CONTRARlAN

> Consider in the 1800s it wasn't uncommon for a publisher to be paid for a product & make it seem like they were simply endorsing something they truly liked.

Since you work in advertising, you should know that that kind of thing is more pervasive than ever today.

Focusing on societal efficiency at the expense of other things seems like a good short-term solution, but a lousy long-term one.

Sorry, I was just talking about Stratfor.

> Of course it was also revealed that The Interview was a propaganda product aimed at destabilizing North Korea (in anticipation of the upcoming planned unification).

I missed all that–can you point me in the right direction?

> These sorts of things can only be found when there's wide access given to journalists.

Sure, but there's an argument to be made that the only way to end domestic violence is to place cameras inside all homes. Obviously that tradeoff is one most people aren't willing to make, and I don't think that leaking the private emails of employees of a private company is ultimately morally defensible.

Whistleblowing is one (very important) thing–bulk dumps of 99% of innocuous stuff became there's 1% of stuff in there that isn't great (but probably isn't all that bad, in the grand scheme of things) is both tactically questionable–leaking something with a 1:99 S/N ratio is a terrible way to get your message across–it's also morally suspect.

If Wikileaks & Co. truly wanted to change the world (and it wasn't about garnering attention and giving indiscriminate anger an outlet), they'd be approaching things differently.

> A pretty nasty no-win situation.

It's a pretty easy win-win situation–offer both, inform users appropriately. And then provide a third set: a list of the sanitized files not present in the virus-free dump. I think a quick spot check through those would show whether any editorializing was going on.

I have serious concerns about their publishing the private emails of employees of a private company that, from all I can gather, turned out to be pretty non-evil. But the virus issues, while not Stratfor's or Wikileaks's direct fault, could have been mitigated by Wikileaks pretty easily.

(Disclosure: I've subscribed to them for many years, but have no interest beyond that.)

Asia's a continent.

The character of Jian Yang is a very specific subset of Chinese nationals, namely those who come to work in a very specific industry in a very small part of Northern California.

That's like being upset about a show with a character poking fun at Americans who teach English in South Korea. (Which, I'm guessing, could provide some pretty good material.)

Your syllogism aside, not all cultural satire is racist, even when people want it to be.

So, just how specific does cultural satire have to get before you won't declare it racism?

I ask, because "Chinese" includes about 56 recognized ethnic groups in mainland China. I don't think we can say whether this character is Han, Zhuang, Hui, or necessarily any specific race that happens to exist primarily within the borders of what we call the nation of China.

Seems to me that character is more making fun of the culture of a nation than of a single ethnic group (or even some set of ethnic groups). If they had a character that made fun of, say, British culture, would that be OK with you? Or only if the character was white? (Which would seem awfully racist to me.)

Or is it only safe to satirize culture if the subject of the satire has ethnic roots in the Caucuses?

Or is it not about ethnicity, but appearance? Is it enough if they merely appear white? Because that opens the comedic landscape far beyond the Caucasus. Can we satirize Mexican culture, provided we limit it to Mexicans of European descent? (Again, how racist is that?)

There are some real battles worth fighting, but this really seems like a cosmetic one to me, no matter how much you think it "smells like racism."

It's like some people have a sense of indignation that's only tuned to detect a few things, and throw any sense of nuance or concept of false-positives out the window.

Are you offended by the definition of Jian Yang, or the actual character in the show? That's like being offended by Wikipedia's entry on the KKK because it accurately describes their position.

Anyway–it's not stereotyping Asians, it's stereotyping Chinese-national engineers in Silicon Valley. That's a pretty specific cultural subset.

> no one would accept this logic if it were applied to Black people or gays.

No? Because comedies have never had characters like Tracy Jordan or Franck Eggelhoffer?

> I don't know, but it's a fascinating experiment, anyone who is not paying for it should be in favor of this experiment -- unless you just hate poor people.

What a bizarre statement. It's really easy to read that as two things:

1. You're totally game to experiment, just so long as it's not your money. 2. Anyone who doesn't agree must hate poor people.

I'm pretty certain you didn't really mean either, but the net result of that sentence is awfully unproductive: "anyone who doesn't like this must either have skin in the game or hate poor people!"

> If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.

Leaving aside the truth of their claims at the time–because it's irrelevant–your comment makes the fatal error of assuming conditions haven't changed at all in 17 years.

As an aside, it's been my experience that titles are often written not by the person who wrote the article, but by someone who is tasked with writing titles that are intended to attract attention, and not necessarily perfectly reflect the views of the author.

I agree with you that they're a private company so they can do what they want with their business–I actually think private entities don't have enough rights on that front in many regards–but that doesn't mean that it isn't a conversation worth having, and or that they aren't unregulated entities–there are legal limits to what stores can do in their relationships with customers, how is this any different?

And walking in doesn't give implicit permission that I agree for them to store, analyze, sell, leak, publish or otherwise use that data however they please, in perpetuity. Are they allowed to disclose my presence to law enforcement without a warrant? Can they tell my health insurance provider that I spent an unusually long amount of time in the dessert aisle?

I'm sure a lawyer could argue (probably quite successfully) otherwise, but from a let's-address-the-problem-before-it's-fully-mature standpoint, these are the kinds of conversations we're supposed to be having right now.

That it's easy to do is all the more reason to try to establish controls to prevent abuse.

It's trivially easy to sell customer data for profit at the expense of their privacy. It's easy to store personal information without securing it. It's easy to take credit cards without using SSL certs.

It's also easy to lock someone up and deny them due process, or to enter someone's home and seize their effects without a warrant, or to set absurdly high bail.

Etc. Again, it's because this is such an easy thing to do–and it's only going to become easier to collect, store, and analyze this data-that it makes sense to establish definitions of what constitutes fair use, and what constitutes abuse, and to do so sooner, rather than later.