This is a response to the following video by MundaneMatt. I wrote it as a comment but it’s frickin’ long. Here’s the same content, organized a bit more neatly.

First off, thanks to Matt for encouraging discussion and critical thinking.

I totally agree with Matt that Gizmodo’s behavior isn’t illegal, and shouldn’t ever be considered such, but I do think it’s unethical to name Nikki Moxxi in their articles. Here’s some thoughts I have in response to some of Matt’s more interesting points:

1. Expectation of Journalistic Ethics

In my opinion, there’s one primary difference between journalists and everyone else who writes news or opinions, and that is that journalists are expected to adhere to a code of ethics (unconsciously, anyway; most people trust newspaper/television journalists implicitly, even if they can’t explain why). We assume whether a writer is or isn’t a journalist based on tone, style, where we’re reading it, etc. Generally, if someone cites like a journalist and sounds like a journalist (tonally), people are going to assume they’re a journalist and assume they’re trustworthy (read: repping a code of ethics). If someone writes casually, uses few citations, and heavily mixes opinion with reporting, people probably won’t make that assumption.

To my mind, that’s the major difference between, say, Gizmodo and Sargon of Akkad. While the Gawker properties often shapeshift between capital-J Journalists and humble bloggers whenever it’s useful to dodge criticism over their lack of ethics, the role they often play ultimately puts them into journalistic territory — they’re just bad at it. Sargon’s videos are well-polished, but lack the tone and format that would be suggestive of journalistic professionalism. But then, that’s just my subjective view of it. Somebody else might look and see the exact opposite.

Whether or not we should hold YouTube pundits to the same ethical standard as journalists is a great question to discuss. For the time being, it’s critical we continue to hold journalists, at the very least, to high standards of ethics.

2. Reason for and Value of Engagement

Another distinction between this Gizmodo article and the sort of response videos typical of Sargon, Chris Ray Gun, Armoured Skeptic et al is the intent with which the subjects are brought into the limelight. Typically, these intent of these YouTubers is not primarily to expose the subject to the criticism of their audience, but rather to respond to their points and have a sort of a back-and-forth discussion; in other words, it’s about the ideas. That’s not to say it’s always polite, but the ultimate goal is typically to shed light on and argue against bad ideas, rather than necessarily expose and shame the individual. Though I understand this is an idealistic interpretation, and the truth often gets uglier than that.

For example, if Gizmodo posted an article about Nikki Moxxi in which the author responded to and criticized her ideas on Gamergate and Trump, I think that would be totally ethical, even if she’s just some rando. But the actual Gizmodo articles in question aren’t about Nikki Moxxi at all, rather only how her political affiliation may have influenced Luckey (at best). That is to say, her identity and beliefs are not brought forth in order to engage with those beliefs in discussion or critique, but rather to flesh out Luckey’s motivations (at best) or, as I suspect, to further damage Luckey’s reputation.

3. Responsibility of Influence, and the Context of Identification

This is probably a very unpopular opinion among Gamergaters, but I believe that with great power comes great responsibility on the Internet. That is, if you want to be an ethical user of the Internet, you have to consider how even bringing someone’s existence to your followers’ attention could do that person harm, particularly if done in a negative light. For instance, if a rando publicly tweets an insult at a celebrity with millions of followers, I feel the celebrity has an ethical responsibility to consider the consequences of any possible reaction; merely responding publicly, or retweeting the insult, or in any way drawing attention to the existence of the insulting rando, would likely do an absurdly disproportionate amount of harm to that rando.

Just to be clear: I am not saying it is an absolute wrong to respond to an insult on Twitter to someone with fewer followers than you. I am saying that it is ethical to consider how your influence may exacerbate your response — there’s ethical calculus to be done, to weigh the good against the bad. Has someone said or done something so egregious that it’s worth it to respond, even if there’s substantial chance that a few of your millions of followers will attempt to make the other person’s online life a living hell for a few days? Questions to ask yourself before deciding how to react.

This actually fits in quite well with the journalistic ethics principle of minimizing harm; when is someone’s identity so critical to a news story that it’s worth identifying them by name, perhaps against their wishes to rename anonymous, or when the association with the story would prove detrimental in their career or personal life? In this case, the Gizmodo article only needed to say that Luckey’s girlfriend was a Gamergate/Trump supporter. Including Nikki Moxxi’s name added no value to the story, and identifying her explicitly clearly did a good deal of harm.

By the same token, I think we also have an ethical responsibility to consider the context in which we’re bringing someone’s identity (or Twitter handle or what-have-you) to light. The writer of the Gizmodo articles knows their readers tend to be aggressively left-leaning, and the Gawker properties have quite purposefully cultivated an environment of open hostility towards Gamergater and Donald Trump across their entire network. By pointlessly introducing Nikki Moxxi’s identity into an extremely hostile environment, Gizmodo has caused a great deal of harm to her without doing any good for the public.

One final example: consider a case in which a black man is briefly suspected, then cleared of a crime against a white woman in the American South, mid-20th century. Would it be ethical for a news story to identify this man by name? How critical is his identity to the story? How much harm might he be exposed to, should his identity be made known, even though he’s been found innocent?

To summarize an awfully long post:

I believe the journalists at Gizmodo have a more concrete ethical standard than a run-of-the-mill YouTuber (at least for the time being), though YouTubers should strive to minimize harm as well, should they value a sense of ethics. In this case, Gizmodo had no real reason to explicitly identify Nikki Moxxi, but did so regardless of knowing it would cause her major harm, in the context of their Trump/Gamergate-hostile environment. For this reason, I find their behavior falls short of what should be expected of professional journalists, and as such warrants contacting their governing journalistic body (Univision).