Geoffrey MillerVerified account

10/ There was also a sense that the momentum was slowing. The IDW had always been mostly a reaction -– to the excesses of the regressive left. But as the campus free speech crisis began ebbing & new outrages became fewer and farther between, the pages of Quillette seemed thinner.

11/ Quilette's enemies had now become more diverse -– and included most recently the vitriolic and blustery IQ-denier Naseem Nicholas Taleb -– and more strident. IDW personality parody accounts were flourishing and specialized anti-Quillette rhetoric had emerged online.

12/ So, the the “DSA Is Doomed” hoax happened at a moment when Quillette seems to have already been pushed back on its heels a bit. The timing of it was not ideal.

13/ What will be important, moving forward, is how Quillette processes this episode. They must not behave like the grievance studies industry behaved after they were hoaxed. They must be transparent, self-critical, and committed to learning from what has happened.

14/ Most importantly, they have to look within themselves and ask how much of the blame for the episode rests on a tunnel-visioned view or a self-defeating confirmation bias. They have to walk their talk, and we're all going to be watching to see if they do.

Any publication that handles a high volume of content with a small staff and budget, and that ideologues detest, is going to be hoaxed sooner or later. I don't think it matters, or reveals any deeper issues. Sometimes a small error is just a small error.

A. Publishing something that was made up B. Publishing something patently ridiculous, and obviously false, but it wasn't spotted due to ideological blinders. A is clearly unavoidable, even for big newspapers. B would be bad. But I haven't seen quotes indicating this case was B.

I'm leaning towards a soft B. Original submission had some flourishes that were cut. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/8/9/20794325/quillette-dsa-hoax-archie-carter?__twitter_impression=true …