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Ethan of H3H3 retracts defamatory claims against WSJ writer (WSJ responds)

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Magwik

Banned
I'm sticking up free for speech. Condemn anyone you want but wanting people banned for their views isn't something I condone. Refute them, don't ask for their heads on platters.
Don't hide behind free speech
At least have the gull to admit you're sticking up for white supremecy​
 
There are certainly lots of things that the western mainstream media, or "old media" as certain YouTube celebrities might take to calling it, could be legitimately criticized for when it comes to fulfilling their duties to the public and providing an effective check on institutional power, but one thing that the well-known respectable outlets unquestionably do very well is instill in their workforces a proper sense of journalistic responsibility. That means understanding the importance of fact-checking, confirming information with multiple sources, never taking one biased source's word at face value, understanding the difference between an allegation and a factual statement or the difference between a legally actionable statement and an opinion -- broadly speaking, all the skills that constitute proper journalistic investigation and reporting. Most reporters for the respectable outlets have gone to journalism school specifically to learn these crucial ideas, because they're the bare minimum knowledge required to be considered a professional journalist.

What we're seeing now unfortunately with the YouTube generation is the rise of a group of people who are sheltered, naive, and awfully self-absorbed, and think that just because they have a webcam and a YouTube account and an unshakable sense of self-certainty bordering on narcissism, that they've been imbued with the same ability to reveal malfeasance and expose unethical actions by institutions that the mainstream media enjoys. Which is fine to an extent, the democratization of media away from entrenched strongholds of power is actually a positive step overall; the problem is these simpletons think that they are entitled to the same credibility, access, and reputation that the mainstream media once enjoyed as a check on institutional power, but without having to go through any of the annoying busywork of learning things like ethics and responsibility.

The mainstream media had to put in the work to get to where it did and it took close to a century to develop those standards. Today's journalism students get it hammered into their heads over and over how fact checking and sourcing works, how to follow up leads, how to smell when a source might be feeding you fake info -- in other words how to do their fucking job. But a YouTube vlogger writes an email, gets a screenshot back, edits it into an insufferably long and self-aggrandizing first-person rant making himself the most important piece of the story, and deigns to call that "journalism", and I'm supposed to do anything but laugh?

Please. This isn't "old media" vs. "new media." This isn't "titans of dying industry" vs. "fresh new bold faces of an evolving medium." This is "are you diligent and responsible enough to know when you're being fed bullshit by someone who makes YouTube videos with the n-word in the title and do you how to spend 30 seconds to properly research YouTube's own statements about how view counts work to understand if the data in front of you even makes sense" vs. "are you such a self-absorbed patsy that you'll take a single screenshot from such a person at face value and make it the basis of a whiny rant that feeds into your own nonsense persecution complex without bothering to do any critical thinking about it because the only thing you actually care about isn't issues of civil injustice, social inequities or the things that real journalists care about, but simply protecting your own livelihood of making webcam videos and calling it important?"

This is the crux of it.

What makes this so dangerous is people don't care. Look at his likes/dislikes and comments. Look at his Tweets and responses. People just do not fucking care. They attach to personalities and celebrity. It confuses and honestly frightens me because short of these people being forced to stop I don't see how this kind of shit doesn't build to a much worse breaking point.
 

Quote

Member
I'm sticking up free for speech. Condemn anyone you want but wanting people banned for their views isn't something I condone. Refute them, don't ask for their heads on platters.
Wait... do my taxes go to Twitter?
Yeah saying free speech was dumb of me. I still think it's better to engage and refute those ideas than calling for them to be banned.
Banned is the least of the things I want for them. Punching has been a great start.
 

oti

Banned
Guess what! The EVIL MSM turned out to not be evil at all. What a surprise. I'm sure all the YouTube kiddies will agree that their hero was wrong and that the WSJ was right.

Right.
t h i c c 😜👅👅

Change your avatar back AT ONCE.
 

Bronx-Man

Banned
When was the exact moment a certain part of the country decided Free Speech = 'I wanna say whatever I want without ever getting criticized'
 

xxracerxx

Don't worry, I'll vouch for them.
Yeah saying free speech was dumb of me. I still think it's better to engage and refute those ideas than calling for them to be banned.
No. If you want to have a discussion with those people head over to their own terrible forums.
 
"This is who we're dealing with, folks"

*pulls down screen*

tumblr_o120r0jmvy1v19iiro1_500.gif
Can I claim your doggo avatar now?
 

mashoutposse

Ante Up
These advertisers are making a dumb move.

They're pulling budget from one of the very few properties online where you can buy video advertising at scale that actually drives results.

Good luck getting any sort of ROI from daily-toaster-reviews.org that sees 90% bot traffic and shows your ad below the fold on mute to the tens of real humans a day who don't bounce away from the site fast enough.

Great news for anyone who wants to sell anything - YouTube CPMs on premium channels and keywords are probably as low as they will be for a long time. It'll likely never be this cheap again.
 

besada

Banned
Phocks has had more than enough replies that he won't respond to, so cut out the dogpile.

And seriously, if your contribution here can be summed up as "I can't believe it!" "Fuck" "Fuck that dude" or any variety of post that's already been seen a dozen times that adds nothing but self-gratification, just spare us. It's be nice to be able to read a thread without a million one-liner shit posts, and I'm too tired to ban everyone.

... Is there a tl;dr available so I don't have to go through 15 pages of messages? wtf is going on?

It's in the OP, the reading of which is necessary to participate.
 

Kinsei

Banned
... Is there a tl;dr available so I don't have to go through 15 pages of messages? wtf is going on?

Ethan claimed to have a smoking gun that proves the WSJ lied.

People realize he's spewing bullshit.

Ethan releases a non apology video

WSJ makes it clear that they are watching Ethan very closely
 

Goon

Member
Yeah saying free speech was dumb of me. I still think it's better to engage and refute those ideas than calling for them to be banned.

I just don't think there is any hope of engaging people who literally are white supremacists and think I'm subhuman.

What was the Hugh Mongus thing? Is that the one where he stuck up for that guy accosting that poor lady who was asking him questions?

What did the Hugh mongus guy do? He seemed innocent in that video
 

Veldin

Member
When I saw this thread earlier today, I thought to myself that there was no fuckin' way this h3h3 guy could be right. And hey, what do you know? He's exactly the scumbag clown I've come to expect.
 

Quote

Member
These advertisers are making a dumb move.

They're pulling budget from one of the very few properties online where you can buy video advertising at scale that actually drives results.

Good luck getting any sort of ROI from daily-toaster-reviews.org that sees 90% bot traffic and shows your ad below the fold on mute to the tens of real humans a day who don't bounce away from the site fast enough.

Great news for anyone who wants to sell anything - YouTube CPMs on premium channels and keywords are probably as low as they will be for a long time. It'll likely never be this cheap again.
Eh, isn't it just as likely that people stop making videos that are likely not to gain ad revenue and shape up?
 
Eh, isn't it just as likely that people stop making videos that are likely not to gain ad revenue and shape up?

Or that, faced with the loss of the little bit of money the giant sinkhole that is youtube actually brings in, google may begin actually enforcing some form of decent curation of content.
 
... Is there a tl;dr available so I don't have to go through 15 pages of messages? wtf is going on?
New media v. Old Media in the cage match of the century. Turns out New Media is a moron and doesn't actually know any MMA moves to save their life. Got punched out like Ronda after talking somethin' fierce.

(Ethan thought he hit on the goldmine of the century to attack the WSJ and used fake screenshots from a known racist in his videos. Then as new evidence came up showing how wrong he was he took it down and made an 'apology' video.)

Edit: Sorry I meant 'apology' as in doubling down on the original claim minus the evidence saying it still could be real, while somehow not apologizing at all.
 
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