My experience with Sarah Jeong, Jason Koebler, and Vice Magazine
As far as I can tell from reading her Medium article as well as Vice&#x27;s article and some miscellaneous Reddit threads (a.k.a. take this with the appropriate grain of salt) the timeline goes something like this:<p>1. Koebler begins a correspondence with Wu and interviews her in person for an article he&#x27;s writing. Wu makes it clear that one condition for her cooperation is not to talk about her relationship status or sexual orientation.<p>2. After interviewing her, but before publishing the article, Koebler sends Wu an email asking whether she&#x27;d like to comment on a a very public and ugly Reddit&#x2F;4chan conspiracy theory that she was getting help from her husband? and that not all of her work was her own. Wu becomes fearful that this means the article will touch on the restricted topics that she specifically requested that Vice would not report on. Wu and Koebler have a back and forth where Wu tries to impress upon Vice just how damaging these topics can be to her in the PRC, especially given that Vice articles are often translated, where the government could severely damage her, causing both physical and non-physical harm. Wu asks to see the article before it is published. Koebler refuses, stating it is SOP not to share articles before publication.<p>3. Wu threatens to use her Twitter followers to cause Vice reputational harm and force Koebler out of his job. Koebler stops responding to Wu&#x27;s emails.<p>4. Before the article is published, Wu decides to take action. She takes to Twitter to call out Vice and Koebler. Separately she doxes Koebler in a video shared with her Patreon followers. Vice&#x27;s lawyers have YouTube remove the video and Patreon close Wu&#x27;s account. Patreon is a large source of revenue for Wu which forces Wu to search for alternative sources of income within China, which force her into additional compromises without fully recovering her previous already modest level of income.<p>5. The Vice article is published. Although most of it focuses on Wu as a Maker, Koebler includes a couple of paragraphs outlining his interpretation of what happened with the post-interview situation. This presumably touches on the things Wu did not want talked about in the article. This is the only mention in a fairly long article about anything to do with Wu&#x27;s relationship status. It is unclear whether the original draft of the article was like this or whether the scope of how much mention of relationship stuff was changed in as a result of the back and forth.<p>6. Wu responds with this Medium article, which she feels only reveals a fraction of what has happened because she cannot talk about the rest due to the PRC government.