Quinn Norton
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534
In 2018, The New York Times announced Norton as its new lead opinion writer covering technology. The hire drew sharp criticism focused on tweets Norton wrote between 2013 and 2017, particularly use of slurs referring to gay people and her defense of her friendship with Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker and white supremacist known as weev. Later that day, she and the Times announced she would not join the paper after all; the Times said it had been unaware of her comments. Calling the episode an example of "context collapse", and describing herself as a member of the LGBT community, Norton said her use of slurs had been specific to the context of engaging with the language of hackers She also said her friendship with Auernheimer (with whom she was no longer in contact) had been an effort to discourage his racism.[29] The incident led to debate over the ethics of free speech in the hacking community at large as well as Times social media policy.[1]