from Hacker News

WikiLeaks Has Officially Lost the Moral High Ground

by gormo2 on 7/27/16, 6:37 PM with 25 comments

  • by jandrese on 7/27/16, 7:14 PM

    This reads like a hit piece. They're lambasting Wikileaks for not understanding some obscure triple parenthesis nomenclature? They're anti-semitic because they're not plugged into the anti-semite culture enough to know their jargon?

    That three parenthesis thing was news to me. It seems weird that people would brand themselves in such an obscure way. I guess Twitter handles can't have Unicode ?

  • by keane on 7/27/16, 8:30 PM

    And then, inexplicably, the WikiLeaks official Twitter account also dove straight for naked anti-Semitism.

    The author, Emma Ellis, has no comprehension of the tweet in question. Understanding the background could have prevented this:

    1. Neo-Nazis begin to point out to their supporters that the people they are discussing are Jews (or "Jew aiders and abettors" [sic]) by placing three brackets around their name. The subjects are often unaware and their account usernames (obviously) do not display brackets.

    2. In reaction to this, numerous camps (social justice activists, evangelical Christians, civil society workers, journalists, etc.) both Jewish and non-Jewish alike begin to place three brackets around their display name to draw attention to the practice and to express solidarity with those who are being discussed in brackets, a practice sometimes revered in Western culture [1][2][3][4].

    3. A subset of these self-labelled, self-bracketed individuals criticize WikiLeaks.

    4. The WikiLeaks account notices that many of their critics are self-bracketed individuals expressing solidarity and wonders what type of people do this, as one might question the individuals who change their profile pictures to have a flag overlay for the tragedy du jour, and if said people are doing so for their own interest.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deputy#Historical_models [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)#.22I.27m_Spar... [4] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IAmSpartacus

  • by spacemanmatt on 7/27/16, 7:47 PM

    I hope WikiLeaks moral high ground and/or credibilty are never huge factors. Their releases should probably always be treated with trust-but-verify disposition. Or maybe distrust-until-verified.

    The way I look at it, WikiLeaks is basically a parallel construction. We have no idea how or where the info came from, but if it's a map to the bodies, we go there and see if it's accurate info.

  • by MollyR on 7/27/16, 7:59 PM

    No it hasn't. The DNC leaks will be remembered as historic. I talked with the protesters in philly, and the vast majority had pro-wikileaks signs or were pro-wikileaks.

  • by bbctol on 7/27/16, 7:40 PM

    That particular tweet falls under the "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity" razor, which kind of undercuts the rest of the author's (fair, but quickly sketched) points.