I thought I was reading an apology letter from one ignorant... or rather, from one unthinking person-in-the-public-sphere-who-is-very-sorry to another unthinking person-in-the-public sphere-who-is-very-sorry, and I was sort of touched because it reminded me of that one time in middle school when I thought it would be sooooo funny to be ironic about Columbine (and got rightfully suspended for it). But after clicking the link to Max Read's article I realized that this is actually an article about Gamergate. This is a fake apology for making an ironic tweet with the foregone conclusion that anyone that participates in Gamergate is a bad person, and leaves no room for talking about the original subject matter at all.

I believe this is a leaf node in a directed graph of self-legitimizing Gawker articles ultimately designed to rebrand the "Zoe Quinn Five Guys" incident as "Gamergate" and shift the focus off of Zoe Quinn and her colleagues and onto "gamers", whoever the hell they are. And that's fine by me, Gawker, Zoe, Sam, Max, Anita, Phil Fish and the rest of them should be allowed to say anything they like.

So if you'll indulge my off-topic wanderings, I want to talk about the original subject matter, because it still bothers me after all these months: why did moderators across a bunch of sites actively participate in censoring the Five Guys story in its early days? Do Zoe and Gawker have a bunch of ties to these moderators? Should I be worried about a secret, incestuous network of journalists and moderators that no longer just post stories in their favor, but actively suppress stories that cast them in a negative light? Who curates the conversations I participate in?

Sam Biddle and his colleagues at Gawker do not have my sympathy. I saw the banning and post deletion as it happened, and I'm mad about it. Maybe he should apologize for that instead.