It’s true and something I experienced myself.*
I got robbed of some money by a business that decided to flee the state, ~50k between all parties owed. Local cops told us it was a “civil matter” because we had a contract, told us to file civil suits, we had to go to the Attorney General. Still won’t see any money back.
*Obviously not a lawyer, but expecting criminals to be treated like criminals is far too much.
Yes, I’m aware he now lives in the US. In this post, he said if obamacare is revoked, he’d move out of the US.
So, what would you like me to apologize for again?
Pinging @doctorow again. Cory, you really need to respond to this.
I suspect in addition to quitting Facebook 6 years ago Cory also quit reading (or responding to) comments on his articles… I can see some good reasons to avoid getting bogged down in comment threads, it isn’t always productive or a good use of an author’s time. On the other hand, one of the reasons he posted for why FB is bad is that it is an echo chamber. Ironically, not reading critical comments in these threads has some of the same effect of an echo chamber, which is avoiding contradiction.
For saying ACA is “free” healthcare that insurers just give away, instead of insurance that people pay premiums for, and for implying that people aren’t entitled to get anything for the premiums they pay if they can afford to pay out of their own pockets.
Did Wells Fargo hire the same lawyers as Scientology?
I guess my problem is… if the major author(s) here aren’t fussed about repeatedly posting inflammatory fake news even after its veracity has been called into serious doubt… then why am I spending time here?
I mean, sure, it’s left-wing fake news rather than Breitbart’s right-wing fake news, and I skew decidedly to the left in my personal politics… but it’s still fundamentally unsourced, unsupported fake news. And… I kind of have trouble supporting that, if that’s the site’s policy and/or focus. The very news article which Cory links to as his source explicitly contradicts the allegations that Cory is making.
It’s hard to believe that this could be a good faith mistake on Cory’s part, as he continues to broadcast these claims on the front page despite his own declared sources completely contracting them. Which is why I again ping @doctorow to please come and comment to set our minds at rest, that these were merely mistakes, and not a policy of fake news generation and dissemination.
I think there is only one that that write inflammatory fake news. But you’re right. It’s a travesty. I have loved this site since the 1990s but it’s all gone wrong. advert, advert, advert, lunatic fake news article, advert, look a squirrel!..
Why, look! There’s some bullshit logic right there!
Came here to write pretty much this–thanks for beating me to it. I guess “Wells Fargo is successfully convincing judges that arbitration agreements are broader than people who signed them thought” doesn’t make as good a headline.
Both versions are dick moves, of course, and version of the dick move that is actually happening is plenty dickish even without a Heller-Kafka twist.
The SEC wouldn’t agree with you.
They’d also have to decide to take action.
Not gonna happen. He doesn’t seem to have any involvement with the BB community here.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him respond to post in a BBS thread.
He’s been making “mistakes” like this consistently for the more than seventeen years or so that I’ve been on this site, about stories both large and small, and these “mistakes” generally seem to land in one particular corner of the political/cultural playing field. Draw your own conclusions. And for fuck’s sake, don’t let it unsettle your mind. It’s not worth the energy.
I like boingboing but I don’t hold it up to any kind of journalistic standards. That just isn’t what it or its contributors are good at. They do a pretty great wonderful thing, but they ain’t revealing the deepest truths of political underbellies or whatever
Not to worry; my mind isn’t unsettled. I’m just pointing out that we’re well past any plausible deniability stage, now, unless @doctorow unexpectedly shows up to explain.
Cory has written this story quoting only a single source, and that single source states precisely the opposite of what he’s claiming it does. The NYT piece that Cory links to says this:
The bank’s counterargument: The arbitration clauses included in the legitimate contracts customers signed to open bank accounts also cover disputes related to the false ones set up in their names.
Cory has twisted that into:
Wells is arguing that the binding arbitration agreements on accounts that you didn’t open are also binding
And he’s made that unsupported claim into the headline of his piece.
This time he isn’t just skewing his reporting to the left and carefully choosing which set of facts to report and which to overlook, as many (most?) authors do. Perhaps usually not as frequently or as brazenly as Cory, but he’s an activist and you have to make some allowances for that. This time, though, he’s actually demonstrably inventing claims which he can’t back up and which his own sources deny, in order to smear his target. (who, I’ll mention again, absolutely deserves to be despised. But they deserve it for the things they actually did, not for the things Cory invented.)
If this is the way of things, then BoingBoing is basically a left-wing Breitbart. The same way that Breitbart invents fake news to appeal to the right, BoingBoing is now, at least in this specific instance, indisputably inventing fake news to appeal to the left. And maybe people are okay with that? I don’t know. But this is a signpost; this is actually happening on the site right now, and it can’t really be denied.
And so I’ve got to figure out how I feel about that. Whether it makes any sort of difference to me.
Can I still criticise people for reading Breitbart, if I read BoingBoing? I don’t know. It seems to me that BoingBoing hasn’t gone as extreme as Breitbart has, but maybe that’s just my left-wing politics skewing my viewpoint, and Breitbart readers would say the same thing about people who read BoingBoing. Maybe right-wing folks who read Breitbart react to it the same way that I’m reacting to this revelation about BoingBoing; that yes, there’s some kooky stuff there, but you just ignore the obviously-fake bits and the rest is basically okay. Maybe?
Scientology once (and I really think it was only once) convinced the Very Large Law Firm called Latham & Watkins, based in LA, to handle a case for them. Latham’s HQ is in the Wells Fargo Tower on Bunker Hill downtown, so Wells Fargo clearly controls Latham and Scientology.
Draw your own conclusions. (But really, please don’t, because I’m just trying to make a funny here.)
To put it simply, it would be nice if BB held itself to the same standards it demands in others.
Some of the writers here are willing to update a story with a correction/clarification, why not all of them?
As for arbitration clauses, why do they exist, what possible use do they have for the consumer?
One second, let me fire up my corporate bullshit generator.
Arbitration clauses:
- reduce the cost of lawsuits, the savings from which is passed onto the consumer in the form of lower prices
- allow disputes to be settled in a venue which is less costly to the consumer
- allow the consumer to seek recompense without having to enlist the services of a lawyer
- are a necessary component to the life cycle of ponies, so if you love ponies, you should support arbitration clauses. Won’t you please think of the ponies?
I know, but people spread the stories either way. That’s exactly what False News is.
Yesterday I had a co-worker ask me whether I had heard the latest scandal that kids’ toys were sending their voices to the military. I hadn’t, and was pretty surprised.
Then I opened Boing Boing and landed on this article.
The latest generation of chatbot toys listen to your kids 24/7 and send their speech to a military contractor
(Written by @doctorow, no surprise.)
It just fucking sucks. If I were to try and correct my coworker now, I’d sound like some military-complex apologist. Even though the original story, without the fabulations and hyperbolic insinuations, would have been newsworthy enough.
