[AlchemistCamp]

The source this article mentions doing the "reporting" has been single-mindedly focused on attacking Elon Musk's reputation ever since he took over Twitter and made it clear he was investigating the prior management's moderation decisions. They've been hunting down any and every disgruntled ex-employee they can looking for dirt and they have no appetite for any positive stories.

I'd take any of their claims with a huge grain of salt.

[ceejayoz]

While we're mentioning past claims, you once claimed donating to @elonjet would make people complicit in kidnapping/murder (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33996612).

[AlchemistCamp]

That's not an accurate representation of what I said and it's completely tangential to this article. Given that you have "Fuck Elon Musk" in your Twitter bio, I'm guessing that this is a major issue for you and possibly part of your identity.

That said, doxxing people's location in real-time absolutely is a security risk and kidnapping is nothing to laugh about.

I believe it's an unethical choice to donate to the legal fund of someone intentionally and stubbornly engaging in that kind of behavior (and even working around technical barriers built by regulatory bodies to do so).

[mthoms]

Well, here's your previous quote:

>Even with the knowledge that the doxxing is leading to stalkers endangering not just the wealthy target but also his young child, you would fund the doxxer? That’s pretty monstrous. If there is a kidnapping or murder down the line, your money will have helped enable it.

It looks like there was a perfectly accurate representation of what you said. At least your current claim is a little more tempered:

>I believe it's an unethical choice to donate to the legal fund of someone intentionally and stubbornly engaging in that kind of behavior

Your characterization of supporting @ElonJet seems to have changed from complicity in child murder to merely making an "unethical choice". That's quite the walk-back.

[AlchemistCamp]

> That’s quite the walk-back.

No, it’s not. I still do think the donation would be monstrous, and that if there were a murder or kidnapping enabled by the doxxing, that it would be on the donor’s conscience for the rest of their life.

That doesn’t mean I have to help ceejayoz derail and inflame this thread, more than two months later. Phrasing my position less aggressively was an intentional choice.

Also, taking the most extreme snippet of what I said in an extended conversation out of context is not an accurate representation.

A key part of what I said is the conditional you quoted from my post that ceejayoz removed. I said, if there were a murder or kidnapping caused by the doxxing activity then the money donated in support of it will have…supported it.

[ceejayoz]

> Given that you have "Fuck Elon Musk" in your Twitter bio, I'm guessing that this is a major issue for you and possibly part of your identity.

Part of my job is working with the Twitter API. If someone gave you a week's notice of a major breaking change, with no details, then delayed it multiple times - still without any details, to this date! - you'd be feeling some frustration with Musk as well.

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1621026986784337922

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1623467615539859456

https://twitter.com/TwitterDev/status/1625234161010343941

(I'm one of the luckier ones; it's only part of what I do. The Tweetbots and Twitterifics of the world have even more reason to be upset.)

> That said, doxxing people's location in real-time absolutely is a security risk and kidnapping is nothing to laugh about.

The claim that ADS-B tracking results in kidnappings is laughable.

[AlchemistCamp]

One of my friends had a big hassle with the Twitter API back in the day, when they reversed their previous policy of actively encouraging devs to make 3rd party clients.

It definitely gives some context that you're dealing with similar issues now, so thanks for sharing that point.

> The claim that ADS-B tracking results in kidnappings is laughable.

Please respond in good faith. As you know, the account in question was doing extra work to de-anonymize planes enrolled in the Privacy ICAO Address (PIA) program. You also know that rich people and their children are very common kidnapping targets. At no point did I say "ADS-B tracking results in kidnapping". I said the doxxer was creating a clear security risk.

[rsynnott]

> They've been hunting down any and every disgruntled ex-employee they can looking for dirt

The cheek! What do they think they are, investigative journalists?!

> and they have no appetite for any positive stories.

That's Tesla's PR department's job, or would be, if it still had one. The broader news media does not generally prioritise praising companies to the heavens.

Seriously, this is all completely normal. There's no market for repeating what a company says publicly; most writing about companies is at least sceptical, and sometimes adversarial.

[AlchemistCamp]

> The cheek! What do they think they are, investigative journalists?!

As ridiculous as it is, they probably do think of themselves that way.

It's too bad they gave up on truth-seeking and gravitated towards tabloid drama and reputational attack. There's a huge void when it comes to high-quality reporting on tech entrepreneurs. Sadly, it really does tend to either be hit pieces or press releases with little in between.

[rideontime]

You keep implying that they're not telling the truth. Can you provide evidence of that?

[AlchemistCamp]

I wouldn't say they're telling outright lies, but I also don't believe that truth-seeking is a primary goal for them. They have a big axe to grind and that their coverage of tech companies is of poor quality, IMO.

One example completely unrelated to Twitter, that I saw as a sign of shockingly poor research, was when the founder went on the Big Technology Podcast and spoke at length about "John Carmichael" and VR work at Meta. It's hard to believe that anyone actually in the software world, especially someone talking about VR with such confidence wouldn't be familiar enough with John Carmack to get his name right.

[rideontime]

So you pretty much just don't like their vibe?

[lolc]

I for one welcome the entertaining reporting on some rich boy's narcissist meltdown. There's room for that no?

[rideontime]

Are you saying that they aren't credible? Have any of Platformer's stories turned out to be false?