> Mr. Tate said he thought frequently about the story [outing Tim Cook] afterward, and even wondered whether Mr. Cook’s parents had known about his identity before the report. “It’s something that gave me pause and that I thought about, but I would do it the same way again,” he said.
This right here tells you everything you need to know about Gawker and people that worked there.
But now, from beyond the grave, Gawker is revealing another reality in this era of media consolidation: that the chief executive of one of the biggest companies in the world, who testifies before Congress and negotiates with China, also decides what television shows get made.
I'm having a little trouble with the premise of this story, that it's somehow novel for an executive to have a hand in killing a show. This is like 40% of the premise of 30 Rock. But that was about the Sheinhardt Wigs hegemony over NBC (and tri-vection microwaves), not Tim Cook's influence over a tiny portfolio of streaming shows nobody watches.
As long as he doesn't fuck with Ted Lasso, I honestly don't give a shit. I'm sure I'll buy another Apple product in 2021, which will re-up my Apple TV+ subscription somehow.
I am quite sure not many people care if you buy another Apple product this year or the text; I am very sure I don't give a shit whether you give a shit.
This story is not about you or your buying habits. It is about the fact that concentration of power and money in the hands of a few tech executives is killing news stories, information about the world (not some comedy show).
The fact that it may not be novel doesn't make it unimportant. Crime is as old as time; it doesn't mean we shouldn't care.
> This story is not about you or your buying habits. It is about the fact that concentration of power and money in the hands of a few tech executives is killing news stories, information about the world (not some comedy show).
Like how the New York Post’s Twitter account was disabled for about 2 weeks because of a story they ran?
>It is about the fact that concentration of power and money in the hands of a few tech executives is killing news stories, information about the world (not some comedy show).
as opposed to the old status quo, where stories would get killed by a few non-tech executives. This is just a power struggle between old media and new media. The general public has no reason to give a shit.
To most people canceling a tv show isn't 'crime' and gawker isn't 'news'
Without really taking a position on the merits of the issue, I think the idea is that Jack Donaghy might testify before Congress about the television shows he runs, while Tim Cook testifies before Congress about matters unrelated to television.
I do but I'm not really sure what your point is. Anti-trust is anti-trust no matter who's doing it or has done it in the past, no matter who made a comedy about it after.
Further, I suspect the emotional reaction here comes from Apple playing a much larger role in the public's mind than General Electric.
> Further, I suspect the emotional reaction here comes from Apple playing a much larger role in the public's mind than General Electric.
This tends to support tptacek's point here, that this is a normal thing to be going on and people are exercised more because they are conditioned to have fainting spells over the name "Apple" than because Apple is doing something different than what's always been done.
I don't know that I'm defending it so much as pointing out how hinky it is to single out what's happening at Apple TV+ when the entire rest of the industry runs on exactly the same kind of executive influence, with the difference being that people actually watch stuff the rest of the industry produces.
If anything, the misleading part of my comment was the suggestion that this was a 30 Rock premise --- it's the premise of a pretty solid chunk of all late night NBC comedy in the 1990s, too, because GE actually did own NBC.
The premise is simple, the current trend in the news media is big tech is too powerful and too much influence over the public which is something the news media used to have in total. So stories which portray big tech as the bad guy are par for the course.
Social media alone proved to the world over how much the press can manipulate a story to the point of outright fraud by major news organizations. Well the news media isn't taking that attack sitting down and finds every opportunity it can to reign in big tech, restricting what can they can say and do directly or facilitate through their services to prevent their customers from doing the same.
This article fails on purpose to acknowledge the Tim Cook only killed the show for his network. Another network can make the show if they want. Now if Apple or Tim Cook were getting in touch with other studios and threatening them that would be a real issue but what we have here is not
> As long as he doesn't fuck with Ted Lasso, I honestly don't give a shit.
First they came for "Firefly", and I did not speak out -
Because I did not watch "Firefly".
Then they came for "Community", and I did not speak out -
Because I did not watch "Community".
Then they came for "Ted Lasso" - and there was no one left to speak out for "Ted Lasso".
your comment is trivial. there are no holocaust survivors reading this page of hacker news. it’s not going to “happen again” or be “forgotten” because someone swaps the words of a phrase everybody knows. spend your energy on something else other than ruining the internet, making us self censor every little thing typed online. lest someone who had nothing to do with the event or problem take offense on behalf of others.
> Another company, Anonymous Content, bought the option to develop a New Yorker article about Gawker, a person familiar with the deal said. (The New Yorker article was written by Jeffrey Toobin, a frequent target of Gawker.)
That is really fucking funny.
> Apple TV+, which started a year ago, has struggled to find its feet in a climate in which its top creative executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, appear to be constantly trying to guess what Mr. Cook and Mr. Cue might like, or might object to.
Pretty much everyone expected Apple to make terrible TV. Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment.
> Like Amazon, even like two good shows would be an enormous accomplishment
They've, imo, already gone one amazing show in 'Ted Lasso'. The premise doesn't sound like it should work. A comedy based on old American soccer commercials? But somehow it really, really works.
I can't stress enough how high quality the writing, acting, and character development is in Ted Lasso, and you don't need to care about sports going into it. What a shame that it doesn't have the fame of something like The Queen's Gambit without the reach of Netflix.
My wife detests football, and audibly groaned when I said I wanted to give an episode of that a go. We both ended up loving it and can't wait for series two. Seriously good show.
I was honestly disappointed in The Queens Gambit. It was just so predictable, and started getting really repetitive. I love chess, but you just can't appreciate what it going on when they're moving that fast. Unless you want to play along and pause every few seconds, it just a whole bunch of repetitive scenes.
Exactly, which is why I was disappointed at how much screen time was given to literally just watching people moving pieces. The story was quite shallow, and the ending wasn't rewarding at all.
Does mythic quest get a lot better after episode 1? We watched it right after Ted Lasso and it was so ... mean. It _seems_ like something I should like, though.
For the first four episodes of Mythic Quest it seems like a standard comedy show from a template, done reasonably well with good acting, but not great.
Episode 5: “A Dark Quiet Death” takes a left turn so bizarre that for 5 minutes I thought my AppleTV had switched to an entirely different show. When I finally realized it was the same show in a different time, place and with different characters I was like OK, that’s it, I gave it enough of a chance, time to stop watching.
But just before I tapped the menu button, Doc and Bean drew me in enough to watch longer, and longer, until I reached the end.
By the end I decided A Dark Quiet Death was one of the best tv episodes I’d ever seen. I wasn’t crying, you were crying! my eyes were just very, very dry and tired, and sad.
And even though the story returns to present day in the very next episode, every episode after A Dark Quiet Death was imbued with a great deal more meaning. And an understanding that making games isn’t just a fun way to make a living. Sometimes it’s an expression of things you really care about, and an attempt to communicate those feelings to others.
This was also the one episode written by Katie McElhenney, Rob's sister. And here's a web version of the game depicted in the episode: https://darkquietdeath.com.
For the most part it's a similar style after. I found it amusing overall just seeing the game development industry being satirized, just like I enjoyed HBO Silicon Valley in that way even if it wasn't necessarily a great show. Episode 5 specifically though comes out of left field, and is one of the best episodes of television on the platform.
We started watching Episode 1 and I hated it and we turned it off. It turns out that the part that we were watching was the advertisement that was put together by the creator and it's supposed to be terrible. After watching it a bit longer, it hits its stride. It's not as good as "Ted Lasso" or even "For All Mankind", imo, but it's a decent comedy with some very self-aware humor.
I also really enjoyed the Long Way Up travelogue which HN might appreciate because they did it on electric Harley Davidsons with Rivian support vehicles.
Also, it's just gorgeous footage and Ewan McGregor is pretty entertaining.
SEE is a show I expected to hate but really loved. It looks hetter than any l movie on my iphone (I think they are using really wide dynamic range and color gamut, which is ironic given the premise.)
Ted Lasso was great too.
I just wish Apple would bring back 20-25 episode seasons from the golden age of TV.
That’s when shows became part of your life, rather than a friend that shows up for a couple months every couple years.
The production quality across the service is outstanding. Of course that's no substitute for quality storytelling, but it's nice that they hold that standard. Trying out spatial audio while watching Servant was unsettling.
I feel like "The Morning Show", "For All Mankind", and "Ted Lasso" are 3 shows that I would put solidly in the "great" category so I don't see how you can say that two "good" shows would be an accomplishment.
I love The Boys and, especially, how gory it is specifically to make a point. It reminds me a lot of Verhoeven and RoboCop. That being said, Amazon doesn't have any other good shows that I'm willing to tune into. Sneaky Pete was awesome and they fucked them over so bad that it makes it hard for me to get invested in anything put out by Amazon.
I love everything you mentioned (including Patriot), but it's nothing like those regarding production since it's very slow and the humor is dry, dark and not always easily noticeable. It's a slow burner, which is exactly the opposite of any Oceans x or Guy Ritchie.
In any case I recommend it, the premise was enough to get me to sign up.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is quite good and worth a go. Maybe it's not for everyone, but it's a very well produced and immersive show. Also Upload was quite good.
The Boys is basically Hollywood not actually doing the source material because it's too controversial. It's a very watered down version of the comic that doesn't even follow the comic's story.
As someone who watches the show and read the comics, I agree with that wholeheartedly but it doesn't detract from my enjoyment of the show. I just have to treat them as 2 separate things. Much like Walking Dead where the comic is awesome to me but I thought the show is terrible. The Boys is a good comic and a good show but only if you don't attempt to resolve the two as being related.
I watched 2 episodes of it and thought the acting was terrible. It reminded me a lot of Battlestar Galactica. That being said, I have several friends that rant and rave about it and keep telling me to try it again.
Among the best Sci Fi shows I’ve ever seen. I’ve read the book series 3 times and on my 3rd watch through of the show. I’m biased (Sci Fi is about all I watch/read) but it’s truly one of the greats.
Obviously they don't have the volume but their average quality is probably as good as any streaming service. Over 16 non-film/doc/kids series the mean tomatometer/metascores is a pretty solid 74/64 and there's 5 with 90+/70+:
Ted Lasso, Tehran, Mythic Quest, Little America, and Central Park.
I enjoyed the first 4 of those and haven't seen the last.
Huh, Anonymous Content sounded familiar so I did a quick search and I discovered that they are responsible for producing a lot of stuff I have really enjoyed: True Detective, Mr. Robot, The OA, Flint Town, Maniac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Out of curiosity, why do you think Servant is mediocre? I thought it was a compelling story around the reborn doll, and that M. Night Shyamalan made it consistently creepy and engaging without being outright paranormal in season one.
Too uneventful and sometimes pretentious. Some episodes could have been done away with entirely and the result would have been the same. Nice polish and production though.
I did enjoy it as something to leave playing in the background while doing something else, or to watch when there's nothing else to do.
That's the problem with the platforms Apple runs, look at how the software on the iPhone is. Quake? gcc? anything that isn't either shovelware or an ad? Nope!
Speaking from first hand experience as "talent" - Apple doesn't know how to make really good TV. It felt to me like it was a lot of middling, risk averse people at the middle layers of production and show running, with an inflated sense of worth . That's pretty common in hollywood - and it generally produces mediocre outcomes - not AMAZING gamechanging outcomes.
They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production - but the left hand of marketing doesn't talk with the right hand and you get a lot of disjointed efforts.
If you look at Netflix, for all their downsides, they go big and hard, buy working shows based on data and don't shy away from controversy. They also have way better middle talent which I think makes the difference.
Funny reading this. A classmate of mine from USC was telling me that their production company was working with Apple to produce a show and it was not going well. Apparently among the folks they felt if Apple just filmed themselves flailing around trying to make something it would be a better show than the show they were making. They reminded me of Truffaut's "Day for Night" which we had seen in Cinema 190 (the cinema elective that engineers often take) and said it was kind of like that, only way funnier in a sad sort of way.
We have a running comparison of "LA people coming to the Bay Area to do tech because 'How hard can it be?'" and the reverse being true as well, "Bay Area people going to LA to produce television/movies because 'How hard can it be?'"
Reality is complicated, and smart people so often seem to miss that.
Steve Jobs made a similar point a number of times based on his experience as CEO of Pixar:
> Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.
I don't often agree with a Jobs quote, but when I do...
My experience as a geek, on shores very far from Silicon Valley, is that engineers are second-class citizens almost everywhere, but particularly where "creatives" are on top.
Look at any high paying industry/job, apart from FAANG tech or doctors - it's either marketing or sales at the end of the day. I'll go so far as to say that even most doctors in the US are in the sales business.
I kind of didn't want to put the statement out that way actually, although I didn't delve much deeper.
There are places where engineers' and creatives' opinions are valued and taken into account when making decisions, for instance certain quant funds or Hollywood studios. If you want to not be considered a second-class citizen, so to speak, work in a place where ideally your job isn't just coding or building content, but also convincing others of your own ideas (sales) and building consensus within the organization to back them (marketing).
I think this is a big part of why there is such a thing as a tech company. If you think about it, it's a weird concept to exist otherwise as basically every company uses technology. But "tech firms" as we know them are really "firms run by geeks". The people who can't get respect unless they create their own companies where they're on top from day one :(
I do grant writing for nonprofits, public agencies, and some research-based businesses, and we get a fair number of calls from smart people who started with the best of intentions and then after a number of hours of struggle decided to seek aid.
> smart people who started with the best of intentions
I had two roommates try to make a structurally stable stool / box out of lumber. 3 hours later I returned to find both of them pissed off & a "box" without a square corner in sight.
Days later, I offered in a conversation with them how odd it is that dimensional lumber doesn't measure the named dimensions.
They looked at me in shock and said "Maybe that's why nothing was lining up."
That's "X does Y, because how hard can it be?" in a nutshell. But the broader takeaway is to test & validate your own assumptions -- they had a measuring tape the entire time.
This seems to be a recurring problem with silicon valley. Bay Area people are so arrogant, they think they can always do it better. Do to inefficiencies in the industry, it just looks from the outside like everyone is worthless, and they just need smart tech people to come and fix it. Then it turns out there were reasons for some of those things.
Only speaking to the output, Servant by M. Night Shyamalan doesn't strike me as risk-averse overall despite the micromanaging detail from the article, and Ted Lasso is widely considered to be top tier.
I love that show, the only thing from Apple TV I actually watched. Got a subscription for buying something from them, and after 7 months decided to give it a go and try something less dark and gloomy. This is such a lighthearted gem, the perfect thing to watch for me right now. Not too much drama, just pure feel good stuff, don’t even know how to describe it, but I love that show.
It feels kind of Hallmark style and hagiographic to me, but it's still interesting and I've only watched three so far. The Indonesian bamboo architecture story is breathtaking.
I'm not even sure if "comedy" is the right category for it, considering how moving and poignant it is on top of Ted Lasso's folksy yet self-aware shtick. It's a breath of fresh air seeing a character manipulate situations by being a genuinely good person instead of yet another sinister anti-hero.
Well not sure if they have good editing either. I saw the first episode of Tehran the other day, two noticeable errors. Passengers are on a commercial airline, but on the first outside shot it looks like a smaller corporate jet. Later when it lands it looks like a commercial jet.
Later the same plane takes off from Tehran and there is a Southwest airlines jet in the background, like its supposed to be Tehran, not Phoenix.
One hardly needs to be an aviation expert to notice these things. How could a well funded production miss two thing in the first episode of a show?
I don't think they were involved with the content of Tehran at all, only they acquired the rights to distribute it worldwide later on. You can also tell because there's no Apple hardware shown.
However, in Servant, there's a continuity error where an Audi is shown without the emblem in one scene and then with it in another scene. This is especially surprising because Servant probably has the best Apple TV+ cinematography.
ah, thanks for the clarification, that make more sense. I guess that can somewhat excuse the Southwest airlines goof if not American makers, but doesn't excuse showing different jets as the same plane
That is the problem I have with Apple Services as a whole, that is Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Arcade.
None of these were started because Apple thinks they could do better and contribute something, a word Steve Jobs likes to use. They are doing it simply because they needed those Services Revenue. Something to dilute down their near 100% App Store Margin and Google Search Placement.
Apple Music was something they wanted to save iTunes / Music as a Business. And they bought in Jimmy Iovine for that god damn "Next Song" idea.
Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade were part of the grand plan for Apple One. Unlike iCloud, Apple Music and Apple News+, Apple TV and Arcade does not have any per unit cost. iCloud are cost / GB, Music are cost per song played, and News are cost per article read. TV shows and Arcade Games are paid as a whole at a fixed cost regardless of users. This give opportunity for Apple to bundle them at a discount.
One could argue Apple Fitness+ is more like iTunes where it is used to sell more Apple Watch / iPod. And it isn't out yet so I am giving it some benefits of doubt.
I think there are a lot of assumptions in here about _why_ certain products and services were created. It is much harder for us to figure this out, looking from the outside.
For Apple Fitness+, it might sell more watches, but the reason it requires a watch is because the product includes sensors that read useful data during the fitness experience that other devices simply don't have.
Given Tim Cook has stated publicly that what Apple wants to be most known for when looking back on the company is improvements to people's health, I don't think Fitness+ was spun up to sell watches. It was created out of a genuine priority for the company to have a certain impact on the world.
I also don't believe the purpose of Apple TV+ and Arcade was to create Apple One. It seems like they genuinely are trying to come up with a unique service for these two areas. Apple One is just a bundling. They are also responses to growing problems. Apple Arcade is an answer to the growing problem of in app purchases and advertising. They want to create a pure, fun gaming experience that you can put in front of your kids and not worry about it. I think Apple TV+ is more about business deals required to build the Apple TV app itself. You aren't going to have a seat at the table if you aren't serious about buying and delivering content.
I would guess that Apple doesn't want any controversy from their media side harming the reputation of the other parts of the company, which is probably a sensible decision. Netflix is in a different position since the "media part" of the company is the entire company. Not sure how Amazon fits into all this because I'm not familiar with their offerings.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, although Tim Cook has been at Apple for decades, he can't make the kind of bold, risky decisions that a founder who's been there from day 1 would.
All of their video games look completely paint-by-numbers also. It's hard to imagine many people continuing to subscribe to these services once the free trials run out.
Yeah. So much potential too. Decently powerful streaming device that can play decent games. And can connect to BT controllers. But there’s nothing on it to play.
Apple doesn’t directly produce any video games, though. They may provide some funding, but most Apple Arcade titles appear on other platforms. And many of them are quite excellent. (There’s also a lot more of them out, so it’s easier to evaluate them as a whole)
Don't agree with you on that. There's quite a few great games in apple arcade. Pilgrims, Beyond a Steel Sky, Neo Cab, Necrobarista, Takeshi and Hiroshi
Those are more indie titles, they are rather original and different from AAA titles and don't have the refinement of AAA titles when it comes to graphics et al. But they are absolutely not paint-by-numbers
Apple services are designed for broad adoption. They are the Disney of tech.
Non-tech, typical parents will stick with their vertical rather than be nickeled and dimed by Netflix, and Amazon, and CBS, and...
I’m pretty sure how the 20th Century thought about this stuff is on the way out.
My kids have no clue what any the names on those icons mean. They watch random stuff and don’t cling given the diversity.
I am teaching my kids to make content with modern tools. ML will no doubt take over.
Consider how much textual content we have given the internet. ML will be able to generate video and audio and where we need new ideas, help humans iterate much faster.
The emotional value of any given property will nose dive as it happens. Mario and Solid Snake will be lost to time. Really though, unlike Aristotle, or Galileo, will humanity have lost anything near the overall value?
> They have good line producers and of course great technical talent for set design, editing, production
I don't understand this - these are Apple people themselves? I was always under the impression that external production companies were making these TV shows and Apple was just buying the rights. They might (or might not, if you ask Apple) make editorial decisions, but I never expected Apple to have technical talent and input for set design, etc/
Sure, think of any movie or TV show kind of like a startup or a company.
The Executive Producers are like the Board. The show runner, director and sometimes certain talent are like the C-Suite or SVPs. These set the vision, pace, hiring, management, budgeting etc... like in a normal business.
There are then the middle level directors (casting, lighting, sound) editors and line producers who do the lions share of the work and are supposed to interpret the intents of the director and show runners - basically handle all the details and make sure things run smoothly.
Finally the supporting cast, craft services etc...are basically told what to do, how to do it and when.
This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech.
Here’s how: imagine a Miramax development executive, circa 1999, bringing in a movie that was about an actress who was molested by an overweight studio executive and then was blacklisted when she spoke up.
That executive would be fired in an instant.
Tim Cook is obviously no Weinstein, and he has the moral high ground here contra Gawker. But the principle is the same: don’t expect The Boss to greenlight a topic they’re sensitive about. This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.
This article is more evidence that major media outlets hate tech and will slant every article to find a way to smear tech.
Classic blaming the messenger.
This has nothing to do “Big Tech has so much power these days”.
You and I must have read different articles. The one I just read has nothing to do with Silicon Valley's persecution complex. It was about Apple not understanding how to make TV shows.
I believe the following statements are simultaneously true, yet rarely simultaneously acknowledged:
1) The First Amendment says nothing about which content companies must produce, promote, or allow with their resources and on their platforms.
2) The principle of free speech extends beyond the First Amendment or government censorship: our society has a considerable interest in the open exchange of ideas and information, especially by the least popular among us, so that we may conduct the difficult conversations which are the prerequisite for progress, and possess the freedoms of thought and communication which are the prerequisites for enlightenment.
3) The increasing centralization of control over new media in a handful of large technology companies (mainly Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter) poses an intense threat to the aforementioned open exchange of ideas, especially where such ideas may threaten business interests of those companies, or merely taint them by association with something or someone unpopular.
4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms, the speed with which such disinformation spreads, and the active, asymmetric promotion of that disinformation by certain political actors, poses a paradox of tolerance of a sort, threatening the continuation of the open society on which everything good depends.
These four truths form a tangled knot which must be cut, but to do so, we must first see its whole, and not merely one or two of its threads.
I have strong doubts about number 4. Paradoxically, the people with the strongest investment in that line of thinking are those with the biggest desire to manipulate the public. The whole discourse around information consumption on the web, with terms such as "viral" and "radicalization", seems purposely designed to paint the picture that we're all helpless to defend ourselves from information on the internet. I just don't buy it. If you ignore the screeching of traditional media pundits, and the various internet commentators, the general level of ignorance and cranky beliefs in the real world among real people seems to me to be about the same as always.
Sorry if that was a bit ranty. About the other 3 points, I agree completely.
P.S. Wasn't the paradox of tolerance mostly about violence, not just untrue or undesirable information?
"Less well known [than Plato's paradoxes of freedom and of democracy] is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force…" (The Open Society and Its Enemies, ch. 7, note 4)
What's clear from this quotation is that Popper advocated neither unlimited suppression of all wrongthink (as the gleeful Nazi punchers sometimes misrepresent him, and indeed advocate themselves), nor the opposite extreme of unlimited tolerance of any political speech so long as no violence has yet been employed (as the more libertarian among us sometimes misrepresent him).
And that's the key to how I'd respond to your point about the "general level of ignorance". I think you may be right that the general level of ignorance has not worsened. It is in any case quite difficult to measure such a thing. But the prevalence of misinformation specifically about foundational matters of democratic governance, such as whether one can even trust the elections themselves, being promoted by actors with open disdain for open society, and a clear intent to end it, is the precise sort of situation I believe Popper had in mind with this passage.
I think the criterion of tolerance depends on if the beliefs are open to falsification or not. Nazis are not up for a debate about their ideas and so can be punched.
I think misinformation is not really that problematic as the truth is valuable to most people and we seek it out all on our own. Its self correcting in an open society.
Falsifiability was Popper’s demarcation of science, not his demarcation of tolerance (if he had one).
Note that he specifically says in that passage that he’s not advocating the suppression of all intolerant speech. Thus even if some speech were intolerant, that by itself would be insufficient for suppression.
---
Misinformation is problematic to the extent that it endangers the open society’s very existence, and with it its ability to self-correct.
The problem as I see it is not one of punching Nazis but identifying Nazis. The people I see who are the loudest advocates of Nazi-punching tend to be the same people who reflexively use "Nazi" to refer to anyone they disagree with, no matter how inaccurate the label. The inevitable result is that non-Nazis get punched, then they start punching back.
> Nazis are not up for a debate about their ideas and so can be punched
Many leftist would meet this criteria just as strongly ala "My <x> is not up for debate." or other statements conflating ones existence with ones identity with the same result: No discussion (outside a select, tautological group of gatekeepers) allowed.
Yeah, I don't think it's about us being helpless to defend ourselves from misinformation. It's the legions of people that desperately want to believe terrible things, or are just stupid, and unsophisticated with no ability to assess the credibility of the source. It's never been about you, me or 90%+ of users (who are also dumb/shitty people), that have the ability to recognize that some sources of information aren't reliable.
That's a gross oversimplification, and there's other issues at play. For instance the lack of trust in traditional media. I don't think the issue is that most people are susceptible to "viral radicalization", and can't tell the difference. Some small minority of people are vulnerable to these things, and can fall victim to it if exposed.
In a large population that winds up being many people, and is a huge issue. See the cult movement of the 60-80s. Most people knew it was a bad idea to go live in the woods with a bunch of free spirits. It's people who are absolutely fed up with reality and so anything that seems to bring back "community" looks attractive. On the commune people dance, sing, and share everything. In cases like Johnstown, it was often racial minorities that were just glad to find somewhere that seemed to treat them as real people (even though they were really props and pawns in a narcissists sick reality). It's so sad.
Perhaps you don't have a change in the number of crackpots, but you have a decent chance the crackpots are now all saying the same thing. Misled voters in a democracy seems like a bad thing to me (this extends to the way mass media is currently used of course).
There's an obvious slippery slope in these discussions - ultimately it's reducible to who you give the right to vote to, and discomfort about measures to keep the undesirables from rallying ought not to be ignored.
It seems to me that mass media has always been under the control of a small group of people; I believe that the current narrative that unrestricted, uncensored mass media is dangerous/an existential threat stems from the fact that digital communications systems stand to threaten that bottleneck, if properly deployed.
It strikes me that this is why Facebook et al are so eager to censor; otherwise an attempt will be made to destroy them, as they provide a bypass around centralized mass media narrative control.
Narratives are how the world is practically governed. The ability to propagate a narrative to millions of people is a power on par with a standing army.
The fact that mass media profits with curated information does not imply that "uncensored mass media", as you put it, has had a positive impact.
It has become apparent that the "uncensored mass media" can be controlled through money, ie. politicians steering the narrative on social media using disinformation campaigns. But now they are hidden behind millions of small agents that are so hard to fact check, hold accountable and prove the liason to said politician. With mass media big companies were in this sense vulnerable -- to 3rd parties attacks, to the legal system, to the public.
I'm hardly a fan of big corporations, but in the current state of affairs the common individual is helpless, drowned in a sea of noise à là Brave New World, and for the powerful chaos is indeed a ladder.
...the people with the strongest investment in that line of thinking are those with the biggest desire to manipulate the public Do you have any evidence of this? It seems to be a position that is extremely vulnerable to confirmation bias.
> 3) The increasing centralization of control over new media in a handful of large technology companies [...]
> 4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms [...]
Are these new points, or are is it just that the gatekeepers are changing? Arguably media is now _less_ centralised than its ever been. Before it was just a handfull of newspapers and tv companies, and now while we still have the same 'tranditional media' companies (who've gone through their own megers, acquisitions, and breakups) there are now all the tech companies as well getting into media, as well as all the independent orgs/voices (who might be beholded to bigger tech platforms, like Youtube)
There's some give and take over time, I grant. But compare the situation today not to the 1950's, but to the early 2000's, when there was a thriving ecosystem of independent blogs and bookstores, to today, where a few big media platforms host the lion's share of conversation, and Amazon dominates book sales.
I think it was easier to maintain an independent voice 15-20 years ago.
I think we've actually never had it so good. There are still a lot of really great blogs out there - I read them all the time, probably most of my reading is online news and blogs. It's just that blogging was always going to be niche and now thanks to Twitter and YouTube all the people who don't like long form writing have a space too, so it can feel like in depth writing has been drowned out. But it's still there. These things weren't subtractive.
I think powerful intermediaries to the common spread of information, like Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube are proving troublesome.
Views like "masks might make us safer from COVID" were suppressed not too long ago. It's a wacky place we're in. Some of the criticism out there (COVID denial, election fraud, etc) is dangerous, but legitimate criticism and nuanced points are getting crushed too in the process. And the entities involved in the suppression are powerful, moving in lockstep, and have limited accountability to the public.
Worse, these platforms have the illusion of being grassroots and open, but you never know when you're getting state-sponsored manipulation or what kinds of content isn't permitted to flow through them today.
> Views like "masks might make us safer from COVID" were suppressed not too long ago.
Are there words missing here? I... don't see this as a viewpoint that is being suppressed at all. Maybe this particular example is more about the people who you follow/listen to?
I think Twitter and Facebook ate a whole lot of blogs. A lot of prominent, active bloggers drifted to these formats. And blog readership has gone way down.
I find it really funny when Twitter is lumped in with the rest of these countries. It is almost like an order or magnitude smaller than all the others, and makes considerably less money.
Twitter is a small niche social network with people who control the news, which vastly overstates it's size.
I thought about that point when constructing that list, but despite Twitter's small size as a business, it has outsized power in the media environment.
For complementary reasons, I excluded Microsoft, despite its large size.
I'm sure one could debate the exact composition of that list, but it's not too important to the larger point.
Twitter has a lot of journalists on it which in turn influences the news. Twitter can be used to influence how the people that make the news view reality
Do 3) and 4) not contradict each other? 3) states all the distribution power is in the hands of a few companies, and 4) states that no entity can control the flow of information on these newly created distribution channels. Seems like they can't both be true?
The point is the tension. It’s very easy to acknowledge (1) and (4), or (2) and (3). It’s very rare to acknowledge all four.
That said, there’s a misunderstanding here:
(3) says much, not all, of the power is increasingly centralized, and that that’s concerning in light of (2).
(4) isn’t saying the companies lack power. It’s saying that their platforms are being abused. It’s understood (from (3)) that they can (indeed sometimes do) use their power to attempt to control that abuse.
> 4) The lack of collective immunity to viral forms of political disinformation on new media platforms, the speed with which such disinformation spreads
humans are predilected towards that... this type of "media" preys on our insticts like sugar and oil (junk food)
if we really want to take this head-on, we would should be motivated to improve education to help students (who then become adults) to learn logic, reason and argumentation to better deal with this stuff
#2 just is most oft heard by people who are upset that their viewpoints, generally concerning the status hierarchy being threatened, are dismissed out of hand.
> 1) The First Amendment says nothing about which content companies must produce, promote, or allow with their resources and on their platforms.
It's not just that it says nothing about these things. It says the opposite of these things.
Any legal or social norm that attempts to enforce what content is produced, promoted, or allowed on private resources and platforms is fundamentally authoritarian. This includes the "principle of free speech" from your 2nd statement. The first amendment is a protection against authoritarianism. Using the ideas behind it to coerce private parties into hosting or promoting content they don't want to is a bit perverse.
Too many people believe Free Speech is SOLELY about government censorship, we have culturally lost a huge amount of respect for the principle of free expression
Instead we look to "cancel" or socially isolate those that do not share our worldview.
There was a time where people could passionately debate politics, or even more personal issues such as abortion, and then still enjoy a game, party, or have a beer at the pub with someone you just passionately disagreed with on another topic. It seems today if persons / groups have an ideological opposition in anything, they must treat their opposition as if they are immoral and completely banish them from their lives
With out this base cultural respect for free expression the 1st amendment will become meaningless and will likely fail to protect from government censorship.
We need to get back to a time where people can passionately disagree on a topic with out being "cancelled", but I honestly do not see how to accomplish that
There was a time where people could passionately debate politics, or even more personal issues such as abortion, and then still enjoy a game, party, or have a beer at the pub with someone you just passionately disagreed with on another topic. It seems today if persons / groups have an ideological opposition in anything, they must treat their opposition as if they are immoral and completely banish them from their lives
When was this mythical time? It wasn't too long ago when abortion clinics were being bombed and abortion doctors were gunned down at their homes and places of work. In living memory are periods when anti-war and civil rights protestors were set upon by dogs and firehoses. Gun companies were boycott for cooperating with gun-control measures. There was the whole South Africa divestment movement. PMRC was doing it's best to "cancel" rock & rap, Terry Rakolta was doing her level best to get Married with Children kicked off the network. And let's not forget Robert Bork.
Americans have always been passionate about issues, only the platforms and terminology are new.
Yes, whenever you see someone wax nostalgic for some golden era in the past when everything was better you can be absolutely certain that this was a period when the group they most strongly identify with was in power and able to exert undue influence over everyone else.
Why were they able to have those debates and then go have a beer? I am guessing it was because the stakes were low or abstract and did not have a direct impact on their life (like when you are the mid-20s upper middle-class white male that the OP clearly was during this golden age...) or because they could afford to simply ignore the other side after the debate because there was no risk to their personal position of privilege. What annoys this person is not the conflict, but the possibility that they might face consequences -- consequences are something for 'the other' to deal with and certainly not something that they should ever need to consider.
"privilege" is a weaponised term that relies on an overly simplistic view of power relationships.
> they could afford to simply ignore the other side after the debate because there was no risk to their personal position of privilege
What is the alternative - people not being allowed to ignore some side of a debate? This isn't just about stakes/skin in the game; It's also about quality of the debate, and when someone has so much invested in the outcome that they won't allow their position to lose, the quality wrt a free exchange of ideas, isn't likely to happen.
In fact, most versions of this can't be described as a debate at all. "shut up and listen" while being dictated to (without the right of reply) bears no similarities. This perspective is basically: "certain people believe the wrong things, so shouldn't discuss them; they should just be told what to think by the right people, and believe that.". If "wrong-thinkers" now want to debate amongst themselves without correction from self-appointed "right-thinkers", is it any wonder, even if they valued diversity of opinion/perspective?
> consequences are something for 'the other' to deal with
Can you give an example? There is a big difference between, say, the consequences of the topic of a discussion, and the consequences of the discussion itself.
> It wasn't too long ago when abortion clinics were being bombed
Yes, by a minority, because they where a minority. If the majority disagreed with the clinic, they would simply be illegal and no-one would need to seek extra-legal means of suppression.
Divorcing this discussion from quantitate measures allows for a distorted view based on cherry-picked examples.
A little related background on Gawker outing people. The original story[1] was made by Owen Thomas, the same writer who outed Peter Thiel. Interestingly, both he and Gawker founder Nick Denton are gay.
Outing is a controversial but old practice from the 80s in the queer community, and involves outing public figures who were involved in making the lives of the LGBT community worse. The classic text I know was Outing, Part 1 from Michelangelo Signorile's "Queer In America." but https://www.newsweek.com/age-outing-202878 is an article from back then.
> Outing is a controversial but old practice
I would translate "controversial" here as "shitty". It is just selling other people's privacy for clicks, which may damage their lives.
Did it make sense to out Jim Kolbe after he sold out the LGBTQ community in congress? Or Ted Haggard who was using his power to hurt the community? We can came other political and public figures where outing was stopping the damage. The moment you sell the community out, your right to the closet is compromised.
OTOH, did it help anyone that Rock Hudson was outed? (Maybe?) Did it help anyone that Cook was outed? Probably not.
The book "Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire" by Ryan Holiday was very interesting, and it´s a detailed look into this whole case.
Nick Denton was known for being happy to gossip and slander; he always said his victims loved the attention, and that if they hated it so much, they could always sue him. Eventually, some did.
Yeah, people assume that LGBTQ people can't be nasty for some reason. I heard him talk about his reasoning, and I believe he's sincere. Basically, he felt that being closeted was an insult to gay men and sets the community back.
Just because someone is a minority from a oppressed demographic, doesn't mean they'll be kind and sensitive, in all social matters. Sometimes black people are racist and gay people are assholes.
They should just hire the people that made Halt and Catch Fire[1] to make a show about the creation of the first mac based on the www.folklore.org stories.
Gawker wasn't just an ordinary media voice that simply made the mistake of offending economically powerful people. In Apple's case, it paid a significant amount of money for a prototype iPhone that it absolutely knew was stolen. In Thiel's case, it outed a gay man that didn't want to come out. The earlier act was illegal; both acts are immoral.
I have real problem with Apple's cooperation with China, the total lack of documentation for developers, the faulty keyboards, the locking down of the App Store and total ban on sideloaded apps. I also have a big problem with the security stuff it builds in that can be (and most likely is) used for domestic spying. I want to run Linux on the M1 MacBook Pro. I think Scott Forstall should be brought back into the CEO role to replace Tim Cook. So don't get me wrong, my position is not reflexively pro-Apple or pro-Cook here.
I'm just saying that Gawker is just about the worst possible example to use. Does their point even stand at all without Gawker?
That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it. The fact that you or I find Gawker's output distasteful is irrelevant.
On the illegallity point, that is a job for law enforcement, not corporations to decide.
>That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it.
You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation.
Germany and other does European nations for example have a stronger claim to personal privacy rights of individuals than the US, based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found that you cannot just publish any picture or piece of information you know but have to weigh the newsworthiness of information against the invasion of privacy such publication would mean.
E.g. paparazzos stalking somebody to a funeral of a family member is usually not newsworthy enough to overcome the personal right to privacy. Writing about somebody being gay would cross a line unless that somebody was/is publicly vocal about "gay matters" such as gay marriage legislation, gay adoption rights etc. Publishing pics of the family, especially kids, of famous people is usually a no go - except when those family members themselves engage in newsworthy activity such as coming a crime.
As it pertains to Gawker, they outed at least two high profile people as gay (Thiel, Cook), published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and his partner, published nude paparazzo pics of various people including Justin Bieber and a slew of other things, while their sister site jezebel.com wrote pieces rather strongly condemning the publication of hacked nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other in the "fappening". If only Gawker listened to Jezebel...
Frankly, I like the European way, which is certainly not free of dangers, a lot better than the US way. But famous people are people too, and are entitled to at least some privacy.
You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation.
The issue here, though, is not whether Gawker's behavior should have been protected speech, but whether it's concerning for a documentary about Gawker to be canned by a studio controlled by a large company which had another aspect of its business harmed by the behavior of the subject of that documentary.
I agree. Short of regulating quasi-monopolies/antitrust and illegal content, media companies - regardless of their size - shouldn't be interfered with. If Apple pays to produce content, then Apple can decide to stop paying or shelf it (in accordance with any contracts they entered).
To me, Apple's own streaming offering - which at least for now has sizable competition from giants such as Disney and Netflix and Amazon as well as small producers on youtube and elsewhere - is quite different from "social media" companies with their defacto "marketplaces of ideas" interfering with legal free speech of regular people, which I see with far more concern. It is also quite different to their quasi monopolist walled garden otherwise known as the App Store.
Apple really is just a minor player in the TV space right now, and far more concerning is the Disney/Fox/Hulu behemoth, where we're slowly heading into antitrust territory.
Free press doesn't mean you can slander people or publish intimate details about them without them having a civil case against you.
Anyone can sue anyone pretty much, that's what a free country is about.
It's not the government shutting down gawker, it's people who have money to sue them. If you think that's wrong then the government needs to change libel laws, that's easy. Similar to the section 230 issues right now, with enough political pressure you can change things.
But gawker, they were asking for trouble, and got it. There's a reason lawyers recommend you don't do stuff that they did, and have done for decades if not centuries.
>Cook didn't stop someone else making a show about Gawker
Yet. We are talking about Apple, which is blocking Microsoft's xCloud and Google's Stadia on iOS on the grounds that Microsoft and Google are not submitting each individual game for review. Both xCloud and Stadia are just glorified video players, where you are streaming video of a game being played in a server room and sending back controls. If streaming video game video can be subject for individual approval on iOS, I don't see streaming TV shows being subject to individual review that far off.
Quite right: Apple is entitled to make (and not make) whatever products it chooses.
Could’ve made a great, and timely, horrible-warts-n-all show about freedom of speech and those who’d manipulate it, but Cook is not one for such exuberant boldness. Hey, I’m fine with that: last thing I want is a desire to spend any more money on their overpriced tat.
Guess it’s The People vs Larry Flynt for movie night tonight. Now where did I put the DVD…
It is painfully ironic if you think that “freedom of speech” means that no one can make any judgements whatsoever about any properties of any speech, except, of course, the government.
Freedom of speech is both a right and a responsibility. You are free to say what you want but you are also responsible for it. If you lie, slander, etc to make a profit then you should pay in some way. Tbh I don’t understand how people like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson get away with so much. Much of it blatant making things up / lying about people.
Most of politics involves creative and/or innovative interpretations of the truth. While in theory it would be an improvement to purge all the liers, in practice it is rare to get a substantial majority (60%+) of people to agree that an obvious lie is in fact a lie. And rarely because they have been mislead, one might suspect.
If it was having a person having to make a television show about someone they hated then I would agree, but corporations are _not_ people and so the reasoning does not apply.
Also important to note that Gawker was hosting revenge porn and defied a court order to remove the content, which is what ultimately brought them down
> Gawker announced that it would not comply with the part of the court order requiring the removal of the post and associated commentary because it deemed the order "risible and contemptuous of centuries of First Amendment jurisprudence." Gawker removed the video itself, but linked readers to another site hosting the video
False dichotomy; you as individual are perfectly in your right to feel like certain speech or press should be constrained (think hate speech, fake news).
> I'm just saying that Gawker is just about the worst possible example to use.
What left me puzzled for a while is that I automatically assumed the series would portray Gawker in a negative light, given how they operated. For Tim Cook to intervene, the opposite must have been the case, or am I missing something?
>I think Scott Forstall should be brought back into the CEO role to replace Tim Cook.
I am glad I am not the only one. This is the same as Intel pushing out Pat Gelsinger. The product people get pushed out by sales and marketing. Which are increasingly running the show at Apple.
It's weird to see how The Times goes to bat for Gawker. They were absolute dregs of the media world that occasionally stumbled onto something hot and relevant. Is this wistful remembrance journalists circling the wagons, or is this guy actually serious?
Also Gawker (the company though, not the specific blog) caused "Gamergate"
If I remember correctly, when Zoe Quinn boyfriend complained about her behaviour, and accused her of having a relationship with an editor of Kotaku (that is property of Gawker), while her game was being reviewed by Kotaku, the reaction by Kotaku and Gawker at first was deny that it was an issue, leading to the shitstorm on twitter (since people were already pissed with media for other reasons, like Doritogate adn whatnot).
Only after things were already a huge mess, with death threats, trolls, people arrested (a Brazillian guy got arrested for sending death threats as a form of trolling, he had nothing to do with any of the groups involved, just wanted to watch the world burn), that Gawker did something about it. (sadly I don't remember what exactly they did, and do not have time to check now, but was something along the lines admit that editors having conflict of interest is a bad thing)
I don't get how Apple being a tech company has anything to do with this. If it was NBC making the show and Gawker outed the CEO of NBC does the New York Times think that the NBC CEO would act differently?
Every media outlet, production company, aggregator, makes implicit decisions about what they choose to fund, air, endorse, or not fund, not air, or not endorse. Is this any worse than the many decisions other channels make every day to support vs. kill certain shows?
Apple isn't obligated to be fair in any sense, and we should stop expecting them to be virtuous or protectors of anyone's expectation that they are.
Apple isn’t obligated to be fair, but the public very much can expect them to be virtuous...the two aren’t incompatible. As Apple will probably discover as pressures grow about labor practices in China.
> Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for internet software and services, who has been at the company since 1989, has told partners that “the two things we will never do are hard-core nudity and China,” one creative figure who has worked with Apple told me. (BuzzFeed News first reported last year that Mr. Cue had instructed creators to “avoid portraying China in a poor light.”)
I miss the days when Apple wasn't run by cowards.
(It's also interesting that simple nudity now qualifies as "hard-core", a term formerly reserved for pornography.)
Jobs was famously against pornography on a personal level. You will find email exchanges back in the day with fans/bloggers/writers where he lists his reasons why porn is not allowed on the App Store.
The only reason this is a story is so that the show can get another buyer. Honestly good for Tim Cook to shut this Gawker crap down. They were garbage when they were around and we don't need rose colored glasses looking back over their history to live on in TV show format. Also the executive who cleared this probably should have thought a little bit more about it.
The bill is an implementation of an EU directive [0] which was ratified in November 2018. All EU member states will have to transpose it into national law.
We had a similar story about Apple interfering with creative direction before Apple TV+ was released, saying that the content would be family-friendly. This was clearly not true based on the first crop of content that was released. I wonder if this was really what was happening? Or maybe this is yet another misunderstanding of how Apple is exercising their influence?
I'm pretty sure they're saying that Apple, etc. are trying not to offend China with their programming. It's unrelated to Gawker, but mentioned in the article.
I don't really understand this comment. He can decide to pose with anyone he wants, and he can make his sexual preference as obvious as he wants, that still doesn't give Gawker the right to do what they did.
MBS is the ruler of Saudi, I don't believe he was democratically elected. Have a little look at the crimes of many of the people Saudi of have decapitated, with swords, to see the point of the comment above.
It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies? Why are they our allies? I genuinely don't know.
There is a conflict between caring about LGBT issues and supporting a dictator who literally chops the heads of homosexuals for being homosexuals. It's unpleasant to consider which is why comments dance around it, like I started to, then didn't.
> It's an easy one to miss as most media seem to play it down rather a lot, I don't know why. Because Saudi are our allies?
No, the corporate media plays it down because the Saudis are major investors in US firms, including media (both old and new media). It's not about them being allies, it's about them being owners.
It's about them being allies, owners and 'good actors' geo-politically, economically (they play nice with Israel, they play it mostly reserved with Iran, they stick to the USD, don't do problematic deals with Russia/China).
The 'national relationship' tends to be more important than 'domestic issues'.
And FYI there was tons of reporting on MLB and his involvement in the torture of quasi-American journalist.
Tim Cook is an example of an American executive of a company that has financial interests entwined with the Saudis, but, no, he's not an example of a corporation in any industry (media or otherwise), being a natural person.
A lot of people in tech believe that technology, by itself, will free people and bring democracy. Apple probably believes that its security features will help activists in other countries escape persecution. What they don't seem to understand is that a phone is easily hacked with torture.
> Because Saudi are our allies? Why are they our allies? I genuinely don't know.
Assuming you're not trolling, it's because of the petrodollar and the deal Nixon cooked up with the Saudis in 1974[1] to prop up the dollar, after the US got off the gold standard (established between the Western allies as WWII was coming to an end). In the end no one in power in Washington cares about human rights as much as maintaining the balance of power.
There was an amazing discussion on the gold standard dollar to petrodollar history recently on HN[2].
Then you can start asking questions on the timing of the Libya intervention, given Gadaffi's plans to trade oil for gold instead of the US dollar, which would upset the balance of power.
The more you start digging, the more realpolitik strategies sound like something from a Metal Gear plot.
That has nothing to do with what I said though? You can write all the articles you want about him taking a public photo with MBS, that's all fair game. That still doesn't make it right to write articles about his sexual preference. This is pure Whataboutism.
He can object to having his private sexuality publicised. That's reasonable. He can refuse to object to others of the same sexuality not so much having it publicised but having their heads cut off with a sword. That's his choice.
If he choses both at the same time, everyone will draw the obivous inference about his principles or lack of them.
It's not "whataboutism" it is literally the same man being judged against one principle that he applies with strength to himself, using the power he weilds as a senior manager of other people's assets and simultaneously he applies not at all to others who are having a much worse time of it. I call that unprincipled. You can draw your own conclusions. That's completely fine.
Either way, the MBS thing happened a decade after the Gawker incident so either way it still isn't relevant to what was being discussed, which is why Gawker made the decision to breach his privacy like that.
This is literally a discussion about an article about the CEO of apple exercising his power as a manager of other peoples' assets to kill a tv show about Gawker who punished him for being homosexual by exposing it when he wanted it kept secret. An action he has just taken. Just now.
The "MBS thing" is ongoing. The decapitations continue. Heads are being cut off with swords. Yes it does makes me sick to acknowledge the reality of that.
So yes, he continues to apply a principle in the strongest possible fashion to his own benefit while completely ignoring decapitations of others by exercising his power controlling the assets belonging to other people.
There's no "decade between" there's no "whataboutism" this is who he is and how he applies principles. I'm sorry if that upsets you. I don't want to believe it either. At some point I feel the need to nod to the reality of how things are rather than how I would like them to be.
I don't think the media should publicise the consenting actions of adults taken in private unless they are a public figure and those actions show their publicly stated principles are lies or simply hypocritcal. (As an examle, think the politican who says adulterers should go to jail while having 1 or more adulterous affairs - this is enough for publicising the private act to be justified).
I also don't think homosexuals, performing consentual acts among adults in private should be decapitated for doing so. I think that is wrong and evil and to be opposed always. In most parts of the world this is an entirely uncontraversial view most would deny disagreeing with.
I find those two stances to be a consistent application of principle. You might well feel the same way yourself.
What does any of this have to do with Cook's sexual preference? You can write all the articles you want about Cook and MBS and how horrible that all is, but I still don't see how any of that is relevant to what I said above.
Don't forget The Man in the High Castle, pretty much the best Amazon show IMO until The Expanse came over from Sci-fi - though they could have done a lot more with the ending. Have the Nazis go to a universe where Mars or Venus isn’t a rock and slug it out over who will rule the solar system, have political intriegue with a bunch of Hitlers plotting against each other, have the communists using dinosaurs as weapons, have the Nazis encounter an very advanced Egyptian civilization that never fell, endless possibilities!
It was very good in its first season. Then it rapidly lost steam, since the writers had no idea what to do with the amazing characters they brought to life and the moral dilemmas they inevitably ran into.
As a result you had most of the characters just aimlessly wander around looking forlorn.
From what I've heard, the first season of the show very closely follows the book of the same name, which was written by Phillip K. Dick (who also wrote the book on which Blade Runner was written, as well as Minority Report, and loads of others). So probably the writers are OK at translating someone else's characters from the page to the screen, but not that good at actually writing them.
Very true. House of cards definitely wasn’t the same once they exhausted their source material. The plots weren’t as intricate, having Frank and Claire at odds didn’t really work, Frank and Freddy at odds didn’t really work, and personally I would like to have seen the Zoey/Rachel story lines fall off - sort “little people” fading to obscurity as Frank marches on to his next conquest. Maybe they will do a reboot one day.
TBH, did the story need the supernatural/sci-fi element at all? It felt like a totally different story when that started to kick in. An alt-history imagining would have been intriguing enough.
This right here tells you everything you need to know about Gawker and people that worked there.