While these reporters no doubt identify with the left, and I certainly don't, this "I can't handle people talking about things in places where I can't hear and record them" attitude is one of the least progressive mainstream ideas in recent memory and is not something I associate with progressives at all. Feels a lot more like small-mindedness.

What's hilarious to me re: Clubhouse getting this negative attention is that platform trends towards the very worst type of insular SV mutual pleasuring.

If groundbreaking free-speech is going on in there to drive the conversation forward, I haven't seen much of it yet.

I listened to about 40 minutes of a chat on SolarWinds from a lot heavy hitter defense<>tech people start with:

-> how do we feel about this level of compromise v. encryption access laws (not totally related but yeah good topic, let's go there!). This was asked by a pub policy devsecops rep at GitHub, so she knew her stuff.

answered first with (and I swear this is a close quote from a thought leader, startup founder and ex-Marine named "Marvin")

-> freedom of expression, leads to freedom of thought, which leads to freedom of innovation, which leads to freedom of minds, which leads to...

leading to:

-> clubhouse uses NLP, so of course if it's free you are the producing

and end somewhere far, far away from anything meaningful on SolarWinds while producing the worst type of verbal fluff from people who generally are there to self-promote their startups. I raised my hand in there to see if I could get in a question re: "hey that engineer asked a solid question 20 mins ago, I'm not sure it was ever answered." Moderators then disabled hand-raising.

Half of Clubhouse is SV founders practicing their pitches on each other, and the other half is entertaining discussions of the somewhat raunchy type, i.e. "Gain your empowerment, no more casual sex!" Additionally, although this is my take away from a casual scroll of profile pictures, clubhouse has a massive diversity footprint. Finally, we have minority techies congregating in numbers, talking about their stuff!

If tech reporters are really spending their time digging for the next GRU disinfo campaign there, then NYT needs its $70k a year back from those reporter salaries and should sub to FEYE's campaign reports instead.

When we see the rise of citizen journalism and independent media. Mainstream media is completely biased and not trustable. Matt Taibbi keeps stressing the need for a unbiased news site but if it has corporate backing, it will eventually become compromised.

I think I am with you on your first sentence being a way forward. Substack is pretty interesting in that regard.

I run into some issues with your use of Taibbi as a good anecdote though for unbiased reporting, and I won't touch your MSM comment.

I think Taibbi is a competent, honest, and candid reporter. That said, I was around during his coverage of GS in the Rolling Stone in '08-'09.

Is he good at speaking truth to power and creating compelling narratives? Yes. But he's biased in his coverage in the same way that Greenwald is. I don't necessarily agree with blurring* the line between OpEd and reporting is the direction that solves the disconnect.

Additionally, honest, citizen journalists with independent funding can misunderstand tech the same way a NYT reporter can. It's still a complex field only getting more complex.

He is certainly biased, but he at least is willing to write unpopular things. Most of these NYT-times will write anything to get more twitter follows.

I agree Taibbi is biased, what makes him a good example for a new model of journalism is that his bias is a) clear and b) not hegemonic. Let a thousand Taibbis bloom each with their own worldview, hangups and bugbears. That seems like a much healthier landscape than the boring, hegemonic left-y (but not Bernie lefty, because his fans are sooo mean online) milieu that we have now.

That's a good take on it, I agree.

> "the rise of citizen journalism"

The only citizens who will be able to expend the time and resources to do more than superficial reporting will either have a Paul Bunyan-sized axe to grind or be funded by someone else. In neither case will they be unbiased.

I have no idea where I first saw this but it's the perfect video for this thread: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-peZ7IeD2w