No One Cares That Bill Ackman’s Wife May Have Plagiarized; They Care About Ackman’s Hypocritical Double Standard

from the the-rich-play-by-different,-censorial-rules dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about outspoken financier Bill Ackman’s threat to sue Business Insider over articles regarding accusations by the publication that Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, had plagiarized parts of her dissertation years ago. The timeline and context of what happened here is important because Ackman continues to ignore it.

Ackman got upset about activity by students at his alma mater, Harvard, in response to the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th. He then helped orchestrate a campaign to oust Harvard’s new President, Claudine Gay, because of what he viewed as her insufficient response to antisemitism on campus. While those initial efforts went nowhere, the situation gained more attention when some nonsense peddlers of the grifter class found examples of what they called plagiarism, but which many academics felt were inadvertent errors in weak paraphrasing, or inadvertent failure to properly cite sources.

For example, one of the people Gay was accused of plagiarizing came to her defense, noting that while it may have been technically improper, it was over minor bits and not the heart of what she was writing:

The plagiarism in question here did not take an idea of any significance from my work. It didn’t steal my thunder. It didn’t stop me from publishing. And the bit she used from us was not in any way a major component of what made her research important or valuable.

So how serious a violation of academic integrity was this?

From my perspective, what she did was trivial—wholly inconsequential. That’s the reason I’ve so actively tried to defend her.

This effort continued for some time, with Ackman again being a leading voice, perhaps recognizing that what he failed to accomplish by complaining about her handling of antisemitism, he could eventually accomplish through piling on and promoting the claims of plagiarism. And it worked. Soon after, Gay lost her job as President of Harvard.

Around that time, Business Insider published its first piece about Neri Oxman, Ackman’s wife, noting that her dissertation at MIT was also found to contain some plagiarized passages. The article was pretty explicit that it was not accusing Oxman of some inherent unethical behavior, but rather noting the similarities between what she had done and what Gay had done:

Like Oxman, Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics’ work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.

Gay’s plagiarism was seen by some academics, including many of those she plagiarized, as relatively inconsequential.

George Reid Andrews, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the people Gay plagiarized, told the New York Post that what Gay did “happens fairly often in academic writing and for me does not rise to the level of plagiarism.”

That is, the entire point of the article was to highlight the parallel situations between Gay and Oxman. It was to emphasize that inconsequential copying or inadvertent failure to properly cite something minor in an academic paper happens all the time.

The point was not that Oxman was terrible. The point was to highlight Ackman’s double standard. Indeed, Business Insider wrote an entire article comparing the accusations against both Gay and Oxman while highlighting Ackman’s noticeably different approach to each.

“Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate,” he wrote in a post on X following Business Insider’s report on Oxman’s plagiarism.

That’s a starkly different approach from the one he took toward Gay after she stepped down as president earlier this week. At the time, Ackman said she should be fired from Harvard’s faculty entirely because of what he called “serious plagiarism issues.”

“Students are forced to withdraw for much less,” he posted on X. “Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard.”

However, the instances of Oxman’s and Gay’s plagiarism have more similarities than differences, according to experts and an internal analysis.

At no point that I’ve seen in this ongoing ordeal has Ackman acknowledged that. Rather, he has gone on rant after rant after rant, combined with threats to sue people for their free speech (while pretending to be a free speech absolutist), pretending that the point of the Business Insider articles was to smear Oxman to punish Ackman for his support of Israel.

A few weeks ago, Ackman promised to sue and has hired Libby Locke of the firm Clare Locke to issue a massive (and massively ridiculous) threat letter to Axel Springer/Business Insider, demanding corrections and retractions of various articles. It’s a Gish gallop of a threat letter. Responding to every single bit of nonsense in the threat letter is beyond the scope of my time, and even so this article is going to be ridiculously long.

Just as an aside, no one who hires Clare Locke is a “free speech absolutist.” Clare Locke (and especially partner Libby Locke) are immensely proud of their ability to threaten media outlets to kill stories (and they’re not as effective as their media portrayal would have you believe). That’s the opposite of free speech absolutists. They are speech suppressors. Their website kinda brags about this:

Sending a 77-page “demand letter” is ridiculous and suggests that you don’t have a clear ask or a clear explanation. Ackman, over on ExTwitter, admits that the letter was written on purpose to be turned into a complaint:

It will not go unnoticed that the demand letter reads remarkably similarly to the pleadings of a lawsuit. If needed, we can convert the demand letter into a complaint and file a lawsuit, which I hope is unnecessary

The letter is long, repetitive, and silly. It does not engage with the actual purpose of the Business Insider articles, to compare Gay’s inadvertent failures to cite with Oxman’s similar mistakes in a manner that highlights how Ackman’s freakout over Gay suggests a huge double standard. Instead, it opens by arguing that Business Insider and the reporters and editors who worked on these articles are antisemitic and targeted Ackman because of his pro-Israel views.

Ackman’s criticism, particularly of Claudine Gay, the former president of his alma mater, Harvard, did not sit well with Katherine Long (an Investigative Reporter at Business Insider), John Cook (Business Insider’s Executive Editor), and Henry Blodget (Business Insider’s Founder and Chairman), who have publicly expressed anti-Zionist and purportedly antisemitic views.

It then goes on at great length (and great repetitiveness) to claim that it’s not plagiarism if it wasn’t done on purpose. Really.

As confirmed by Business Insider and the common definition of plagiarism, plagiarism requires an intent to steal or defraud. Unintentional citation mistakes and honest errors are not considered plagiarism as the word is commonly understood

Now, there are two major problems with this. First of all, as noted here (but not in anything from Ackman), if that’s the case, then it appears Gay did not plagiarize either. And, again, that was the whole point of the Business Insider articles.

But, secondly, yes, you can absolutely plagiarize without intent to do so. The letter plays a very sloppy game of “use the definition we want at different times throughout our argument.” Note that even in the quote above, Locke’s letter says “as the word is commonly understood.” But… that’s not true. As commonly understood, inadvertent plagiarism… is still plagiarism. It might not be as serious. But it’s still plagiarism.

And the most incredible bit is that the letter admits that itself. Much later in the letter, it argues that Oxman couldn’t have done anything terrible because of MIT’s guidelines on plagiarism at the time. The letter, early on, states the following:

As MIT itself plainly explains in advising students of its academic standards, plagiarism “does not include honest error.” MIT also recognizes that “unintentional” plagiarism is not considered academic misconduct. In other words, honest mistakes happen, but those simple errors do not count as academic misconduct.

But, again, the whole point was that Gay appeared to have committed similar unintentional acts of plagiarism, yet Ackman demanded her head over them.

Either way, later on in the complaint letter, they show snippets from MIT’s guidebook which… read quite differently in context. They do not at all seem to be suggesting that unintentional plagiarism is not plagiarism. Rather, they seem to be stating that unintentional plagiarism is still very much plagiarism, and that’s why one should be very careful to not even engage in unintentional plagiarism. Here’s page 12 of the letter, in which it seems pretty clear that MIT is saying “don’t plagiarize, even if it’s unintentional,” but where Oxman/Ackman/Locke seem to be pretending it’s saying “meh, as long as you didn’t mean it, you’re fine.”

Notice, clearly in there, that MIT is not saying that “accidental” and “unintentional” plagiarism is fine. Both of the clips above are trying to help students understand why accidental plagiarism is still wrong and how they need to learn how to properly do academic writing by citing sources and writing up things by yourself.

Page 13 of the letter provides even more examples of this, where they seem to think it is absolving Oxman and revealing Business Insider’s ill-intent, when it really just seems to show that Oxman/Ackman/Locke don’t understand what they’re looking at:

Those are all clearly explanations for how to avoid that kind of “botched paraphrasing” which it appears both Gay and Oxman may have engaged in.

Notably, this demand letter leaves out the line right after those two screenshotted selections above, which proves that Libby Locke is omitting important context. Here, see it for yourself:

“In any event, even if the plagiarism is unintentional, the consequences can still be very painful.”

And then it explains why it might be painful:

Plagiarism in the academic world can lead to everything from failure for the course to expulsion from the college or university.

Plagiarism in the professional world can lead, at the very least, to profound embarrassment and loss of reputation and, often, to loss of employment. Famous cases of plagiarism include the historian Stephen Ambrose (accusations about six of his books have been made, most famously about The Wild Blue) and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (who ended up asking the publisher to destroy all unsold copies of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys). Such plagiarism may be accidental, but its consequences are the same as for intentional plagiarism.

The threat letter leaves out all of this context and seems to pretend that MIT is suggesting that such unintentional plagiarism is fine. When the very document they’re quoting from says the exact opposite.

And what’s funny is that throughout the 77-page letter, Locke keeps insisting that omissions by Business Insider that distort the meaning of things are clearly defamatory and/or evidence of actual malice. Yet Locke engages in identical behavior.

The next page of the letter actually drives this point home (though again, the letter’s author does not appear to recognize this) by including a screenshot of the MIT Academic Integrity handbook that explains how to avoid “inadvertent plagiarism.”

All of that undermines Oxman’s argument, but the letter seems to think it boosts it. That’s because it confuses what counts as “research misconduct” with what counts as plagiarism. Looking at the MIT documents in context suggests that they are talking about two different things: what counts as plagiarism (which could include accidental or inadvertent copying and missed citations) and what counts as misconduct for which sanctions make sense, which requires intent.

But none of that really matters for the point that the Business Insider piece was trying to make: comparing Gay’s conduct (which Ackman insisted was a horrible, fireable offense) to Oxman’s (which Ackman continues to insist was no big deal).

On the very next page of the letter, it (falsely) suggests all this proves that Oxman’s “inadvertent” failure to properly cite somehow was not problematic. Even as the very documents they screenshot say the literal opposite. It also claims that “quoting one part of an article without quoting another part which might tend to qualify or contradict the quoted part is evidence of actual malice” even though that’s the same thing this letter does in this very section.

Business Insider’s purpose in excluding references to these portions of MIT’s Academic Integrity Handbook and academic misconduct policies in its articles on Dr. Oxman is clear: Including them would have debunked the notion that Dr. Oxman had committed intentional plagiarism and academic fraud, and Business Insider wanted to create the false impression that Dr. Oxman committed intellectual theft.

Business Insider’s wholesale omission of MIT’s policies and procedures contradicting its preconceived narrative was deliberate, and it is further evidence of Business Insider’s actual malice towards Dr. Oxman and Ackman. Indeed, the law holds that “quot[ing] one part of an article without quoting another part which might tend to qualify or contradict the part quoted” is evidence of actual malice. Goldwater, 414 F.2d at 336; see also Eramo, 209 F. Supp. 3d at 872 (“[D]isregard[ing] contradictory evidence” is supportive of actual malice.); Murray, 613 F. Supp. at 1285 (“It would be unjust and nonsensical to allow the defendant to rely on the report for certain purposes and to ignore it for others.”).

Once again, it’s unlikely that anyone with half a brain reading the BI pieces would think they were accusing Oxman of anything particularly nefarious. They were simply comparing what she had done to what Gay had done and noting the similarities.

There’s so much more that’s silly about this threat letter that there’s no way to go through it all, so I’m going to skip some of it and give highlights of other parts.

There’s an entire section whining about the use of the word “marred” in one of BI’s headlines, claiming that because it was only inadvertent, it couldn’t have been “marred.” I shit you not:

Given that the only instances of alleged plagiarism Business Insider identified in this article were only four paragraphs with eight missing quotation marks and one instance in which Dr. Oxman failed to cite an author she cited extensively elsewhere in her 330-page dissertation, it is wildly inaccurate to characterize her dissertation as “marred” (i.e., ruined or spoiled) “by plagiarism.”

Except they’re using a… weird definition of marred. It’s most commonly “damaged or spoiled to a certain extent; made less perfect.” As such, even small defects (such as those described) sure would seem to count as marred. My articles are often marred by typos, but that doesn’t mean that every word is a typo. And, either way, the use of the word “marred” is, in no world, anywhere close to the standards of defamation.

Then we get to the whole “citing Wikipedia” nonsense. Ackman had argued on ExTwitter back when this first came about that at the time of Oxman’s dissertation Wikipedia was still new and there weren’t general agreements on citing it, but that’s… nonsense. On multiple levels. First off, it wasn’t that new. Wikipedia was widely known and widely used at that point. Second, even if there wasn’t agreement on how to cite Wikipedia, that did not change the simple fact that it was still very much widely considered plagiarism to copy directly from it without citation/quotation. The lack of understanding of how to cite Wikipedia is a separate issue from the question of copying without attribution.

I had thought that once a lawyer got their hands on this fight, this argument would die a sudden death, but apparently the law firm of Clare Locke has no problem pushing totally specious arguments, because that makes it in here too:

Business Insider, however, intentionally omitted that MIT’s Academic Integrity Handbook at the time Dr. Oxman wrote her dissertation in 2009 and 2010 did not address—much less require— citation to Wikipedia, which itself is a collaborative resource with no single author to whom ideas could be attributed, and which at the time of her dissertation was of relatively nascent origin. In fact, Wikipedia was so inchoate that MIT had not yet developed or published any guidance on how researchers should use Wikipedia. Only later—several years after Dr. Oxman’s dissertation was published—did MIT revise its Academic Integrity Handbook to include a prohibition on citing Wikipedia for academic work. In 2009 and 2010, when Dr. Oxman wrote her dissertation, no such prohibition existed.

Note the shift here between citing and copying without attribution. Those are two separate things that this letter seeks to conflate. Even if MIT hadn’t published policies on how to cite Wikipedia, it has zero impact on whether or not copying directly from Wikipedia might be considered plagiarism. It still was. And it’s ridiculous to suggest that people didn’t think that to be the case in 2010.

There’s a whole section complaining that BI could not possibly call out Oxman for plagiarism unless it did an “inquiry or investigation into Dr. Oxman’s mental state to support such a finding.” To which I will just say… did Bill Ackman conduct such an “inquiry or investigation into Dr. Gay’s mental state” to support the many statements he made about her alleged plagiarism?

Or do we just admit that the billionaire gets to live by different standards than he seeks to impose on others?

After BI published its initial article, Oxman posted some tweets admitting that she had failed to properly put quote marks in certain sections:

Any reasonable read of this is that Oxman is admitting to not quoting things she should have quoted, which… is plagiarism, even by the definitions that were quoted earlier in the threat letter. Thus, BI published a new article saying that she admitted to plagiarism. The threat letter is apoplectic in insisting that she didn’t admit to plagiarism, and only to omitting quotation marks, which is fucking crazy.

Shortly after the first article was published at 2:28 PM on January 4, Dr. Oxman acknowledged in a post on X that, in “four paragraphs” of her 330-page dissertation, she did not “place the subject language in quotation marks, which would be the proper approach for crediting work,” and in one sentence she paraphrased an author but inadvertently did not cite him. She apologized for these errors. She did not, however, admit to plagiarism, intentional or otherwise. Three hours and 30 minutes later, Business Insider published a follow up article falsely claiming in its inflammatory headline that “Neri Oxman admits to plagiarizing in her doctoral dissertation after BI report.”91

Business Insider knew that when it published this article that its statement was false— Dr. Oxman had not admitted to plagiarism. Business Insider read and included a link to Dr. Oxman’s post in the article, but it purposefully mischaracterized Dr. Oxman’s post in the headline creating the false impression that Dr. Oxman had admitted to intellectual theft.

I’m still amazed at the chutzpah here. I’ve read Oxman’s tweet multiple times, and it’s pretty clear that she is admitting to plagiarism, though saying it was inadvertent. But, again, (1) inadvertent plagiarism is still considered plagiarism (including by MIT) and (2) it’s the same sort of thing that Dr. Gay was accused of, which was the whole point of BI’s efforts.

There’s another whole section on all of the Jeffrey Epstein stuff which I won’t get into (Oxman had a very, very distant connection to Epstein via the MIT Media Lab where she worked, and which Epstein infamously had donated money to, though apparently unrelated to her work). But the letter (which I’ll note claims to be on behalf of Oxman and not Ackman) whines quite a bit about BI stating that Ackman had sought to “pressure” then Media Lab director Joi Ito not to name Oxman in response to a media inquiry. It also whines about BI’s claiming that the Boston Globe had “uncovered” emails between Ackman and Ito, when (according to this letter) Ackman had sent them willingly to the Boston Globe.

But, the emails he forwarded sure do look like “pressuring” Ito. I guess it depends on your definition of “pressure” but the entire point of the email was asking Joi not to name Oxman and giving a bunch of reasons why he shouldn’t. That sure sounds like it meets one of the common definitions of pressure: “the act of trying to persuade or force someone to do something.” The threat letter, instead, seems to think “pressure” must involve threats of some kind, which… is not what the word means. And, remember, the threat letter itself talks about the use of “common definitions” (quoted above).

The letter says that Business Insider “falsely” claimed that Oxman and Ackman (who again, the letter does not purport to represent) “did not dispute the facts” in the BI articles, and then points out that this is false, because… of Ackman’s silly rant about citing Wikipedia:

In just one example, at 9:57 PM on January 5, just a few hours after Business Insider published its article falsely accusing Dr. Oxman of plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources, Ackman posted on X disputing that using Wikipedia for definitions is plagiarism. He asked rhetorically, “How can one defend oneself against an accusation of plagiarizing Wikipedia … Isn’t the whole point of Wikipedia that it is a dynamic source of info that changes minute by minute based on edits and contributions from around the globe? Has anyone (other than my wife) ever been accused of plagiarism based on using Wikipedia for a definition?” 110 Among other challenges to Business Insider’s reporting, Ackman directly disputed the notion that Dr. Oxman’s inclusion of definitions from Wikipedia in her dissertation was plagiarism.

But… that’s not disputing the facts. That’s disputing the interpretation of the facts (it’s also silly).

Much of that section is just a hilarious list of Bill Ackman not refuting any of the facts to the actual reporters or editors of the piece, but reaching out to various super rich executives somewhat associated with Business Insider, who assured him they were looking into things. That is not the same thing as “disputing the facts” to the actual journalists. That’s whining to the rich in hopes they’ll smack down the poor reporters who dared to make you look silly.

There are five (five!) pages that are just screenshots of Ackman’s (again, not officially represented in the letter) WhatsApp messages to Axel Springer boss Mathias Dopfner “disputing” the stories, but basically none of what is disputed is actual provably false statements of fact. They pretty much all appear to be differences of opinion on how things were portrayed in the BI stories. That’s not defamation. And it’s not even disputing the underlying facts — which is all BI claimed.

Hilariously, the only response from Dopfner to Ackman is a short email, which does not agree to anything that Ackman claimed. It just says “Thanks for your e-mails. Very helpful input to clarify things during the investigation” and then notes that because Ackman had announced plans to sue BI, his general counsel had (correctly) told him not to communicate with Ackman anymore:

Then we get to “actual malice.” On its website, Clare Locke declares itself “the leading defamation law firm in the United States.” I guarantee you that Libby Locke knows what “actual malice” means in the context of a defamation lawsuit. And it is not “they didn’t like the plaintiff” or “they were biased against the plaintiff.” Yet, Libby Locke seems to not care what the legal definition of actual malice is in their laughably wrong section on actual malice.

Business Insider never had any interest in journalistic integrity or the truth when reporting on Dr. Oxman. From the outset, its reporting was tainted by its progressive political bias and the desire of its anti-Zionist reporters and editors to smear a prominent, Jewish advocate and his family for speaking up against former Harvard President Gay. The Business Insider employees primarily responsible for this attack have a history of unethical conduct and have publicly expressed their anti Zionist and/or purported antisemitic views.

Beyond being fucking ridiculous, it’s also got nothing to do with actual malice. Actual malice means that the statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.” Also, “reckless disregard” doesn’t mean that you were just sloppy or lazy. It means that the speaker had serious doubts about the truth of the statements but published them anyway. The Supreme Court has been quite clear that it doesn’t mean biased reporting. And it doesn’t even mean mere negligence in reporting.

For there to be actual malice, BI’s reporters would have to fundamentally know (or have very strong beliefs) that what they were publishing was false, and then publish it anyway. But, they’ve (rightly) stood by their reporting. And Ackman, repeatedly, is only complaining about their interpretation of the facts, not the underlying facts themselves.

The letter then goes on to trash the reputation of Henry Blodget, BI’s founder, who had talked to Ackman early on when Ackman was first freaking out about the stories (hilariously, Blodget suggested Ackman could write for BI at one point, and in return he gets trashed). Blodget is, of course, easy to trash. He somewhat infamously settled with the SEC for publicly pumping up dot-com era stocks, while privately trashing those stocks. Some of us still remember all that.

The letter also tries (pathetically) to trash the reputations of the reporters and editors who worked on the BI stories, including digging editor John Cook’s self-admitted story about how as a teenager in the 1980s he was suspended from high school for publishing an obnoxious underground newspaper (I too published an underground newspaper in high school, and it was also obnoxious, but also I didn’t get suspended, in part because I wrote the back page of the first issue that was an entire article about how the First Amendment works, citing numerous Supreme Court cases on why the school couldn’t take action against those of us who wrote the paper… which was, perhaps, a preview of what my life was to become).

But what does that have to do with actual malice? Fuck all! It’s just Ackman burning bridges for show — and potentially as a threat to try to convince others not to report on his wife, or he’ll trash your reputation too (come at me, Bill).

The letter then moves on to misleadingly claim that Business Insider was trying to get Oxman fired. Again, this misunderstands what seemed pretty obviously to be the point of the articles: to compare Ackman’s response to the accusations around Gay as compared to his wife. The letter makes a big deal of Insider’s reporter, Katherine Long, asking in her initial email to Ackman if he expects Oxman to lose her job (Long, at the time, mistakenly believed that Oxman was still at MIT, when she had left a few years earlier):

In context, it’s obvious why Long asked this question. Since Ackman had pushed so strongly for Gay to lose her job at Harvard, it’s a kind of obvious question for a reporter to ask about Ackman’s wife (who they thought was still at MIT) given the whole point of the exercise was to showcase Ackman’s selective outrage and differential treatment of Gay compared to his wife.

But the letter treats this as an attempt to make Oxman lose her job and seems outraged. Which is fucking hilarious given Ackman’s tirades trying to get Gay fired from her job.

Business Insider’s Coverage Of Dr. Oxman Was Motivated by Its Desire To Get Dr. Oxman Fired by MIT.

Almost no one could possibly think this is what Long was trying to do. It seems blatantly obvious that she was simply seeing if Ackman felt his wife should face the same treatment that he helped engineer for Gay.

There’s also some just incredible hubris in the letter, in that it reveals Ackman petulantly demanding in text messages to Blodget that the articles be taken down while the promised investigation on the reporting occurred (which would be an extraordinary step that would have brought Streisand Effect levels of extra attention to the claims) and Ackman seems to think that BI’s refusal to accede to his demands when Blodget promised he was “working” on the issue is somehow more proof of malice (when the more sensible, and likely accurate, reason is that BI investigated, found that the story still held, and there was no reason to take it down).

There are also about eight whole pages of the letter going on (at ridiculous length) about what an amazing, brilliant, and famous person Neri Oxman is, which is hilarious since when all this started and people pointed out to Ackman that defamation against public figures involves a high bar (that high bar being the real actual malice, not the pretend one in this letter) Ackman tried to argue she wasn’t a public figure:

So, according to Bill Ackman, she’s not a celebrity academic or a public figure, but the threat letter on her behalf has eight pages lauding all of her accomplishments, awards, public exhibitions including at top museums around the world, the description in the NY Times of how she’s “a Modern-day da Vinci” and more. So, I guess they’re not even going to try to argue that she’s not a public figure.

There’s also a ridiculous number of words describing the alleged “harm” all of this has had, failing to recognize that if Ackman hadn’t made such a big deal of all of this, the story likely would have died out after a day or two as people got a good laugh at Ackman’s hypocrisy and moved on. Instead, his continued talking about it, and now sending this letter have only guaranteed that many more people are aware of all of this. If there’s any harm (and that seems unlikely) much of it should be pinned on Ackman’s inability to let this go.

On the final page of this opus, we get the “demands.”

Axel Springer and Business Insider must mitigate the damage they have caused by correcting their libelous reporting, issuing statements setting the record straight, making a sincere and meaningful public apology to Dr. Oxman and Ackman, and creating a fund to compensate other victims of Business Insider’s libelous reporting and to discourage their inappropriate conduct in the future. (Dr. Oxman is seeking no compensation for herself to make available additional resources for other victims.) Failure to take these steps will expose Axel Springer and Business Insider to substantial legal liability and will be further evidence of actual malice directed toward my client.

This is nonsense. I’m quite sure BI’s general counsel is not worried about this. Nothing in the letter indicates anything close to the level that would be defamation. The only real question — and the likely real intent of the letter — is whether or not all the rich folks that Ackman called up and texted during this whole mess, including Dopfner, Henry Kravis, and Axel Spring board member Martin Varsavsky, decide to just go along with this to hush up the mouthy rich guy so they won’t have to deal with more of this nonsense.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that Oxman (and Ackman) have no actual defamation case here. They have a lot of noise and bluster. And sometimes that’s enough to get a publication to back down (which Clare Locke seems to want you to believe they can produce in every case). But it would be a fucking shame and an embarrassment if Axel Springer/BI caved here, and would put all of its future reporting in question by showing that they could be bullied by specious, vexatious legal threats.

In Ackman’s tweet revealing this letter, he claims that he hasn’t sued first because “people we highly respect” had told him that Axel Springer was “perhaps the strongest long-term supporter of the state of Israel of any media organization, and also an important advocate against antisemitism.” What that has to do with anything in the letter, I do not know.

In the end, this is just more censorial bullshit. It’s hilarious that Ackman presents himself as a “free speech absolutist” when he’s doing this shit to seek to pressure (as it’s commonly defined!) BI into removing these stories. It misses the entirety of the point of these articles and pretends they’re about attacking Oxman, when it’s obvious to anyone outside of Ackman’s immediate sphere that the intent was to highlight the very, very different treatment Ackman gives to the accusations against Gay and Oxman.

Indeed, this very letter demonstrates that point to a much greater level. All this letter does is call that much more attention to Ackman’s disgusting double standard. When it’s someone he doesn’t like for other reasons, he’s willing to play up the plagiarism claims and push for them to lose their job. When it’s his wife, he tries to burn down an entire media outlet.

All this letter shows is that Bill Ackman is a censorial hypocrite.

Filed Under: actual malice, bill ackman, defamation, gish gallop, henry blodget, libby locke, neri oxman, opinions, plagiarism, reporting, wtf is this i don't even
Companies: axel springer, business insider, clare locke

Indian Court Orders Reuters To Take Down Investigative Report Regarding A ‘Hack-For-Hire’ Company

from the huh,-will-you-look-at-that dept

Over the years we’ve written about plenty of “cyberespionge” companies. Some engage in spyware or surveillance ware. Others actively hack devices. Almost all of these eventually get exposed through dogged investigative reporting.

A few people reached out to point to this rather concerning Editor’s note that was posted to Reuters this week:

Reuters has temporarily removed the article “How an Indian startup hacked the world” to comply with a preliminary court order issued on Dec. 4, 2023, in a district court in New Delhi, India.

Reuters stands by its reporting and plans to appeal the decision.

The article, published Nov. 16, 2023, was based on interviews with hundreds of people, thousands of documents, and research from several cybersecurity firms.

The order was issued amid a pending lawsuit brought against Reuters in November 2022. As set forth in its court filings, Reuters disputes those claims.

I had missed the original article, now that the court has forced Reuters to take it down, it seems likely to get much more attention. You can find archives of it in multiple places. Though who knows if those will remain up. You can also find articles building on Reuters’ investigative reporting.

The basic summary of the Reuters report is that an Indian firm, Appin Software Security, has been offering what is effectively “hack for hire” services for over a decade.

Notably, Reuters reporters handed over the data they found to SentinelOne who did their own analysis of what was found, and it’s pretty damning. Notably, the SentinelOne report appears to still be online.

Appin is considered the original hack-for-hire company in India, offering an offensive security training program alongside covert hacking operations since at least 2009. Their past employees have since spread to form newer competitors and partners, evolving the Appin brand to include new names, while some have spread into cybersecurity defense industry vendors. Appin was so prolific that a surprising amount of current Indian APT activity still links back to the original Appin group of companies in one form or another. Campaigns conducted by Appin have revealed a noteworthy customer base of government organizations, and private businesses spread globally.

Our analysis and observations corroborate the June 2022 reporting from Reuters noting some of Appin’s customers tied to major litigation battles. The group has conducted hacking operations against high value individuals, governmental organizations, and other businesses involved in specific legal disputes. Appin’s hacking operations and overall organization appear at many times informal, clumsy, and technically crude; however, their operations proved highly successful for their customers, impacting world affairs with significant success.

Of course, I might never have heard about this at all if a court in New Delhi hadn’t ordered Reuters to delete the story. And it’s possible that you wouldn’t have heard about it either.

Someone should come up with a name for that sorta situation.

I will note that in the original Reuters article, they note that the company’s US legal representatives is the law firm Clare Locke, which we’ve spoken about before. They’re the lawyers who often appear to brag about how their aggressive tactics are known to get stories killed in the media. Their website literally lists all the major media outlets they’ve gone after in the past.

So I guess it’s little surprise that the firm would seek to suppress the story about them.

But the data and the report seen by SentinelOne are pretty damning.

The cybersecurity firm’s exhaustive analysis of data that Reuters journalists collected showed near-conclusive links between Appin and numerous data theft incidents. These included theft of email and other data by Appin from Pakistani and Chinese government officials. SentinelOne also found evidence of Appin carrying out defacement attacks on sites associated with the Sikh religious minority community in India and of at least one request to hack into a Gmail account belonging to a Sikh individual suspected of being a terrorist.

“The current state of the organization significantly differs from its status a decade ago,” says Tom Hegel, principal threat researcher at SentinelLabs. “The initial entity, ‘Appin,’ featured in our research, no longer exists but can be regarded as the progenitor from which several present-day hack-for-hire enterprises have emerged,” he says.

Factors such as rebranding, employee transitions, and the widespread dissemination of skills contribute to Appin being recognized as the pioneering hack-for-hire group in India, he says. Many of the company’s former employees have gone on to create similar services that are currently operational.

Reuters’ report and SentinelOne’s review have cast fresh light on the shadowy world of hack-for-hire services — a market niche that others have highlighted with some concern as well.

And the demand that the Reuters piece get removed only should draw that much attention towards Appin’s behavior.

Filed Under: espionage, hack for hire, india, reporting, streisand effect, takedown
Companies: appin, clare locke, reuters, sentinelone

Pharma Exec Trying To Dodge First Amendment By Pretending He’s Going To Sue An American In A Foreign Court

from the wrong-about-libel-and-wrong-about-this dept

People are finding cool new (probably illegal) ways to unmask people they want to sue. In this case, it’s a guy who didn’t like some things said about him. But in order to get a libel lawsuit going, the plaintiff needs to have a defendant to sue. Here’s where all the bad faith begins, as uncovered (and reported) by Paul Levy of Public Citizen.

Frederic Eshelman, a pharmaceutical magnate, resents being criticized by an anonymous gmail user who called him a “piece of shit” and urged companies to stop collaborating with Eshelman for, among other things, “abusing police resources” when he used his political influence to secure the arrest and prosecution of hunters who “corner-crossed” his hunting reserve to get from one bit of public land to another.  To move forward a defamation claim, he would have to get a subpoena to Google enforced in a California court, and those courts have protected the First Amendment right to speak anonymously by requiring plaintiffs to present complaints that state valid defamation claims, and to present evidence in support of that claim. And Eshelman’s supposed defamation claim is more than a little bit fanciful.

“Fanciful” is putting it kindly. There’s no valid defamation claim here, even if Eshelman manages to convince a court he’s not a public figure. (That’s going to be tough to claim, since he’s already made headlines at the Washington Post.) But we’re not even at that point yet. Eshelman wants to unmask the Doe he wants to sue, and he appears to be twisting the truth in hopes of keeping his subpoena to Google from being blocked.

So, instead of just filing a suit for defamation in his home state of North Carolina and domesticating a subpoena to Google in California, he went straight to the federal court there, invoking 28 U.S.C. § 1782, a procedure enacted to enable litigants in proceedings outside the United States to obtain needed discovery from US courts. Eshelman doesn’t actually have any lawsuits pending abroad – his excuse for using this procedure is that, among the recipients of the critical email was a company in India (SEE UPDATE BELOW) and a company in Germany (although as far as I can tell, the company he claims is in Germany is really in California). 

The update Levy has added to this post comes from Google — the recipient of the questionable subpoena. Google dug around a bit on 6 Degree PR’s website and discovered the CEO of the company actually lives in the Philadelphia area, which means every entity Eshelman wished to exploit to bypass the First Amendment is actually a US entity or resident. The First Amendment applies.

Eshelman’s use of this loophole to bypass First Amendment scrutiny would be problematic enough if it was his idea. But it wasn’t. As Levy notes, it was likely his lawyer’s idea.

Eshelman’s counsel, from the well-known libel litigation boutique Clare Locke, told me that he has used the section 1782 procedure several times before, always successfully. 

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean every Section 1782 action filed by this firm has ultimately involved US-based entities. But it does suggest the firm has played a little loose with the facts to acquire subpoenas to unmask litigation targets.

Fortunately, this bogus attempt to unmask a critic is likely to go nowhere. Both Public Citizen [PDF] and Google [PDF] have filed motions asking the judge to quash the illicitly obtained subpoena. Both make the same point: this is bad faith litigation wholly unsupported by the known facts. This is from Public Citizen’s motion:

On January 13, 2023, Eshelman filed an Ex Parte Application for an Order Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782 against Google LLC, seeking subpoenas to learn from Google the identity of an anonymous American citizen who criticized him in a single email. […] As grounds for the request, Eshelman purportedly intends to file two defamation actions against Doe in foreign courts, claiming that the email was sent to “two international business contacts.” Neither the application nor Eshelman’s supporting declaration alleges that Eshelman suffered any injury to his reputation in either of the two foreign countries, Germany and India.

Google’s take:

The Application appears to be an attempt to circumvent the policies of the United States. The U.S. has a policy of protecting speech and public debate under the First Amendment. See, e.g., Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 829 (1975) (“The policy of the First Amendment favors dissemination of information and opinion”). There is evidence demonstrating that this matter involves a U.S. citizen or resident who sent an email to U.S. recipients, implicating the First Amendment. The Anonymous Speaker’s statement is plainly an opinion based on disclosed facts. This statement would not be actionable in U.S. courts, evidencing an intent to evade the protections of the First Amendment.

[…]

Applicant does not appear to have any basis to bring claims under Indian or German law, and he has not shown that his possible claims are actionable or that foreign proceedings are even viable. Instead, this appears to be a purely domestic dispute without a clear connection to foreign countries.

There’s basically no chance this ends up going Eshelman’s way. These are shady tactics in service of a libel lawsuit Eshelman has zero chance of winning in a US court. Hopefully, the court will quash the subpoena and force Eshelman to play by the (US) rules. And, if he has to do that, hopefully he’ll realize moving forward with a lawsuit is only going to net him another loss. If Eshelman’s smart (and there’s nothing here that suggests that he is), he’ll quit while he’s only this far behind.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, frederic eshelman, gmail, section 1782, subpoena
Companies: clare locke, google

Stifling Free Speech Is Now A Core Plank Of The Republican Platform

from the free-speech-was-good-until-the-media-started-reporting-on-what-we-do dept

We just recently wrote about the reasons why Congress should move, right now, to codify the NYT v. Sullivan case into law. While considered mostly settled and uncontroversial, in the last few years there have been increasing attacks on this ruling, which has been one of the most important rulings in preserving and protecting free speech over the last half century. And some (Clarence Thomas) on the Supreme Court support dismantling it, which is why we think it’s so important for Congress to codify it into law.

In that post, we noted that the idea of chipping away at it first started to gain steam when Justice Thomas pushed for dismantling NYT v. Sullivan, which would massively set back free speech by making it way easier for the rich and powerful to file bogus SLAPP suits to silence criticism or revealing news stories.

And for all the talk from Republicans pretending to support free speech lately, their rapid embrace of this plan to undermine NYT v. Sullivan is a massive concern. We noted that Republican politicians Devin Nunes and Sarah Palin have both been trying to overturn NYT v. Sullivan with some of their ridiculous defamation lawsuits.

Now it appears that one of the most popular Republican politicians, whom many are assuming is the front runner for the GOP’s 2024 Presidential campaign, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is making it clear that he’d get rid of the Sullivan standard if he could.

During the panel discussion on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis accused the press of using Sullivan as a shield to intentionally “smear” politicians and said the precedent discouraged people from running for office. Would the current Supreme Court, he asked the panelists, be “receptive” to revisiting the case?

This wasn’t just some off-the-cuff thing by DeSantis either. It appears that DeSantis’ crew set up an entire event to agitate for killing Sullivan and making it easier for the rich and powerful to silence people through the mere threat of a ruinous lawsuit.

Of course, there was some hilarity, which the NY Times article highlighted, in that one of the panelists invited to help push for the overturning of Sullivan is Libby Locke, partner at Clare Locke, a firm who specializes in silencing the press (and brags about it constantly) often with very questionable lawsuits. It’s no surprise that Locke would want to overturn Sullivan… but as the NY Times article notes, her firm actually has taken one of the largest high profile defamation cases that… might actually be legitimate: Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News.

So, apparently, Republicans are conflicted:

Also on the panel was Libby Locke, a well-known media defamation lawyer who has pushed for judicial review of Sullivan, as well as state-level legislation that could make it easier for plaintiffs to bring and win libel cases.

Ms. Locke’s presence alongside Mr. DeSantis drew rebukes from many on the right, particularly Trump supporters, who noted that one of her firm’s clients is Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine company that has been the target of unfounded accusations of election fraud from the former president’s backers.

Ms. Locke’s firm filed a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News on Dominion’s behalf. Fox has invoked Sullivan as part of its defense. Last month, the Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch was deposed in the case, which is set to go to trial in April.

Of course, what this should do is help Republicans realize that NYT v. Sullivan protects all of us, and that its removal would lead to all sorts of media, across the spectrum, facing a flood of vexatious lawsuits. But it will be especially true for Fox News and others like OAN and Newsmax (not to mention Breitbart, Daily Wire, Joe Rogan) etc. — news orgs that, let’s say, are not as well known for their fact checking.

The simple fact is that the NYT v. Sullivan standard protects everyone‘s free speech, especially when people are speaking out against the most powerful people in society. It has been one of the most important levers for protecting free speech and making sure that the 1st Amendment actually matters.

If Republicans truly believed in free speech, they would continue supporting it (as they did until just recently). Instead, as part of their ongoing culture war nonsense, because they see that it also protects news orgs that they have decided are pure evil, like CNN, the NY Times, Washington Post, and MSNBC, they have decided to set it on fire, without caring how it will do just as much damage to their own speech, and that of their many favored news organizations as well.

Once again, what we’re learning is that the modern GOP does not believe in principles like free speech. They are motivated solely by what will cause the most pain for their enemies, no matter what damage they do to themselves in the interim. It’s pathetic.

That the party that is banning books, silencing teachers and other government employees, is now attacking a key 1st Amendment decision shouldn’t be surprising, but people should call it out whenever any Republicans pretends that their party supports free speech.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, free speech, gop, libby locke, nyt v. sullivan, ron desantis, slapp, slapp suits
Companies: clare locke

No, Filing A Defamation Lawsuit Is Never The Only Way You Can Clear Your Name

from the do-people-not-realize-this dept

The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple (who, for reasons I’ve never understood, always refers to himself as “The Erik Wemple Blog,” which is really annoying for readers), had a truly bizarre article recently about Devin Nunes’ defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which Wemple suggests that maybe this Nunes lawsuit is “halfway decent.” It is not. As we discussed in our own post about the lawsuit, this one may be his worst one yet and has little chance of surviving.

Still, what I found most bizarre about the Wemple piece, is that includes this truly ridiculous paragraph:

There are those who believe that a courtroom is the appropriate place to feud about alleged dairy secrets. ?Kudos to Congressman Nunes for utilizing the court system to vindicate his reputation,? wrote defamation attorney Elizabeth Locke of Clare Locke LLP in an email (before the filing of the CNN suit). ?In the United States, a defamation action that seeks monetary damages is the only remedy available to those who have been defamed. We should be celebrating, not disparaging, those who use the courts to resolve their disputes.?

If you recognize the name of that lawyer, Elizabeth Locke, or her firm, Clare Locke, it might be because we wrote about them last year, in highlighting how the firm and Elizabeth in particular have truly bizarre views on free speech, support making libel laws more stringent, and the firm specializes in intimidating journalists and news organizations to kill stories about important and wealthy people.

Even leaving that aside, Locke’s quote is just so out of touch with reality. A defamation lawsuit is “the only remedy” to those who have been defamed? Bullshit. How about just proving the defamer wrong? We live in an age when anyone can publish, and so if someone has said something false about you, you don’t need to run to court and make use of the power of the state to try to correct the record. You can do so yourself.

Defamation law was originally designed in a time when there really was little recourse if, say, a newspaper defamed you. They controlled the media channel, and an ordinary person would have little direct recourse to present their side of the story. But that’s not true any more thanks to the internet. On the internet, if someone says something false about you, rather than going through an expensive and wasteful defamation lawsuit and tying up the court system, you can just go on the internet and tell your side of the story. If you do it well (and people can help you do this for a mere fraction of what a pricey defamation lawyer will cost you), you can have a much more effective “recourse” to the defamation. You get your side out there much faster and more thoroughly, and the court of public opinion can determine who is right. If you present your case compellingly, whoever defamed you will end up having their own credibility and reputation hurt.

All of that works entirely without resorting to the court system and the frequently abused system of defamation law, which Nunes has been using to intimidate journalists, political rivals, and critics. The fact that a newspaper like the Washington Post would quote Locke without pointing out how what’s she saying is utter nonsense is disappointing. Given Locke’s history of trying to threaten various news sources, it’s a shame that the Washington Post would even consider her a valid subject for a quote — at least without qualifying the statement.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, devin nunes, elizabeth locke, free speech, marketplace of ideas
Companies: clare locke

Breitbart Snowflakes Threaten To Sue People Who Have Asked Advertisers To Stop Advertising On Breitbart

from the free-speech-hypocrites dept

Earlier this year, we wrote a story about the boutique law firm Clare Locke that appeared to specialize in intimidating news orgs with legal threats to try to get them to kill stories. One of the firm’s partner, Elizabeth Locke, flat out says that she thinks there’s too much press freedom:

“… the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of freedom of the press.”

As we pointed out in that article, if you’re a journalist hiring such a firm — and a bunch of the #MeToo journalists have done so — to try to stifle stories from other publications, it would suggest you’re an incredible hypocrite. Journalists thrive on the First Amendment. If you’re a journalist threatening to stifle others’ free speech, you’re a hypocrite.

Enter Breitbart. Because, of course it would be Breitbart. According to a Daily Beast article, Breitbart has hired Clare Locke to threaten a group of people who have been advocating for advertisers to drop their ads from Breitbart. I should say up front, that I think all of these attempts to push advertisers to drop ads is actually pretty silly. It’s mostly symbolic and rarely has a real economic impact. It’s just a silly game of tit for tat.

But, according to the letter written by Clare Locke’s other partner, Thomas Clare, asking advertisers to stop advertising could be “unfair, fraudulent and deceptive.” From the letter:

I write on behalf of my client, Breitbart News Network, LLC. As you of course know, Breitbart has been the target of a months-long smear campaign by the online activist group ?Sleeping Giants.? It has recently been revealed that you are a founder and leader of this group. My client is considering potential legal action against you, and we therefore demand that you preserve and retain certain documents in your possession that may be relevant to potential civil claims.

These include potential claims concerning unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices intended to cause Breitbart economic harm. We believe that Sleeping Giants has sought to deceive the public and, in particular, purchasers of online advertising, by making false, deceptive, and disparaging claims about Breitbart and the news content it publishes ? including, among other things, accusing Breitbart of distributing ?anti-Semitic? propaganda, of promoting ?white supremacy,? and of being a ?neo-Nazi propaganda? website. Sleeping Giants has directed these and similar deceptive and misleading statements to companies that purportedly purchase advertisements appearing on Breitbart?s website ? and has encouraged its members and others to do the same ? in an effort to drive advertising revenue away from Breitbart, and to solicit donations and sell Sleeping Giants? branded merchandise.

The letter goes on to angrily deny that it is any of those things (while also plugging the fact that the White House Chief of Staff reads it). It then goes on to concoct quite a fascinating conspiracy theory, arguing that “Sleeping Giants” is really designed for “commercial interests” because many of its founders apparently work in the ad tech business. How that creates any commercial advantage isn’t exactly clear at all. It just implies that this somehow is a fraudulent practice.

Although, as stated above, the group and its organizers have long attempted to conduct these tortious actions behind a veil of anonymity, a recently-published article identified you, Matt Rivitz, as the founder of Sleeping Giants and the acknowledged proprietor of its social media accounts. That same article noted that you have long worked in online marketing and advertising. Notably, after your identity was involuntarily disclosed through investigative reporting, you claimed that you hid your identity and role with Sleeping Giants as an act of humility in order to ?keep this about the mission rather than the individuals involved.? But your past, conflicting explanations for hiding your identity tell a different story. For example, in January 2017, an individual identified only as a Sleeping Giants ?founder? ? who cited biographical details specific to you ? told the New York Times that Sleeping Giants was conducting its campaign targeting Breitbart?s advertisers anonymously because ?some members of the group work in the digital-media industry.? Similarly, in March 2018, a Sleeping Giants ?spokesman? acknowledged to GQ that ?the people behind Sleeping Giants? elected to remain anonymous because they ?work in marketing-related fields? and their targeting of online advertisers ?might be perceived as creating some kind of conflict of interest.? These frank admissions, made at a time when you and your supporters in the ad tech world expected their identities to remain a secret, are extremely revealing and hint at a hidden and improper commercial motivation behind Sleeping Giants? deceptive practices targeting Breitbart. It appears that the reason you and your backers did not want their identities known was because it would have revealed their shared economic interests and deceptive practices.

These unfair, fraudulent, and deceptive practices may give rise to civil liability both for you and the members of the online advertising and ad tech worlds that you coordinated with. These potential claims include, but certainly are not limited to, claims relating to violation of California?s Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code Sections 17200, et seq.), fraud, violation of the Lanham Act, tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.

I’m trying to figure out what exactly the “shared economic interests” are in getting companies to stop advertising on a site? It seems that a much more logical (and obvious) explanation for why the Sleeping Giants folks wanted to remain anonymous was because working for an ad tech company while supporting advertising boycotts actually goes against their economic interests, and might make their own employers kinda pissed off. But, this letter assumes the exact opposite, without any actual explanation.

It then asks Rivitz to preserve all sorts of stuff, including communications with an insanely long list of individuals, organizations and companies — including a bunch of Breitbart critics.

This seems like a pretty blatant intimidation tactic. And while the letter, hilariously, claims that this threat is really “about Sleeping Giants? desire to stifle speech that does not adhere to its narrow liberal politics,” it’s hard to see how you can claim that when the whole point of the letter appears to be to stifle the speech of people asking for advertising boycotts.

And, of course, asking for advertising boycotts is pretty common on both sides of the traditional political divide. In fact, it’s not difficult at all to find a whole host of Breitbart articles happily reporting on campaigns to pull ads from news orgs deemed “liberal.” Separately, I’ll note that it’s fascinating to see a subtle shift in tone when Breitbart reports on similar campaigns targeted at Breitbart allies. Those stories suddenly talk about “liberal outrage,” “liberal fascism,” and “corporate warfare attacks from the left.” Oddly, those earlier stories about removing ads from CNN, MSNBC, TBS and NBC don’t have any of that kind of language. Indeed, they seem to focus on whatever “outrageous” thing done on those stations that lead to pressure to remove ads. Must be a coincidence, huh?

So, to be clear: ad boycotts are overrated, but if people want to do them, it is their First Amendment protected speech to call for such boycotts, no matter what the reason, no matter what their politics and no matter how silly. Threatening those who exercise their First Amendment speech in such a way with a lawsuit, however, is not supporting free speech. It is bullying censorial intimidation tactics, and Breitbart should be ashamed (if such a thing were possible). The site regularly likes to whine about liberals and universities stifling free speech, but apparently has no problem at all trying to stifle the speech of people who ask its own advertisers to stop advertising on the platform.

Either way, all this red team, blue team bullshit is getting pretty annoying. Silly people who identify as either left or right wing (which is a stupid designation anyway) will do stupid things. And silly people on the other side will generalize and stereotype based on those things, while doing the exact same things themselves. But, seriously, stop freaking out about one “side” doing the exact same thing your side is doing and then coming up with all sorts of silly rationalizations for why it’s okay when your side does it, but a horrific violation of the law when the other side does it.

Filed Under: advertising, boycotts, chilling effects, first amendment, free speech, intimidation, sleeping giants, threats
Companies: breitbart, clare locke