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| ▲ | misnome 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here. It’s not optional, but wasn’t followed, with zero repercussions. Sounds optional. | | |
| ▲ | throw3e98 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Reading between the lines, this is corporate-speak for "this is a terminable offense for the employees involved." It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process. | | |
| ▲ | g947o 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | They might as well wait till business hours to sort things out before publishing a statement. Nobody needs to see such hollow corpo speak on a Sunday. | | |
| ▲ | maxbond 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, admitting fault as soon as possible makes a big difference. It's essential to restoring credibility. If they had waited until Monday the thread would be filled with comments criticizing them for waiting that long. | | |
| ▲ | icegreentea2 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, but the problem is that by not making it clear that additional actions may be coming, they're barely restoring credibility at all, because the current course of action (pulling the article and saying sorry) is like the bare minimal required to avoid being outright liars - a far cry from being credible journalists. All they've done is leave piles of readers (including Ars subscribers) going "wtf". If they felt the need to post something in a hurry on the weekend, then the message should acknowledge that, and acknowledge that "investigation continues" or something like that | | |
| ▲ | maxbond an hour ago | parent [-] | | You don't announce that you're firing people or putting them on a PIP or something. Not only is it gauche but it makes it seem like you're not taking any accountability and putting it all in the employees involved. I assume their AI policy is fine and that the issue was it wasn't implemented/enforced, and I'm not sure what they can do about that other than discipline the people involved and reiterate the policy to everyone else. What would you have liked to see them announce? | | |
| ▲ | icegreentea2 an hour ago | parent [-] | | They just needed to expand "At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident." into "We are still investigating, however at this time, this appears to be an isolated incident". No additional details required. And yes, it looks like Ars is still investigating (bluesky post by one of the authors of the retracted article) https://bsky.app/profile/kyleor.land/post/3mewdlloe7s2j |
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| ▲ | lapcat 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It's a holiday weekend in the US so they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process. That's not how it works. It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door. Sometimes they just snail mail the employee's personal possessions from their desk. Moreover, Ars Technica publishes articles every day. Aside from this editor's note, they published one article today and three articles yesterday. So "holiday weekend" is practically irrelevant in this case. | | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | danaris an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > That's not how it works. Some places. > It's standard op nowadays to lock out terminated employees before they even walk in the door. Some places. You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done. It's standard op nowadays to acknowledge that your experiences are not universal, and that different organizations operate differently. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat an hour ago | parent [-] | | > You're speaking very authoritatively about what's "standard", in a way that strongly implies you think this is either the way absolutely everyone does it, or the way it should be done. Neither. I just meant it's common. The comment I replied to said, "they may need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process." I think the commonality of the practice shows that Ars Technica doesn't need to wait for office staff to return to begin the process, if office staff is even gone in the first place (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people. Does Ars Technica have a "policy" to only fire people on weekdays? I doubt it. Imagine reading that in the employee handbook. Besides, President's Day is not a holiday that businesses necessarily close for. Indeed, many retailers are open and have specific President's Day sales. | | |
| ▲ | trivialities777 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > (again, Ars Technica appears to be open for business today). There's certainly no legal reason why they'd need to wait to fire people. They normally aren't, they probably write the stories on the weekdays and prepare them to automatically publish over the weekend, with only a skeletal staff to moderate and repair the website. Legal, HR, and other office staff probably only work weekdays, or are contracted out to external firms. Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response. | | |
| ▲ | lapcat 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Their CEO posted a quick note on their forums the other day about this which implied they don't normally work on holidays and it would take until Tuesday for a response. Judging from today's editors note, if things need to happen more quickly, then they do. |
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| ▲ | add-sub-mul-div 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's embarrassing for them to put out such a boilerplate "apology" but even more embarrassing to take it at its word. It's such a cliche that they should have apologized in a human enough way that it didn't sound like the apology was AI generated as well. It's one way they could have earned back a small bit of credibility. |
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| ▲ | anonymous908213 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Greatly appreciate this direct statement clarifying your standards, and yet another reason that I hope Ars can remain a strong example of quality journalism in a world where that is becoming hard to find > Kudos to ARS for catching this and very publicly stating it. > Thank you for upholding your journalistic standards. And a note to our current administration in DC - this is what transparency looks like. > Thank you for upholding the standards of journalism we appreciate at ars! > Thank you for your clarity and integrity on your correction. I am a long time reader and ardent supporter of Ars for exactly these reasons. Trust is so rare but also the bedrock of civilization. Thank you for taking it seriously in the age of mass produced lies. > I like the decisive editorial action. No BS, just high human standards of integrity. That's another reason to stick with ARS over news feeds. There is some criticism, but there is also quite a lot of incredible glazing. | | |
| ▲ | icegreentea2 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, the initial comments are pretty glazey, but go to the second and third pages of comments (ars default sorts by time). I'll pull some quotes: > If there is a thread for redundant comments, I think this is the one. I, too, will want to see substantially more followup here, ideally this week. My subscription is at stake. > I know Aurich said that a statement would be coming next week, due to the weekend and a public holiday, so I appreciate that a first statement came earlier. [...] Personally, I would expect Ars to not work with the authors in the future > (from Jim Salter, a former writer at Ars) That's good to hear. But frankly, this is still the kind of "isolated incident" that should be considered an immediate firing offense. > Echoing others that I’m waiting to see if Ars properly and publicly reckons with what happened here before I hit the “cancel subscription” button | |
| ▲ | arduanika 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No reason to trust that the comment section is any more genuine than the deleted fake article. If an Ars employee used genAI to astroturf these comments, they clearly would not be fired for it or even called out by name. | | |
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