Interesting take. You’ve certainly got me thinking about it a bit more.
I won’t try to interpret the author’s intent because that’s for him to do and I don’t want to speak on his behalf. But I do think he’s right about the tone of the response to the error being wildly wrong. News orgs should be dispassionate and I don’t get a sense that they were at all.
I think Meta fucks up. I think mass media is terrible at understanding what they’re reporting about. I think conservatives in particular see boogie men everywhere. Anyway, I’d read Nick’s piece earlier in the day and that had been my only exposure to the story, so I chose to link to it because to me it was a reasonable response.