>The mainstream media is pure evil. They will go to any lengths to protect their billionaire owners and friends.
This assumes billionaires are some sort of cohesive group that's collectively hurting from the GME frenzy, when really there's plenty of billionaires that are making money off this. Citadel just got a bunch of ownership in Melvin for cheap for instance, and MUST asset management unloaded a bunch of stocks for a tidy profit.
Not to seem conspiratorial or anything, but with this guy now identified, he's the obvious candidate to be given the Madoff treatment if a bunch of retail traders get wiped out by institutional manipulation. I don't expect anyone to buy such a transparent scapegoating play, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.
The mainstream narrative so far is still in flux - and that includes the WSJ piece linked elsewhere in this thread; it's humanizing, sure, but it's also carefully designed to leave open the possibility of demonization.
It'll be interesting to see where the narrative goes on Monday.
Doxxing is messed up and it really doesn't seem like it adds much of anything to the story. On the other hand, it again comes down to the question of how big one can be if ever before talking about details of their life is fair game? After all, he just led hundreds of thousands people, made millions, and shook up markets for billions. Is that big enough?
I would say it's fair game if it matters to the story. If DeepFuckingValue was a hedge fund employee using the internet to pump his positions, or something like that, then it would be relevant. If journalists stuck to reporting the relevant facts then maybe they wouldn't get so much hate.
A basic surface level review of the events would have shown that their identity doesn't matter to the story. They bought shares in 2019, and boasted about it. What part of that makes it relevant to events in 2021?
Honestly, I think the notion that someone is so important or noteworthy that they should be doxed against their will for no good reason is mad.
On the other hand, Scott Alexander wrote about basically the same thing at length and I think it is a more interesting discussion than I could probably come up with. I’d recommend it if you are interested in broadening your view and aren’t familiar with it.
Of course, however, there are situations where one can argue other considerations trump that. On the extreme end, if they had uncovered that he is GME's CEO I would think it's well worth publishing it.
It's nowhere near as clear-cut here though, so once again I'm wondering where the lines should lay.
Specific to this incident, this person bought shares back in 2019 and boasted about it. There's no reason to peel back their privacy for an event that occurred well over a year later.
