The tl;dr version of critiquing articles about #GamerGate

Over the weekend Newsweek published some interesting stats about the tweets using the #GamerGate hashtag, and who they were aimed at. I covered it for Ampp3d.

You can imagine what happened next on Twitter.

But what I was especially interested in was the way the responses broke down into three main camps.

People would tell us that this was only a fraction of the 2 million tweets on the #GamerGate hashtag so far. A point addressed in the article.

People would say why have you just looked at tweets to Zoe Quinn. You should also look at the tweets aimed at a site like Kotaku or to Brianna Wu? Both figures that were included in the article.

And most especially, people repeatedly said after seeing Ampp3d’s tweets on the subject, that we should do more research and specifically directed us to this article.

An article that was linked to and quoted from in the Ampp3d piece.

One guy has angrily tweeted us the link on four separate occasions without ever noticing that it was referenced in the article he is complaining about.

And I eventually asked someone else who sent me the link directly about it last night.

It’s almost as if – and I can scarcely even bring myself to write these words – #GamerGaters critique the accuracy of articles and tweet corrections to them without even reading the article.

And, that, well…sounds…unethical?