The colossal arrogance of Newsweek’s Bitcoin “scoop”

In the lack of more evidence, it's time for a retraction.

Read the whole story

 

[jxmzsr]

Goodman's thesis that he was Bitcoin's inventor rests on the words they exchanged in the next few minutes.

and Newsweek might say "Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto's thesis that he is not Bitcoin's inventor rests on the words he says."

Really, I think this will take a court to determine the truth and/or make them print an honest retraction, however, they could also just give up and print one anyway but i'll bet it would be "creatively defensive" also.

 

[afanen01]

virve[/url]":1brblyft]on small things like “double spaces after periods and other format quirks,”

This is extremely silly. The document has been typeset with LaTeX. The Newsweek reporter is clearly too thick to recognize nice type-setting.

Gee. Since when did knowing about *TeX become a proxy for intelligence?

 

[Deleted member 174040]

sr105[/url]":u6x7foem]As I said yesterday, I'll believe him when he swears under penalty of perjury that he had nothing to do with the development of bitcoin.

That's certainly one way to do it.

 

[avant]

Newsweek’s “forensic research” boiled down to background research on a preset list of candidates, which included everyone they could find named Satoshi Nakamoto.

Really? So they began searching by name, instead of making a skill-based profile, and work it from there? There can't be that many C++ adept programmers, knowledgeable in cryptography and economics, with a particular writing style in the world (that is going by the article with the matrix debunking Newsweek).

 

[Asvarduil]

Shmeelz[/url]":965vwle5]Evidence from the article: “double spaces after periods and other format quirks”

I guess I created Bitcoin. Who knew? I sure could use that $400 million. Does Newsweek know where I put it?

Edit: The forums eat double spaces after periods. Ars has eliminated me from contention.

No, I type the same way! I'm Spartacus!

 

[strohminator]

RockDaMan[/url]":29ca8rp6]

strohminator[/url]":29ca8rp6]Don't forget Newsweek's statement that we should, "respect the privacy of everyone involved." Respect privacy, including things like not accusing some random guy of being the inventor of Bitcoin without real evidence.

Those last few words bug me.

The US legal system allows you to put a person in jail for years without what you call 'real evidence'. Circumstantial evidence is a perfectly reasonable thing.

If either the legal system or the journalistic one had to wait for 100% undeniable smoking guns all the time, both would be severely diminished.

I didn't say she had to break into his house and find a USB stick with a million bitcoins on it.

Let's say, for example, she discovered that he was an adjunct professor in the late 90s teaching distributed cryptography. Or that he had a large swiss bank account that his family didn't know about. That would be more compelling than, "He was the last name on our list."

 

[Tymanthius]

His writing is unique b/c he uses 2 spaces after a period? Hell, that's how I was TAUGHT to type.

Has that teaching changed somewhere along the way?

 

[JabberwockyPHL]

If I had any doubts that it's amateur hour over at Newsweek, they were thoroughly dispelled by the double-spaces-after-periods thing. I'm nowhere near his age or location and was taught the same, and that was the example specifically cited among many: Usually you give that honor to your most convincing argument.

Further, it's shockingly unwise to allege things based on undisclosed facts ('We have more evidence that we can't tell you but that nobody else could have') when someone may be considering a lawsuit. Defamation is a high bar to clear in the US, but statements like that make for excellent moon shoes.

 

[samworm]

sr105[/url]":30c6aqbo]As I said yesterday, I'll believe him when he swears under penalty of perjury that he had nothing to do with the development of bitcoin. Right now, it's purely a civil matter. Let him put prison time on the line, and I'll gladly accept him at his word.

This is complete madness.

We should put you on trial for the gas station robbery down the road from me last week. I heard you have the same trousers as the person that did it. That should be reason enough to disrupt your entire life and make you go to court. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't happily accept your life being ruined for months on end, you'll get a chance to swear a denial when prison is on the line so no one could possibly complain.

The evidence is of very poor quality. This man shouldn't have to be defending himself. There is no burden of proof on him.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

RockDaMan[/url]":3fqk4xnd]

sr105[/url]":3fqk4xnd]As I said yesterday, I'll believe him when he swears under penalty of perjury that he had nothing to do with the development of bitcoin.

That's certainly one way to do it.

For a person who dislikes attention, that wouldn't help.

 

[Sifaka]

RockDaMan[/url]":3s90tkhq]

twdog[/url]":3s90tkhq]Joe Mullin has no right to criticize any other journalists after his trash "look at snowden's girlfriend's naughty photos!!" linkbait article.

To be fair, Joe was covering what Snowden sacrificed in his flight, and the girlfriend was certainly a (worthy) component of that. It wasn't a voyeuristic look at someone only tangentially connected to Snowdens life.

I seem to recall Ars linking to a picture of her in her underwear which I would call somewhat voyeuristic...

 

[therealeffingaeiouy]

I was of the wait and see mindset initially but it is very clear now Newsweek massively failed here. If they were smart their next issue would be a cover story post mortem on how a news organization could completely fail from top to bottom. It would be compelling and might actually regain then a sliver of credibility.

 

[caseyjohnston]

Joiry[/url]":s9aigy13]I can't say if Newsweek was wrong or not. But I have to say the rest of the internet piling on to them and the reporter is a bit ridiculous. But then, its the internet, isn't it...

And honestly, the situation really is a "he said, she said" situation.

Agreed that it is he said-she said, but reporting a he said-she said situation in the assured way that Newsweek did was not called for. A handful of critiques of the piece have already said this before me, but if the story had been reported with the right amount of deference and skepticism toward the circumstantial nature of their evidence, that would have been far more palatable. Instead they ran full-steam ahead and claimed the man they found to unequivocally be THE Satoshi Nakamoto. Per a piece by Felix Salmon, the Newsweek author claims to have even better evidence of her theory that she, for some reason, didn't include in the feature but plans to air in a follow-up piece. Personally, I'm holding out for that. But I think the real problem is staking too firm a claim in too-unstable grounds.

 

[sbrown23]

Mystery solved!!!

Keyser Soze is Satoshi Nakomoto.

 

[6StringMercenary]

samworm[/url]":3l318fxm]

sr105[/url]":3l318fxm]As I said yesterday, I'll believe him when he swears under penalty of perjury that he had nothing to do with the development of bitcoin. Right now, it's purely a civil matter. Let him put prison time on the line, and I'll gladly accept him at his word.

This is complete madness.

We should put you on trial for the gas station robbery down the road from me last week. I heard you have the same trousers as the person that did it. That should be reason enough to disrupt your entire life and make you go to court. I can't see any reason why you wouldn't happily accept your life being ruined for months on end, you'll get a chance to swear a denial when prison is on the line so no one could possibly complain.

The evidence is of very poor quality. This man shouldn't have to be defending himself. There is no burden of proof on him.

Personally, I'm in the camp that the story should've ended with claiming to have met the person and leaving it at that. The exchange was messy on both sides. Goodman's taking way too many liberties in justifications, yet the mistake has already been made and Dorian deserves compensation. Jewell sued and won. Can he sue for enough to put Newsweek out of business and end its brand of journalism? I'd like to think so. Is this story terribly different from what is available on any grocery store aisle (little print: "Lawsuit claims" big print: "DiCaprio gave woman herpes!") as far as publicity and case law goes? I really don't think it's that far off, but that's me.

 

[VivianMitchell]

If we expect Newsweek to publish the evidence that is currently being held, we are assuming that evidence was obtained legally- which may not be the case. There could be data out there that would validate the original article but put the publication at more serious risk.

Of course even if that’s true it puts us back at square one- why publish in the first place?

 

[caseyjohnston]

6StringMercenary[/url]":ebw3al7o]

caseyjohnston[/url]":ebw3al7o]

Joiry[/url]":ebw3al7o]I can't say if Newsweek was wrong or not. But I have to say the rest of the internet piling on to them and the reporter is a bit ridiculous. But then, its the internet, isn't it...

And honestly, the situation really is a "he said, she said" situation.

Agreed that it is he said-she said, but reporting a he said-she said situation in the assured way that Newsweek did was not called for. A handful of critiques of the piece have already said this before me, but if the story had been reported with the right amount of deference and skepticism toward the circumstantial nature of their evidence, that would have been far more palatable. Instead they ran full-steam ahead and claimed the man they found to unequivocally be THE Satoshi Nakamoto. Per a piece by Felix Salmon, the Newsweek author claims to have even better evidence of her theory that she, for some reason, didn't include in the feature but plans to air in a follow-up piece. Personally, I'm holding out for that. But I think the real problem is staking too firm a claim in too-unstable grounds.

And now if it turns out Goodman is correct, will Ars Technica retract this piece? Honest question.

I can't comment on editorial policy, but the issue at hand isn't whether Newsweek will turn out to be retroactively right or wrong. As I said, it's that they went too far with too little to go on, from the standpoint of their audience.

 

[Schpyder]

6StringMercenary[/url]":277fwpn7]As to the statement about Snowden, it's regarding the method used by Ars Technica. Joe calls out Goodman, consistently, for using sources that aren't "available to other journalists." Well, what did you call mining Snowden's posts here? Ars used a proprietary resource in an ethically questionable avenue (you really want to re-open that thread?) and now wishes to take a high ground? I'm rather taken aback, really, as I'd hoped the audience reaction last time was at least tacitly acknowledged as a learning opportunity.

Um, you'd have a point here if any of this was, in fact, correct.

But the facts of the timeline with the Snowden forums posts reporting were that (since ALL posts to the OpenForum that aren't in the VR are public), other sites had found his posts on the forum and reported on them first. It was only after that reporting happened that Ars also wrote and published its stories about Snowden's posts on the forums. So not only did they not use a proprietary resource, they didn't even get the damn scoop.

 

[Nate Anderson]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2nra83dn]

Nate Anderson[/url]":2nra83dn]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2nra83dn]

charybdisjim[/url]":2nra83dn]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2nra83dn]Overall, the story could have been presented in a much more "ethical" manner, through the use of obfuscation. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the author has pretty much destroyed her own career (also relevant: role of editorial staff). The fact that Ars is taking this space for a shaming is a little over the top, in my opinion.

After all, it's a lot easier to get "Scoop" type stories when you are able to mine message boards, right?

Because of the extremely high cost to the subjects of such stories when journalists get it so wrong, this may be a necessary cruelty to disincentive recklessness.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nat ... 6359_x.htm

I think part of the reason this sort of reciprocity where a journalist can find themselves in a broadly similar position as they may have put a private citizen in (except their situation being based on the the correction of the inaccuracies rather than the perpetuation of them) could seem excessive is because that sort of reciprocity and accountability doesn't exist in many of the sectors it probably should.

Well, there's a very simple way to get to the bottom of this: He can sue them for being wrong, present evidence in court, and win extensive monetary compensation to alleviate past, present and potential future inconvenience due to their substandard journalism. There are avenues for reconciliation that are established; if you think they're insufficient, well, that's your perspective. I happen to believe that Ars Technica, following the "let's whip up a breaking scoop story about Snowden by rummaging through his comments on our boards" to be rather ironic, in the genuine definition of the word. Ironic Ars (now?) believes digging into the personal life of a public figure can be such an opportunity to "tee-off" on a competing publication. Unless I've missed something, this article didn't have any large philosophical "take aways" about how to actually be more ethical in reporting. It also doesn't acknowledge that just saying "Wasn't me" isn't as convincing as going to court with the lawyer who helped with the statement and presenting evidence to the contrary. That'd shut up a lot of people, wouldn't it?

I think you may in fact have missed something. When you say that Ars "believes digging into the personal life of a public figure" is "ironic," you're missing the entire point of Joe's post. Finding the inventor of Bitcoin is definitely legitimate journalism, and journalists do all sorts of posts that reveal information the article subject would prefer to keep private. The issue here is that Dorian does -not- actually appear to be a "public figure."

On the Snowden issue, I'm not sure what to say... It's clear that this is one of the most important tech figures of the decade, he had publicly posted messages in our community that reflected on his philosophical views (and which were first revealed by Reuters), and you can't believe we did a piece drawing on that information to fill in some of his background?

Joe's article takes Dorian's statements at face value and tears into them [Newsweek], that's what this piece is. Very sharp hatchet. As the legal system will - or should figure out - we'll get to see the actual facts that Goodman has, or that Dorian can prove to the contrary. If anything, this is ridiculously premature.

As to the statement about Snowden, it's regarding the method used by Ars Technica. Joe calls out Goodman, consistently, for using sources that aren't "available to other journalists." Well, what did you call mining Snowden's posts here? Ars used a proprietary resource in an ethically questionable avenue (you really want to re-open that thread?) and now wishes to take a high ground? I'm rather taken aback, really, as I'd hoped the audience reaction last time was at least tacitly acknowledged as a learning opportunity.

Edit: Point being, Ars mined for the "scoop" - to beat Reuters then, right Nate?

Look, this is just not true. Snowden's forum posts on Ars are all public; you can Google them! Or you can click on his username--which Reuters revealed--and see all of them.

Background on a figure of huge public interest is Journalism 101. It wasn't "ethically questionable" and it has nothing to do with the Bitcoin story or this thread. Feel free to email me directly if you have anything more to say about it.

 

[Aurich]

6StringMercenary[/url]":15arwdu3]As to the statement about Snowden, it's regarding the method used by Ars Technica. Joe calls out Goodman, consistently, for using sources that aren't "available to other journalists." Well, what did you call mining Snowden's posts here? Ars used a proprietary resource in an ethically questionable avenue (you really want to re-open that thread?) and now wishes to take a high ground? I'm rather taken aback, really, as I'd hoped the audience reaction last time was at least tacitly acknowledged as a learning opportunity.

If you're going to get all blustery and outraged you could at least get your facts right. Snowden's posts here were entirely public, that was the entire point. We didn't even discover them, a 3rd party did. Ars had no secret access or proprietary resources, we used the same public site search anyone else had access to.

Your assumptions are simply wrong.

Edit: Heh, beaten to it. I should note though that even the VR is public, it's not spidered by search engines, but all you need to read it is a registered account, which anyone can get. So the veil of privacy there is microns thin.

 

[DaveSimmons]

6StringMercenary[/url]":1gbd5jw7]

And now if it turns out Goodman is correct, will Ars Technica retract this piece? Honest question.

This article is pointing out how flimsy the provided "evidence" is:

"Two spaces after a period"? -- I type that way. "The last one on our list"? -- I could make a list with just you on it, "I have SEKRIT evidence, trust me!" -- show it or retract.

This Ars article publishes facts. Even if the broken clock is right and Goodman is correct, it will remain accurate that the provided evidence is flimsy so no retraction by Ars will be needed.

 

[pokrface]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2n1674wy]
As to the statement about Snowden, it's regarding the method used by Ars Technica. Joe calls out Goodman, consistently, for using sources that aren't "available to other journalists." Well, what did you call mining Snowden's posts here? Ars used a proprietary resource in an ethically questionable avenue (you really want to re-open that thread?) and now wishes to take a high ground? I'm rather taken aback, really, as I'd hoped the audience reaction last time was at least tacitly acknowledged as a learning opportunity.

Edit: Point being, Ars mined for the "scoop" - to beat Reuters then, right Nate?

It sounds like you're a little fuzzy on the timeline and the methods. Several other outlets, including Buzzfeed, were the ones that broke that particular "scoop." There wasn't anything in the forums that wasn't publicly visible to literally anyone. The only barrier to entry is the requirement to create a (free) account to read posts in the VR subforum.

 

[elizibar]

shav[/url]":1qip89t1]Because my name isn't really Shav.

Sounds like you just outed yourself, Satoshi.

 

[Sifaka]

Nate Anderson[/url]":2cb0yqp7]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2cb0yqp7]

Nate Anderson[/url]":2cb0yqp7]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2cb0yqp7]

charybdisjim[/url]":2cb0yqp7]

6StringMercenary[/url]":2cb0yqp7]Overall, the story could have been presented in a much more "ethical" manner, through the use of obfuscation. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure the author has pretty much destroyed her own career (also relevant: role of editorial staff). The fact that Ars is taking this space for a shaming is a little over the top, in my opinion.

After all, it's a lot easier to get "Scoop" type stories when you are able to mine message boards, right?

Because of the extremely high cost to the subjects of such stories when journalists get it so wrong, this may be a necessary cruelty to disincentive recklessness.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nat ... 6359_x.htm

I think part of the reason this sort of reciprocity where a journalist can find themselves in a broadly similar position as they may have put a private citizen in (except their situation being based on the the correction of the inaccuracies rather than the perpetuation of them) could seem excessive is because that sort of reciprocity and accountability doesn't exist in many of the sectors it probably should.

Well, there's a very simple way to get to the bottom of this: He can sue them for being wrong, present evidence in court, and win extensive monetary compensation to alleviate past, present and potential future inconvenience due to their substandard journalism. There are avenues for reconciliation that are established; if you think they're insufficient, well, that's your perspective. I happen to believe that Ars Technica, following the "let's whip up a breaking scoop story about Snowden by rummaging through his comments on our boards" to be rather ironic, in the genuine definition of the word. Ironic Ars (now?) believes digging into the personal life of a public figure can be such an opportunity to "tee-off" on a competing publication. Unless I've missed something, this article didn't have any large philosophical "take aways" about how to actually be more ethical in reporting. It also doesn't acknowledge that just saying "Wasn't me" isn't as convincing as going to court with the lawyer who helped with the statement and presenting evidence to the contrary. That'd shut up a lot of people, wouldn't it?

I think you may in fact have missed something. When you say that Ars "believes digging into the personal life of a public figure" is "ironic," you're missing the entire point of Joe's post. Finding the inventor of Bitcoin is definitely legitimate journalism, and journalists do all sorts of posts that reveal information the article subject would prefer to keep private. The issue here is that Dorian does -not- actually appear to be a "public figure."

On the Snowden issue, I'm not sure what to say... It's clear that this is one of the most important tech figures of the decade, he had publicly posted messages in our community that reflected on his philosophical views (and which were first revealed by Reuters), and you can't believe we did a piece drawing on that information to fill in some of his background?

Joe's article takes Dorian's statements at face value and tears into them [Newsweek], that's what this piece is. Very sharp hatchet. As the legal system will - or should figure out - we'll get to see the actual facts that Goodman has, or that Dorian can prove to the contrary. If anything, this is ridiculously premature.

As to the statement about Snowden, it's regarding the method used by Ars Technica. Joe calls out Goodman, consistently, for using sources that aren't "available to other journalists." Well, what did you call mining Snowden's posts here? Ars used a proprietary resource in an ethically questionable avenue (you really want to re-open that thread?) and now wishes to take a high ground? I'm rather taken aback, really, as I'd hoped the audience reaction last time was at least tacitly acknowledged as a learning opportunity.

Edit: Point being, Ars mined for the "scoop" - to beat Reuters then, right Nate?

Look, this is just not true. Snowden's forum posts on Ars are all public; you can Google them! Or you can click on his username--which Reuters revealed--and see all of them.

Background on a figure of huge public interest is Journalism 101. It wasn't "ethically questionable" and it has nothing to do with the Bitcoin story or this thread. Feel free to email me directly if you have anything more to say about it.

Along with the IRC chat logs? The internet memory is long.

Edit: Article - http://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/2013 ... ecame-one/

It would seem to be hard to square this with the we just used the publicly available forums defense.

 

[killing_time]

Tymanthius[/url]":3a8fr164]His writing is unique b/c he uses 2 spaces after a period? Hell, that's how I was TAUGHT to type.

Has that teaching changed somewhere along the way?

Yeah its an old style, my guess is because of bad spacing on typewriters. Only thing i can think it means is that the person learned to type a long time ago.

 

[boottux]

"double spaces after periods"

I took typing in the seventh grade way back in the day when nearly all the students in that class were girls. It wasn't because I wanted to meet girls but because I hated hand writing and typing eliminated my having to write everything by hand. Turned out to be a really good skill.

We were taught at that time that one always double spaces after a period when a period signifies the end of a sentence. One however did not double space after using a period to signify a title such as Mr. Mrs. or Ms. which didn't exist at the time I took the class.

That is not the case today. see http://www.mlahandbook.org/fragment/faq#How_many_spaces

So - based on that, Satoshi must be an old guy who took typing around the same time as me or at least within the time frame that a double space after a period was considered correct formatting for typists.

Now regarding our intrepid reporter's conversation with her suspect - it is obvious to me that she has projected her own bias onto Dorian's mind. She brought with her a great deal of baggage in her mind and took what he said and simply integrated it with what was in her head. From Dorian's point of view, a man obviously not a very social creature, is suddenly confronted with a stranger on his porch asking him questions which he automatically related to a whole set of different experiences than what Lois Lane had in her mind and responded with what he thought was appropriate for his experiences.

Two minds, two worlds which means it takes more than speaking the same words for communication to occur. Heck, the woman I've been married to for over 30 years will say things which I hear but don't necessarily understand what she actually means and vice versa.

 

[Deleted member 174040]

Thanks Joe, for posting what Felix Salmon wrote after talking to her in private for a few hours. I think everyone should read it before judging the author of the piece, because he does a great job laying out the motivations and concerns of both sides (geeks and mainstream writers), and it's very interesting and eye-opening.


http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2 ... onvincing/

 

[potato44819]

twdog[/url]":yone6bdb]

Major General Thanatos[/url]":yone6bdb]

twdog[/url]":yone6bdb]Joe Mullin has no right to criticize any other journalists after his trash "look at snowden's girlfriend's naughty photos!!" linkbait article. Doesn't matter what newsweek did and I think they did fuck up) ... this is pot calling the kettle black bullshit

One of these things is not like the other. Irregardless, one error on something completely unrelated (unless you are saying she wasn't snowden's girlfriend?) does not invalidate one's opinion on all other things there are to report on.

This whole article is a criticism of newsweek's handling of a story by a guy who himself was responsible for Ars' lowest moment.

---

Nate Anderson[/url]":yone6bdb]On the Snowden issue, I'm not sure what to say... It's clear that this is one of the most important tech figures of the decade, he had publicly posted messages in our community that reflected on his philosophical views (and which were first revealed by Reuters), and you can't believe we did a piece drawing on that information to fill in some of his background?

Yeah, because linking to the girlfriend's instagram account of her underwear photos was an important part of his background.

---

I'm dropping this now because Ars always circles the wagons, so what's even the point?

Sorry, I just don't see how ones unrelated past 'sins' on accurate if in poor taste reporting make a person unable to comment on inaccurate reporting.


One of these things is not like the other. Trying to make it so just shows that you have an axe to grind, nothing more.

 

[jxmzsr]

What if, as flawed as the Newsweek 'forensic research' may be to some people, it does turn out Newsweek has stumbled upon the right 'Satoshi Nakamoto' inventor of bitcoin?

What is going to be the story from each side then?