Taylor Lorenz is at it again. The job of the “technology and online culture” reporter for the Washington Post seems to consist entirely of targeted harassment of individuals and, occasionally, organizations. Now, in an article co-bylined with Elizabeth Dwoskin and Peter Jamison (“Twitter account Libs of TikTok blamed for harassment of children’s hospitals”), she seeks to weaponize hate mail to get the speech of the Libs of TikTok Twitter account suppressed. This is asymmetrical information warfare and should be treated as such.
Is free speech too dangerous? Should we allow reporting on the conduct of individuals or institutions? The rules should be the same no matter who is doing the reporting. The situation that Lorenz is writing about is a common enough one in journalism, whether it is practiced by prestige outlets or by rougher-edged citizen journalists on blogs or social media:
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