On Monday I came across a dodgy, unreliable person on Twitter trying to get attention by deliberately publishing inaccurate, misleading inflammatory info. His name online is Dan Buzzard, and I'm asking you to block him, and to refuse to retweet anything he posts on Twitter. I first saw what he posted after Twitter user @askegg (Andrew Skegg) retweeted it. The tweet I saw said:
Well that sounded like it was worth passing on to the people who read my stuff on Twitter, so I checked it out. And I quickly found the info was utterly worthless. The link goes to a story in The Age about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange having his passport confiscated. Um, I thought, being a political prisoner means going to jail for your political beliefs or actions, not having your passport taken away. But it gets worse. The headline of the story says Assange's passport was taken away. But the actual story says his passport was taken away for fifteen minutes, and then returned. Half an hour after that, an Australian Federal Police officer questioned him. Assange says the official who gave him his passport back said it was cancelled, or about to be cancelled, according to the story. But the journalist who wrote the story claims he has information saying Assange was free to travel. So all we can be reasonably sure of is that someone who has embarassed the Australian Government by posting the secret Internet censorship blacklist online suffered some minor bureaucratic harassment. It's certainly worth a story. It's just the sort of mindless, petty thing you'd expect from Australian authorities. But having your passport taken for fifteen minutes and having to deal with some chest-thumping low-grade officials is NOT the same as having your passport confiscated. And it's definitely not the same as being a "political prisoner". So I replied to both @askegg and @danbuzzard:
I said
And Buzzard replied:
At which point I decided any further discussion was useless, as Buzzard clearly has no idea what simple concepts like "ethics" and "not being a manipulative, lying creep" mean. According to Buzzard, if you make a statement into a question that makes it "100% accurate". So let's try that with a few statements, shall we?Dan Buzzard: Guilty of Murder?
Dan Buzzard: Abuser of Women?
Dan Buzzard: Oxygen Thief?
Dan Buzzard: Worthy of Tarring and Feathering?OK, let's see. Yep, question marks after each statement, turning them into a question. By Buzzard's rules of honesty, these statements, now questions, are all "100% accurate". They are of course ALL UNTRUE, but these ridiculous examples certainly show what a joke his "100% accurate" claim is. We know Buzzard thinks honesty is important. The latest post on his blog, as I write, says:
So yeah. Not only is he a hypocrite, he's one of these pathetic sectarian atheists who think the most important thing worth arguing about is religion. I am an atheist and I don't give a good Goddamn what other people believe, I care about whether they make the world a better place or a worse one. And Buzzard makes it worse. Clearly Buzzard is motivated by publicity and attention. I thought about whether I should write this post, as it gives him attention, but I thought dealing with the issue of manipulative bullshit was worth the risk of giving him a few more eyeballs. So:If you agree with me that Buzzard has lied;If you think his claim that using a question mark at the end of any statement makes that statement "100% accurate" is utter garbage;And if you think this sort of dishonest behaviour should have consequences, Please:a) Block him on Twitter
b) If you see anyone passing on his tweets, ask them not to, and send them a link to this tweet
c) Check everything before you retweet it to make it harder for dishonest tactics to work.
Wikileaks founder now a political prisoner in Australia: http://bit.ly/9Qkard #nocleanfeed #openinternet (via @DanBuzzard)
Well that sounded like it was worth passing on to the people who read my stuff on Twitter, so I checked it out. And I quickly found the info was utterly worthless. The link goes to a story in The Age about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange having his passport confiscated. Um, I thought, being a political prisoner means going to jail for your political beliefs or actions, not having your passport taken away. But it gets worse. The headline of the story says Assange's passport was taken away. But the actual story says his passport was taken away for fifteen minutes, and then returned. Half an hour after that, an Australian Federal Police officer questioned him. Assange says the official who gave him his passport back said it was cancelled, or about to be cancelled, according to the story. But the journalist who wrote the story claims he has information saying Assange was free to travel. So all we can be reasonably sure of is that someone who has embarassed the Australian Government by posting the secret Internet censorship blacklist online suffered some minor bureaucratic harassment. It's certainly worth a story. It's just the sort of mindless, petty thing you'd expect from Australian authorities. But having your passport taken for fifteen minutes and having to deal with some chest-thumping low-grade officials is NOT the same as having your passport confiscated. And it's definitely not the same as being a "political prisoner". So I replied to both @askegg and @danbuzzard:
And I got a reply:@askegg @DanBuzzard absolute nonsense. The story doesn't even confirm he's banned from travel. Leave the misleading headlines to Murdoch?
@djackmanson that sounds like jealousy to me :D Headlines sell stories. Perhaps I should have put a "?" mark at the end.
I said
@DanBuzzard No, it's anger that you'd tweet an inflammatory and utterly misleading headline. A question mark would make it no better.
And Buzzard replied:
@djackmanson Marketing 96 clicks and counting. The article is accurate and the headline would have been 100% accurate with a ? mark included
At which point I decided any further discussion was useless, as Buzzard clearly has no idea what simple concepts like "ethics" and "not being a manipulative, lying creep" mean. According to Buzzard, if you make a statement into a question that makes it "100% accurate". So let's try that with a few statements, shall we?Dan Buzzard: Guilty of Murder?
Dan Buzzard: Abuser of Women?
Dan Buzzard: Oxygen Thief?
Dan Buzzard: Worthy of Tarring and Feathering?OK, let's see. Yep, question marks after each statement, turning them into a question. By Buzzard's rules of honesty, these statements, now questions, are all "100% accurate". They are of course ALL UNTRUE, but these ridiculous examples certainly show what a joke his "100% accurate" claim is. We know Buzzard thinks honesty is important. The latest post on his blog, as I write, says:
One of the things that really annoys me about Creationists is their dishonesty;
So yeah. Not only is he a hypocrite, he's one of these pathetic sectarian atheists who think the most important thing worth arguing about is religion. I am an atheist and I don't give a good Goddamn what other people believe, I care about whether they make the world a better place or a worse one. And Buzzard makes it worse. Clearly Buzzard is motivated by publicity and attention. I thought about whether I should write this post, as it gives him attention, but I thought dealing with the issue of manipulative bullshit was worth the risk of giving him a few more eyeballs. So:If you agree with me that Buzzard has lied;If you think his claim that using a question mark at the end of any statement makes that statement "100% accurate" is utter garbage;And if you think this sort of dishonest behaviour should have consequences, Please:a) Block him on Twitter
b) If you see anyone passing on his tweets, ask them not to, and send them a link to this tweet
c) Check everything before you retweet it to make it harder for dishonest tactics to work.
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ReplyDeleteWhile I am very grateful for the free publicity you are willing to give me. Such unprofessional behaviour is not doing you any favours.
ReplyDeleteYour desire to launch a personal jealousy fuelled vendetta against me only makes you look small and petty in the eyes of others. I have doubts as to whether anybody reads this but if they do they will judge each of us on our own merit and right now your not looking so good.
Perhaps you should consider the sort of publicity that this article gives you.