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posted by Fnord666 on Monday April 30 2018, @10:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-internet-is-forever dept.

Joy Reid, an MSNBC host, apologized in December for "homophobic content" on a "now-defunct blog". This month, a Twitter user found similar material by using Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, although robots.txt is now in effect. This time around, Reid blamed hackers (archive) for inserting these posts into the blog, before admitting that it could not be proven (archive) that the blog had been hacked/manipulated:

Joy Reid, the MSNBC host who accused hackers of inserting homophobic posts into her now-defunct blog, said on Saturday that while she continued to deny having written the offensive language, security experts could not conclusively say her blog was breached. "I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things, because they are completely alien to me," she said on her morning show, "AM Joy." "But I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past, why some people don't believe me." She hired a cybersecurity expert to see if her former blog had been manipulated, she said, but "the reality is, they have not been able to prove it."

The posts containing the offensive language, which Mediaite wrote about on Monday, said that "most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing" and that "a lot of heterosexuals, especially men, find the idea of homosexual sex to be ... well ... gross." They also allegedly showed Ms. Reid arguing against legalized gay marriage and criticizing commentators who supported it, including Rachel Maddow, who is now one of Ms. Reid's colleagues at MSNBC.

The Internet Archive responded to claims that its database might have been manipulated:

This past December, Reid's lawyers contacted us, asking to have archives of the blog (blog.reidreport.com) taken down, stating that "fraudulent" posts were "inserted into legitimate content" in our archives of the blog. Her attorneys stated that they didn't know if the alleged insertion happened on the original site or with our archives (the point at which the manipulation is to have occurred, according to Reid, is still unclear to us).

When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions. At least some of the examples of allegedly fraudulent posts provided to us had been archived at different dates and by different entities.

We let Reid's lawyers know that the information provided was not sufficient for us to verify claims of manipulation. Consequently, and due to Reid's being a journalist (a very high-profile one, at that) and the journalistic nature of the blog archives, we declined to take down the archives. We were clear that we would welcome and consider any further information that they could provide us to support their claims.

Also at CNN.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @12:08PM (5 children)

    By the study it seems just as likely a hard wired physiological reaction as an opinion. Chemical composition of saliva isn't something controlled at a conscious level, so it's either unconsciously mental or purely physical.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday April 30 2018, @01:22PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @01:22PM (#673708)

    From the journal article abstract:

    This result held across the full sample, regardless of individual levels of prejudice.

    that would imply strictly biological response, like insulin levels an hour after carb dosing not being tremendously affected by your politics or the books you read.

    The odds of a whole bunch of random brains all along the spectrum having a linear unconscious response smells fishy to me. That's the kind of input-output response you expect with biochemical physical stuff like "eat salt / pee salt" kidney response or whatever. A typical unconscious mental response is the seemingly random response due to uncanny valley issues with common circus clowns, some people just can't tolerate them. Santa is another good random response, just freaks out X% of little kids makes them cry. Dogs, thats another good phobia vs maternal reaction vs male dominance response that's surprisingly random.

    If its deeply enough unconsciously mental I guess that IS purely physical, in another way of looking at it, unless you're stuck with souls and dualism and vitalism and all that non-scientific stuff.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @01:39PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 30 2018, @01:39PM (#673716)

    Chemical composition of saliva isn't something controlled at a conscious level...

    You know what α-amylase [wikipedia.org] does in one saliva? Doesn't the thought of a nice sponge cake with a creamy chocolate ganache let you mouth watering?

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 30 2018, @01:47PM (1 child)

      That would be consciously invoking an unconsciously controlled response. Like the response caused by deliberately thinking about some Donald/Hillary Rule #34; you only indirectly control the physiological results in either your stomach or your crotch, depending on how twisted you are.

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      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 30 2018, @05:32PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 30 2018, @05:32PM (#673828) Journal

        I couldn't decide whether to mod that funny or insightful, and I can't upmod and unmodded comment...so, Thanks, that comment was a combination of funny and insightful.

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