New York Times Runs Elaborate Front-Page Sunday Smear of YouTube Conservatives

News Busters ^ | June 9, 2019 3:08 PM EDT | Clay Waters

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Kevin Roose, a technology writer for the New York Times, made a front-page splash on Sunday with “The Making of a YouTube Radical – How the Site’s Algorithms Played Into the Hands of the Far Right.” A caption underneath a photo of the story’s subject: “Caleb Cain likens the far right on YouTube to a “decentralized cult.”

The interactive version is graphically rich, dominated by an enormous collage of some of the ostensibly harmful YouTube clips Cain watched over several years, and the 4,000-word plus print version take up two full inside pages.

The online subhead:

Caleb Cain was a college dropout looking for direction. He turned to YouTube....Soon, he was pulled into a far-right universe, watching thousands of videos filled with conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism.

Roose opened dramatically, like a revenge tale:

Caleb Cain pulled a Glock pistol from his waistband, took out the magazine and casually tossed both onto the kitchen counter.

Cain claimed he was getting death threats “from right-wing trolls in response to a video he had posted on YouTube a few days earlier. In the video, he told the story of how, as a liberal college dropout struggling to find his place in the world, he had gotten sucked into a vortex of far-right politics on YouTube.”

[E. Pluribus Unum]

De-junkifed News Busters link:

https://outline.com/BcXp3m

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks E. Pluribus Unum.

• Progressive tech writer who tweeted vile insults at President Trump arrested on horrendous charges [Peter Bright, wrote for Ars Technica]

[Chode]

Caleb Cain pulled a Glock pistol from his waistband, took out the magazine and casually tossed both onto the kitchen counter.

the boy lives in NYC, so he has an illegal handgun???

[mumblypeg]

The name “Caleb Cain” sounds like a paranoid, bunker dwelling white supremacist hero of a poorly written novel in comic book form.

[jughandle]

Lol the NYT is butthurt by YouTube..

[Antoninus]

Slander and censorship are the last weapons the dinosaur media has against these upstarts. And they won’t work.

[Chode]

LOL!!! looking for an Able to kill

[Svartalfiar]

In the video, he told the story of how, as a liberal college dropout struggling to find his place in the world, he had gotten sucked into a vortex of far-right politics on YouTube.”

Hm. A quick Alt-F4 woulda saved him from the swirling mess he was in. Man. Even a simple bathroom break or a walk to stretch his legs might have been enough to save him from the void!