000 followers, that's one thing, if it's said privately to 4 friends that's completely different. Somewhere in the middle of these things there's a line between right and wrong. I'm quite confident that telling an audience of 400,000 that you want a few named people to "Die slow motherfuckers" is on the wrong side of that line.
- pompino 3y ago
  >I'm quite confident that telling an audience of 400,000 that you want a few named people to "Die slow motherfuckers" is on the wrong side of that line. Then why are we trusting the person to make a rational choice? By that logic, X should simply disallow using certain words when your audience is > 400,000. Because anyone can get incited for violence when they read certain words as you claim.
KaiserPro 3y ago
I would kindly suggest that this is at best wrong, at worst deliberately misleading The job of journalists is to report news worth events, and provide extra context with some level of verification. When the CEO quotes rap lyrics which implies that someone should kill them selves, that is news worthy. The CEO, who is in a position of both power and responsibility, should really not be saying stupid shit. Why? because the job of the CEO is to make sure a company's image isn't tarnished. (see Gerald Ratner). Tan should frankly grow the fuck up and do what CEOs normally do, which is pay local politics to change.
- worksonmine 3y ago
  > which implies that someone should kill them selves How does the sentence "die slow motherfuckers" even remotely imply someone should kill themselves? Do you see the irony of misquoting him in a comment about misleading journalism? Necessary disclaimer: I do not support the tweet and it has nothing to do with my comment, so breathe and understand my point before hitting that down-vote.
  - KaiserPro 3y ago
    If we are being pedantic, then "kill themselves" would have been the wrong clause. I would probably change that to "publicly wish death upon someone". If we are also continuing along pedantry, it was a quote, it was an incorrect assertion. But what we can possibly agree on, is that whilst we are both engaging on this particular point, the more important issue of a CEO acting incorrectly goes unexplored. Where I think we are both aligned: the CEO is perfectly within their rights to say stupid things, however they really shouldn't. Whilst we shouldn't use legal tools to stop CEOs doing stupid things, we certainly should use social tools to encourage them to respect other people.
    - worksonmine 3y ago
      > If we are being pedantic > If we are also continuing along pedantry We're not being pedantic, we're being correct and honest.
jrflowers 3y ago
>it's not clear that the story is more than "someone said something regrettable on Twitter". This is a good point. Who is to say if there is a difference between receiving hateful letters to one’s home and not receiving hateful letters to one’s home? This is bad journalism because it is a report of events that happened, good journalism would have been a levelheaded piece about how Tan is probably a good guy and we should probably agree with his politics
tech_ken 3y ago
None of your criticisms make sense to me, this is some of the best local journalism I've seen in a while. The headline is a tl;dr of the entire piece and the first several paragraphs are the facts directly related to the incident and providing essential context. Nothing is sensationalized, there's no sob angle, and they even corrected a minor inaccuracy. The way you describe it is like it's a tabloid covering some nothingburger, but this is a clean summary of an important event: people are threatening SF supervisors, and it's a result of a drunken Twitter rant by Gary Tan. This is what is happening, and this is what the article describes in clear and direct language. What else could you even want from this article? That they just elide the liquor angle? That they don't cover it at all or spend the entire article analyzing the person who sent the threats? A person in power wished death on a political figure, and people acted on that wish. This is absolutely news worthy of an article in a local blog, whose beat overlaps with the political jurisdiction of the threatened politicians.

by timr 3y ago

Tarragon 3y ago

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur... Stochastic terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_terrorism

concordDance 3y ago
I doubt this CEO had any intent to actually cause harm to these people, which is often what's implied by stochastic terrorism.
- klyrs 3y ago
  Yeah, he merely quoted a diss track that famously escalated a previous grudge to murder. Who could ascribe anything but jovial intent to that? Why should somebody as famous as Gary Tan expect to have unhinged followers who could be inspired to act?
- jmull 3y ago
  Seems like he was hoping to get his twitter followers to harass them in a manner similar to the way he did -- otherwise why tweet it? Probably receiving death threats causes a lot of real anxiety (not just the PC snowflake kind). That's a lot better than an actual assassination, but it's not nothing either.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    > Seems like he was hoping to get his twitter followers to harass them in a manner similar to the way he did -- otherwise why tweet it? People often say things just to express themselves rather than for any planned and considered reason. I greatly doubt the plan was to cause harassment. The gains are extremely low and this could cost him his job.
    - jmull 3y ago
      > People often say things just to express themselves rather than for any planned and considered reason. Sure, but you don't have to express yourself on twitter... you do that when you want to communicate something to all your followers. > ...The gains are extremely low and this could cost him his job. That's true of the tweet by itself. If sober reason was going to hold him back there would be no tweet at all.
      - concordDance 3y ago
        > you do that when you want to communicate something to all your followers. Or you do it automatically and habitually. The brain to mouth filter and a brain to keyboard filter are similar, many people don't have either.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I doubt this CEO had any intent to actually cause harm to these people He expressed a strong desire for these people to die a slow death. How is that not intending to cause harm?
lupusreal 3y ago
"Stochastic terrorism" is just an excuse to crack down on free speech by conflating harsh criticism with violence because deranged idiots exist who might take any criticism of anybody as divine inspiration to commit crimes. The standard for free speech in America is that if you're not calling for imminent and specific violence, then you're in the clear. The stochastic in stochastic terrorism does away with both the imminence and specificity; with a large enough population you'll have enough nuts that some of them may take even the most mellow criticism as a call to action.
- jmull 3y ago
  Calling something stochastic terrorism is speech... by your own logic, shouldn't you be defending their free-speech rights to use the term stochastic terrorism? You say "crack down" but it's just an online comment here, which should be protected, right?
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    I have not advocated for people calling something stochastic terrorism to be brought up on charges, so blow it out your ass.
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    Free speech doesn't imply not being questioned or corrected, but I understand that some have that impression in these times. But that is exactly what free speech is, you speak, someone replies, you may have more to say, and so it goes. "Die slow" or "I hope you die" are not threats. It's unconstructive venting.
    - jmull 3y ago
      > Free speech doesn't imply not being questioned or corrected Right. That's why the post I responded to shouldn't object to calling this "stochastic terrorism" on the basis of free speech. In the immediate discussion the argument is inherently self-contradictory. It also muddies the meaning of free-speech from a profound principle to a cheap argument to club people with online when they criticize something in a way you disagree with.
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
Stochastic terrorism is such a dangerous and nebulous concept. It itself can be considered stochastic terrorism. People become afraid of stochastic terrorism and start to terrorize people whom they don't like. Or can't we say that Garry Tan wrote his tweet only because of what the politicians had done? Aren't they also stochastic terrorists if he is?
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. It's not nebulous at all, it in fact describes a very specific approach, to the point that it might as well be a playbook. Part 1 is a radicalization chain, where you have several layers of public figures with varying levels of public-facing support for your cause, who guide people down the chain by platforming people with more extreme public-facing views. So maybe a talk show host who mostly just points out obvious problems in our society, who occasionally brings on guest speakers who have slightly more specific framings, who themselves occasionally publicly support YouTube channels that pitch potential solutions. Part 2 is consensus building. As people trickle down the radicalization chain, it's important to introduce them to new social spaces that present your ideas as obvious truths. This normalizes your radical ideas in the minds of your newly radicalized cohort. Casual "joking but not joking" comments are a basic staple of this, with guillotine memes and blackpill posting and Boogaloo jokes all serving to make the appearance to their community that their extreme views are normal, acceptable, and widely held. Part 3 (which is somewhat optional) is targeting. Some prominent figure (likely one of those public figures on your radicalization chain) paints a far less vague target than usual: casually calling for people to kill all landlords is one thing, mentioning one specific landlord is a clear escalation from that. Ideally this is done without making any incriminating statements, which at least in the US is easy: as long as your don't make a specific plan, it's typically considered protected speech. Part 4 is, to borrow some specifically leftist terminology, "propaganda of the deed", "direct action", or just "terrorism". With a sufficiently large pool of radicalized individuals, you'll have people all across the radicalization and "unhingedness" spectra. The "extremely radicalized, completely unhinged" corner is where you find your martyrs, freedom fighters, etc. They hear the targeting speech from part 3, and decide to take it upon themselves to do something about it. They commit some act of violence, and probably end up facing some extreme consequences for it, whether that means death, imprisonment, etc. Then, your entire movement needs to achieve 2 things: outwardly distance themselves from the "lone wolf" to avoid unwanted scrutiny or consequences, while privately lionizing them as someone who "did what needed to be done" in order to encourage the next one. The elegant thing about all this is that what it lacks in cohesion, it makes up for in robustness. Since it's not a rigidly fixed organization, individual parts can take a fall without crippling the effectiveness of the whole. One lone wolf doesn't incriminate any other members, except maybe the person who announced the target, if they were sloppy about how they worded it. And if someone along your radicalization chain loses their seat in the public eye for whatever reason, you have plenty of redundancy to fill the gap, and they can probably find a comfortable position somewhere further along the chain once things cool off a bit. Playing whack-a-mole with the people with enough prominence to plausibly select targets is probably the most legally justifiable way of suppressing a standalone complex like this. Most people along the chain, both participants and consumers, are pretty clearly practicing free speech and assembly. They make perfectly legitimate targets for rival radical movements, but the State needs to uphold basic human rights, so it takes a more precise approach. Focusing on the shotcallers, it's easier (not necessarily easy) to get creative with what constitutes a non-protected "true threat", rather than crack down on civil liberties as a whole.

noelwelsh 3y ago

No. When people with power stay things, other people take it as permission to do things that are said or implied in that speech. For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

timr 3y ago
This is a fairly standard and boring way of dressing up censorship as something high-minded. It's nice that you're familiar with a story from England in 1170, but no, you don't just get automatically blamed in the US when crazy people do things in response to dumb things you said on Twitter. Regardless, even if you did get blamed, missionlocal is not the impartial jury who gets to decide whether or not quoting 2pac is incitement to violence.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  It's not some obscure story. T.S. Eliot wrote an entire play about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_Cathedral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_the_Cathedral
  - ahonhn 3y ago
    Indeed, though I suspect many might first have learnt of it watching Blackadder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNopZDwahg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rNopZDwahg
    - jhbadger 3y ago
      Or the Richard Burton/Peter O'Toole movie "Becket" (1964) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057877/
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  Sigh. Please read the article more carefully. missionlocal explicitly says it is not incitement to violence. Here are three paragraphs from it: --- But tying this potential legislation to the message Tan communicated to his 408,000 Twitter followers would appear to be a serious legal challenge: Half a dozen lawyers and judges told Mission Local that, however ill-advised, Tan’s comments do not rise to the legal definition of a death threat. Under Penal Code 422, a person making a criminal threat must harbor “specific intent that the statement, made verbally, in writing, or by means of an electronic communication device, is to be taken as a threat…” “It is offensive, but it is speech protected by the First Amendment,” said Berkeley School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “It does not meet the standard for incitement.” --- "This is a fairly standard and boring way of dressing up censorship as something high-minded." Do you think that speech is not an act? That speech does not have any consequences in the world, and so should be free from all restriction? That's certainly not the law in the US, and you seem to be aware of incitement to violence. "missionlocal is not the impartial jury who gets to decide whether or not quoting 2pac is incitement to violence." Please quote where missionlocal decides that is incitement to violence. You are accusing missionlocal of hack journalism where it is simply reporting what happened. You may not think Garry Tan should get heat for doing what he did, but you should not place your ire on the journalists who are reporting what is by any reasonable definition a story within their purview.

Arthanos 3y ago

This comment is everything wrong with media literacy. It's absolutely worthwhile to cover highly public calls to violence of government officials by respected individuals with lots of power and the article makes it clear he personally did not send the letters. But denying that public calls to violence spurs actual violence is denial of basic cause and effect.

timr 3y ago
> It's absolutely worthwhile to cover highly public calls to violence of government officials by respected individuals with lots of power I mean, sure...who are you arguing with? I didn't say nobody should cover this. I said this article is terrible. > But denying that public calls to violence spurs actual violence is denial of basic cause and effect. Yeah, except we have laws around this concept, and even if what you're saying were true in the US (it isn't, thankfully), it doesn't magicaly make hack journalism good. Said differently, "incitement to violence" doesn't mean that missionlocal is high-minded and mature for spending two articles talking about the price of his liquor.
- notahacker 3y ago
  > Said differently, "incitement to violence" doesn't mean that missionlocal is high-minded and mature for spending two articles talking about the price of his liquor. Garry Tan chose to flaunt the high-end liquor bottles and "Twitter menace" plaque ahead of his sort-of-apology, not missionlocal. Only one of the articles (not the one linked) refers to them at all. The other one focuses more on the hate mail some idiot decided to send being a screenshot of Tan's original tweet, and both of them are pretty clear about it being a rap lyric. Kind of hard to argue with a straight face that the real problem with the YC CEO acting like a not-very-smart bro influencer even in his sort-of-apology is that some local rag journalist didn't spare the embarrassing detail. Sure, Tan was probably more interested in highlighting the "twitter menace" plaque than the fairly expensive liquor and unremarkably-priced wine, but celebrities flaunting wealth with a laughing emoji as a "fuck you" to their critics is a well established trope, and I don't think high-minded, mature journalism is about taking the most sympathetic interpretation possible of bro silliness.

softwaredoug 3y ago

I think the point is when prominent figures say these things, whack-jobs feel emboldened. It happened with Trump, who more or less seemed to know he was provoking something dark. Other public figures ought to have more care with their language.

tootie 3y ago

The article is perfectly clear about what happened.

jakewins 3y ago

If you are a leader in some capacity, you have degrees of responsibility for things that happen because you rile up your followers. Clearly Garry’s fans are threatening violence here as a direct consequence of Garry’s intentional targeting and signalling here. I don’t follow at all how the journalistic angle is problematic

klyrs 3y ago
> I don’t follow at all how the journalistic angle is problematic People of a certain political bent are eager to throw journalists under every available bus, even if that means denying history and common sense.
theGnuMe 3y ago
I mean this is what is being litigated in court wrt Trump.

deleted 3y ago

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elpakal 3y ago

Came here to voice my frustration about the muddying of the waters and the quality of this article. Took me a few minutes of cynical reading to understand that he did not send the letters, someone else did.

hobs 3y ago
If your very public words can be mailed to someone and mistaken as a fairly death threat to them do you A) Rethink your life or B) Retreat to how this is not technically a death threat and you did not technically send it to them?
- mwigdahl 3y ago
  Por que no los dos?
- lupusreal 3y ago
  In America, it is a legal and popular pass-time to wish politicians would die.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hobs 3y ago
    You've chosen option 2, good for you!
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      If I say that your argument is counter to the principles of a free society, does that count as a death threat because some unhinged militia type might agree with me then shoot you down in the street?
      - hobs 3y ago
        There's no argument, just a moral judgement, that's the great part. So, in that case, no!

COGlory 3y ago

What part of the article isn't factual?

jacobolus 3y ago

> everything wrong with "journalism" today Mission Local is one of the best sources of local San Francisco news, especially anything directly relevant to the Mission District. If rich jerks don't want to be called out by local journalists, they shouldn't post unhinged public death threats, even as a "joke" or "song reference".

lupusreal 3y ago
If local politicians don't want jerks (rich or otherwise) talking shit about them, they picked the wrong profession in the wrong country.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Publicly wishing death on people is a whole different category from "talking shit about people".
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    It isn't. It's crass but constitutionally protected political speech.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I never said it wasn't constitutionally protected. That status isn't relevant to the point.
timr 3y ago
> Mission Local is one of the best sources of local San Francisco news OK. Maybe their coverage of potholes is fantastic, but this article is a terrible, obviously partisan hack job. Both things can be true.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It isn’t a partisan hack job, the facts are just bad for Gary.

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bdcravens 3y ago

I'm not certain that Twitter is an exempt place when it comes to threatening statements. You don't have to send it to the person in question in many cases.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

Society and the victims are lucky that the letters are the core of the incident. Tan incited some lunatic to send IRL mail with a printout of the tweet to their home address, we're fortunate that he didn't incite some lunatic to send IRL bullets to the home address. A wealthy, powerful, influential celebrity figure saying something 'regrettable' on Twitter often has real-world consequences. If he'd posted a tweet that read something like "Upload a picture of you assassinating so-and-so and a Bitcoin address and I will send you $100k" and someone followed those instructions, that would be conspiracy to commit murder. If he'd posted "I feel that so-and-so's politics are misguided" that's totally reasonable free speech. There's also a question of scale or exposure. We legally define rights by qualitative analyses. I feel strongly that as technology increases the power of an individual that quantitative analyses are relevant too. If someone's speech will be broadcasted to 400,000 or 40,000,000 followers, that's one thing, if it's said privately to 4 friends that's completely different. Somewhere in the middle of these things there's a line between right and wrong. I'm quite confident that telling an audience of 400,000 that you want a few named people to "Die slow motherfuckers" is on the wrong side of that line.

pompino 3y ago
>I'm quite confident that telling an audience of 400,000 that you want a few named people to "Die slow motherfuckers" is on the wrong side of that line. Then why are we trusting the person to make a rational choice? By that logic, X should simply disallow using certain words when your audience is > 400,000. Because anyone can get incited for violence when they read certain words as you claim.

KaiserPro 3y ago

I would kindly suggest that this is at best wrong, at worst deliberately misleading The job of journalists is to report news worth events, and provide extra context with some level of verification. When the CEO quotes rap lyrics which implies that someone should kill them selves, that is news worthy. The CEO, who is in a position of both power and responsibility, should really not be saying stupid shit. Why? because the job of the CEO is to make sure a company's image isn't tarnished. (see Gerald Ratner). Tan should frankly grow the fuck up and do what CEOs normally do, which is pay local politics to change.

worksonmine 3y ago
> which implies that someone should kill them selves How does the sentence "die slow motherfuckers" even remotely imply someone should kill themselves? Do you see the irony of misquoting him in a comment about misleading journalism? Necessary disclaimer: I do not support the tweet and it has nothing to do with my comment, so breathe and understand my point before hitting that down-vote.
- KaiserPro 3y ago
  If we are being pedantic, then "kill themselves" would have been the wrong clause. I would probably change that to "publicly wish death upon someone". If we are also continuing along pedantry, it was a quote, it was an incorrect assertion. But what we can possibly agree on, is that whilst we are both engaging on this particular point, the more important issue of a CEO acting incorrectly goes unexplored. Where I think we are both aligned: the CEO is perfectly within their rights to say stupid things, however they really shouldn't. Whilst we shouldn't use legal tools to stop CEOs doing stupid things, we certainly should use social tools to encourage them to respect other people.
  - worksonmine 3y ago
    > If we are being pedantic > If we are also continuing along pedantry We're not being pedantic, we're being correct and honest.

jrflowers 3y ago

>it's not clear that the story is more than "someone said something regrettable on Twitter". This is a good point. Who is to say if there is a difference between receiving hateful letters to one’s home and not receiving hateful letters to one’s home? This is bad journalism because it is a report of events that happened, good journalism would have been a levelheaded piece about how Tan is probably a good guy and we should probably agree with his politics

tech_ken 3y ago

None of your criticisms make sense to me, this is some of the best local journalism I've seen in a while. The headline is a tl;dr of the entire piece and the first several paragraphs are the facts directly related to the incident and providing essential context. Nothing is sensationalized, there's no sob angle, and they even corrected a minor inaccuracy. The way you describe it is like it's a tabloid covering some nothingburger, but this is a clean summary of an important event: people are threatening SF supervisors, and it's a result of a drunken Twitter rant by Gary Tan. This is what is happening, and this is what the article describes in clear and direct language. What else could you even want from this article? That they just elide the liquor angle? That they don't cover it at all or spend the entire article analyzing the person who sent the threats? A person in power wished death on a political figure, and people acted on that wish. This is absolutely news worthy of an article in a local blog, whose beat overlaps with the political jurisdiction of the threatened politicians.