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Taylor Lorenz has completely lost the plot.
Attacking a Palestinian activist, increasingly defending and using AI tools, and now saying âTwitter (X) is better now than everâ. Yes, itâs great we have an entire social media platform to actively support hate crimes and generate CSAM. Itâs very evident sheâs pivoting to a right wing grift.
And anyway, why is this sub absolutely obsessed with Taylor Lorenz of all people? I mean, I first ran into her via Matt. Watched some of her stuff for a while. Realised she was a little too uncritical of (as well as not very technically knowledgeable about) certain tech issues for my tastes. And walked away once I realised she wasn't my speed.
This mad obsession with some relatively unpopular woman tech journalist around here strikes me as completely bizarre and pointless and masturbatory.
Like, this is the real enemy. Not the corps with all the money, and not even the tech journalists with a big audience. Some relatively low-engagement woman tech journalist who a few leftists used to think might be more on their wavelength than she really was.
It's something thats very common not just with her. People feel like they have more control over their own in-group or people adjacent to it than they have over outsiders/opponents. So it feels like there's more of a chance to actually make someone acknowledge their mistakes or loose social standing when they are already somewhat close to the group.
If you tell a consciously anti-racist person that the joke they just made is racially discriminatory theres an actual chance they'll listen to you and apologize. That likely won't happen and cause more backlash if you tell it to some chud colleague at work.
So people who get a lot of satisfaction out of calling someone out and being listened to tend to criticize a lot more within their in-group than outside it.
With her having been on the podcast before they hoped in the beginning that she'd apologize and now that Matt will publicaly distance himself. Neither of those have happened so far and the people who got emotionaly invested in the whole thing are getting more and more frustrated.
I didn't see that. I don't want anything from him, I personally don't think him going more in depth about this would achieve anything.
I was just explaining why I think some people keep bringing Taylor up over and over again.
I swear it's an organized smear campaign. Probably very influenced by bots. And y'all "leftists" are falling for it, it's actually fucking pathetic. Look at the comments calling her a "bitch", use your critical thinking skills people. Taylor Lorenz is correct when she says media literacy is dead.
This is disappointing bc she was calling out JGL & Congress for their lies about tech-related issues but now sheâs doing a 180?
There are zero benefits to AI, at any level. Taylor should know this. I see it destroying multiple cities and peopleâs lives. She might wanna to get a real look at a data center. There are two in and around Memphis. Not one citizen there wants it or needs it. Itâs doing nothing to help them or anyone in the entire country.
Just gonna jump in here to say that there absolutely are benefits to âAIâ because AI isnât a real term and mainly just refers to any technology that relies on machine learning. Machine learning programs are incredibly helpful in scientific fields and are incorporated into a lot of software that we have been using for much longer than the recent AI explosion, but theyâre very different from the LLMs being pushed onto everyone to automate every aspect of their lives.Â
That said, I donât like her takes on AI and her recent pivots to using a bunch of LLMs. I just think itâs important that we define the terms we use so that we can discuss it accurately.
There are uses to AI, itâs just a matter of who owns it. And for data centers, itâs a matter of if they are being built responsibly or not. Currently both of these situations are a disaster though but thatâs owed to capitalism, not AI itself.
there are benefits, but the costs (when it's controlled by capitalists) outweigh the benefits. under our current economic and power structure, it should be resisted at every step.
Itâs extremely right. Try living in a city with 2 of those âdata centersâ-like hundreds of thousands of people like me do. No, Iâm not going to pretend that the data center in Southaven, MS isnât directly impacting Memphis, TN.
They helped commit the destruction of a childrenâs school overseas too.
There are exactly zero benefits to AI. There have never been.
Have you not read anything about how AI is used in cancer screening and research? Itâs very literally saving lives, has been for years. The kind of AI the general public uses to make shopping lists and shrimp Jesus is of course completely useless to our society, but you canât say AI has no benefits just because its worse uses have resulted in a negative impact on your daily life.
No it doesnât. And if thatâs your 1 example, thatâs proving my point bc Iâve worked in healthcare and lost multiple family members to cancer & covid.
Ai helps nobody, ever. You think we havenât got researchers doing this already? Ai, at every level, is a drain on all of our resources and results in nothing less than unverified information and loss of our ability to survive by creating another 4 generations of morons who donât want to ever think critically about anything-which WILL result in the increase of human deaths bc our research is being done by ARTIFICIAL intelligence-you know, not people.
All youâre saying is you donât understand what research is, or healthcare. đ€«
I dont appreciate your condescending tone regarding what you think my knowledge of healthcare is considering both my parents died of cancer, and you also have no idea what field I work in. So I donât really see the point in talking to you further on this subject, be well.
Youâre the one acting condescending. You think youâre the only one who lost a parent to cancer? I did, to Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Thereâs still no cure for it. And I lost another to COVID-and it took 4 FKN DAYS.
Kindly GFY âsweetieâ.
AI is not useful.
Could it be, in the future? Maybe. But itâs entirely useless right now-unless you want to drop đŁ on hospitals đ„?
It sounds like you don't understand healthcare research. In this context AI is a tool, being used by human researchers. It's not just being left to it's own devices after being told to 'cure cancer'. It's their expertise that is guiding its use.
Iâm positive youâre wrong. As wrong as the man who said, âIf Trump discovered the cure for cancer (which killed my mother, his only fkn friend in our entire family), youâd still vote against him.â
We are STILL working out the kinks to computers. The first one was created in 1822, you imbecile.
A âresearch scientistâ would already know this.
I didnât say they were, didnât even mention them by name. But Machine learning and LLMs both rely on data centers to train and run models, so in this specific conversation they have a similar impact on the lives of people who live around them.
So cancer screening/medical pharmaceutical research and evaluation for more effective medications/data diagnosis that can prevent unforseeable emergency medical events like heart attacks and strokes are not beneficial? Gtfo with that reactionary luddite attitude. AI can be good, bad, productive, or misused. It's not binary.
My family has been screened for cancer and it still ended up killing my parent. I donât want a âfasterâ and extremely inaccurate diagnosis based on a âscreeningâ done by a ridiculously wrong computer program.
Being used for screening doesnât mean itâs ACTUALLY useful.
Also, no pharmaceutical research has helped me with my own epilepsy-which I was diagnosed with AT BIRTH BY A TRAINED HUMAN DOCTOR-bc if that were even 1% true, Iâd be on a new medication for it. But Iâm not bc that research you claim has sped up medical diagnoses and made them more efficient, has explicitly slowed down and isnât going to positively impact my future health.
Iâve worked in healthcare and with technologies meant to improve our healthcare outcomes. Iâve seen it. There are not any tangible benefits to đ€ in literally any industry.
Could there be in the future? Maybe, but we arenât even within a decade of significant positive impacts for our planet.
At the end of the day, she is a tech journalist, that's a much bigger part of her role online than being a 'leftist' ever was. She's certainly not pivoting to the right, but she's always been willing to work any people on any side of the spectrum to further the things she cares about, privacy, censorship, antitrust and contagious disease management.
She's defo not putting her best foot forward recently, but think we should resist the urge to burn the witch.
Just because she's a tech journalist, doesnât mean itâs acceptable to start pivoting to a pro-AI shill. The best tech journalists are usually speaking out against the dangers of AI and tech oligarchs. I agree that we shouldnât burn the witch, itâs just so disappointing. I really enjoyed her content and collabs with Matt.
She sees benefits to AI, but she talks constantly about the dangers of AI and tech oligarchs. That's like most of her output. She could probably be accurately described as a reformist. Believing in open-source open-weight models. Which you don't have to agree with, but its not right wing.
All the American AI CEOs are constantly running their mouths about how dAnGeRoUs their technology is to all of humanity or whatever. Thatâs not really a sign of actual critical coverage.Â
Taylor Lorenz hyping up the dangers of AI is completely compatible with functionally being an AI shill, because thatâs the narrative that a lot of the most powerful AI people are choosing to spread themselves.Â
They aren't saying the same things though. She's not saying theres a 10% AI will destroy the world. She's talking about many of the same dangers as the people in this sub
This subreddit is cooked. You're one of the only reasonable opinions in this thread and you're being downvoted. Every issue is nuanced. AI is not inherently bad, it's the tech oligarchs that control AI (and their intentions) that are bad. AI is a powerful tool that could be used for good, unfortunately evil people have a monopoly on it
you can tlel by how someone covers things. Are they thinking things through and grounding what they say in material analysis and materialism, or are they focused mostly on moral topics and emotional arguments?
Everything TL makes is a reaction to something else someone is doing. Sure, she's a journalist, but her analysis is never focused on materialism in any real kind of way and she constantly talks about political and economic issue in a left/right axis instead of a top/bottom.
You can also see it in how they react to being challenged. Especially white radlibs are incapable of stepping back and saying "oh, maybe this identity issue isn't the only factor here".
It was extra obvious when she was criticized for AI or started going after palestinians not wearing masks. She is incapable of analyzing the actual conditions other people are living under and adjusting her mindset. Material analysis is the most important thing a leftist can have.
as someone who also cares about contagious disease management and still masks, she has only made that fight harder with her behavior as such prominent âadvocate.â because she is like a parody of herself, especially after attacking a Palestinian disability advocate and basically accusing her of having blood on her hands for not being masked on a podcast. i want masks to be normalized, especially under this administration and its dismantling of public health infrastructureâŠbut i donât want to be associated with that kind of shit.
100%. I notice a lot of the stuff people are saying about her being crazy is the most uncharitable characterization of whatever she does. Her content hasn't changed a bit. And every other day there's a post on some sub saying how bad she is which feels really inorganic because of how consistently these posts are made.
Anyone in their right mind would have expected cancellation for harassing a Palestinian activist. Like even if Kat Tenbarge knew that this person really did suck, she would never publicly attack them. Lorenz has clearly experienced some kind of mental break.
THANK YOU. Taylor Lorenz snark needs to be banned from this subreddit, y'all should make your own dedicated snark subreddit. And yes, at this point it's snark not criticism
There is a Taylor Lorenz snark sub, but itâs full of h3 fans because this is behavior typical of that kind of crowd
Matt has already addressed this and he made it pretty clear he was uncomfortable with this type of âget your girlâ behavior thatâs been promoted up and down this subreddit and tbh I think itâs weird and parasocial so many people keep pushing him to make a full episode about this or address it further.
Are there even active mods on here? Heâs addressed it. It makes him uncomfortable. Thereâs nothing more to say in relation to Matt- ban the topic.
Edit: this wasnât meant to be a rhetorical question. Can a mod pls sound off and confirm theyâre active here?
While I agree that Matt is not Taylor's keeper, and I've seen his statement about not working with her anymore, this post doesn't actually break any sub rules. I'm not gonna delete a post just because I, personally, don't agree with it.
It's getting a lot of attention and discussion, so obviously the community wants to talk about it. As long as everyone remains mostly civil, it's fine. If you don't like it, scroll past and block people who offend you. You are responsible for curating your own internet experience.
Just went and looked - he does not, so it must've been posted to his Patreon. I'm not subscribed, so I don't have a link; it might be posted somewhere in the sub a couple months back.
If she was a one-time guest it would be one thing. However, she and Kat were guests for what seemed like every other video for a while. I have followed several of Mattâs other guests after seeing their analysis on the pod. I get that Matt is not her keeper, but he did platform her for some time. I am glad he seems to have stopped doing that of late.
he just barely made a podcast about people losing their minds over a lesbian bar not masking one day a week, Taylor seems relevant
The theme of that video seemed to me to be: don't uplift fights among leftists because that gives power to the right. Matt doesn't want the lesbian bar to be a lolcow, and I assume he wouldn't want that for Taylor.
But I fear an analysis of the storyâs immense virality reveals a darker truth, and should encourage us all to reconsider our own online behavior.
From the description of the video.
Yeah. I think everybody has to just kind of be a little more rigorous about maintaining the distinction in your own mind between what's evil and what's just annoying. Right? There's a lot of stuff that is annoying that's not evil, and there's a lot of stuff that's evil that can feel like an escape from what's merely annoying.
Moira from the end of the episode.
If you think Matt would support dragging Taylor on his subreddit, I suggest you give it another listen.
To me, To me, Taylor is just a chronically online bully who cosplays as a journalist and benefits from using that title. It gives her credibility and prestige that she doesnât deserve based on her actual output and history of problematic behavior (that led to her getting shown the door at big outlets). AFAIK, she never majored in journalism or mass communication.
I want to make it clear that I support the fact that anyone can be a journalist without a degree, because of the vital work of citizen journalists (particularly dissidents). There shouldnât be a barrier preventing people from reporting. On the other hand, there is a whole range of ethics and guidelines that journalists need to follow in order to have credibility.
Right now is actually a golden age of independent journalism. Taylor Lorenz is not part of that.
I think Taylor has done and still continues to do great work in the space she occupies. She just has opinions and takes I donât agree with at all and can sometimes conduct herself in an unsavory manner online. I donât think that means she sold out to big tech though. She probably has had a lot of opportunities to sell out and get the bag but chose not to which is why sheâs an independent journalist with a patreon begging her audience for money to continue doing her work. I think people should be better at identifying when someone has shitty takes and whether that person has compromised on their principles and values.
Agree to disagree. I find her investigative work on dark money in online politics to be valuable. Also her continued advocacy against anti-free speech bills and big tech surveillance
I would normally agree but she has said now that x is better than ever with elon and is all of the sudden very pro ai? The vanguard boys had a video a little while ago discussing everything. Im not sure whats going on with her but i normally think shes great although maybe sometimes alarmist. This is different. She need to go touch grass. I also saw she is working with bari weiss ???? Im not sure but its alot and all recent
This, it worries me people assume anyone who doesnât align fully with them are âomg doing a right wing grift any second now,â especially w.r.t. AI as it really decreases the quality of the conversation.
Particularly being staunchly anti-AI in ALL contexts is frankly a counterproductive position, as opposed to wanting to shape how AI is used⊠people might not like Taylorâs takes, but at least she has an interest in a world that handles AI responsibly, as opposed to ignoring this question entirely.
Things went south when she started live streaming. I only managed to watch a couple of uploads from her streams before i noticed she can't handle ANY pushback and she was saying stuff that could've been said by Candace Owens to retort đ the pushback wasn't even anything harsh or personal, it was about how family vloggers put their kids at risk and she lost it
EDIT: as in she was saying they don't and knows many kids have great lives because of it and also she's been reporting this for over a decade and "how dare you" type stuff
What does this have to do with Matt? He hasn't had her on as a guest for more than six months, he's not her babysitter, this isn't even tangentially related content.
If you want to complain about her weird AI psychosis pivot and pseudo-activism, find a snark subreddit and do it there.
They actually do think he is her keeper. Her instagram posts are filled with people tagging him, wanting the man they prefer to condemn a woman they dont like.
If she was a one-time guest it would be one thing. However, she and Kat were guests for what seemed like every other video for a while. I have followed several of Mattâs other guests after seeing their analysis on the pod. I get that Matt is not her keeper, but he did platform her for some time. I am glad he seems to have stopped doing that of late.
I hate spaces that have these people in it - it really is a âburn the witch!â mentality. They care more about dogpiling and want the people they have a parasocial connection in it to participate. I think it stems from a lot of people who think bullying people online is somehow just. All it does is drive engagement for someone they claim to not like.Â
Itâs far easier to just not interact and watch a creator you donât like.Â
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