80 ms·

I Am Deleting the Blog

• Impassionata 6y ago
  I wrote a letter. https://theimpassionata.wordpress.com/2020/06/23/to-whom-it-may-be-concerned-at-the-new-york-times-an-open-letter/ https://theimpassionata.wordpress.com/2020/06/23/to-whom-it-...
• ewtwo2r 6y ago
  Good riddance [redacted].
• raxxorrax 6y ago
  I hope not. He was always on my list of people to troll at some point. Current outrage would make that stale however. Still, good reading for what it's worth!
• perditus 6y ago
  This was in a piece specifically about the blog that was going to be positive, which makes this all the more inexplicable.
  • ve55 6y ago
    A lot of political extremists hate people like Scott, and it has caused him a lot of trouble in the past. This is why anonymity is more important now than ever, because just writing a scientific blog about interesting topics can make you the target of witch hunts designed to ruin your life and kill you. It's hard to describe how bad these things can get out of nowhere without having been through some of it or seeing it yourself. But, having your real name attached to posts that are against certain political topics or narrives, can be borderline-lethal in 2020, and I can't blame him for what he's chosen to do. There's been plenty of scary situations and chilling effects in the past, and they're obviously only getting worse recently. He's scared, and rightfully so.
    • uniqueid 6y ago
      Is there any public figure on the internet who doesn't receive death threats? You could maintain a blog for photos of puppies, and some lunatic would have a deadly-serious problem with it. The web isn't working. The saner and wiser a person is, the less likely they are to contribute content. The design of the web selects for morons with neither any reputation to lose, nor foresight to worry.
      • jakeogh 6y ago
        A close friend and I have run a blog about 09/11/2001 since ~2009, timewise it's easily one of the longest in existance (~2004 911blogger.com/faq), and some odd stuff has happened, but never a death threat. The previous owner as far as I know has the same experience. There is a vid in my profile if anyone is curious. Confounding factors are the subject is self-insulating and it breaks traditional party lines. Also, people who experienced that Tuesday are exceptionally good at avoiding it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571449 ... I certinally was.
      • nullc 6y ago
        It's extremely random. There are plenty of public figures that don't get that stuff and whom don't get what the fuss it about and plenty of other otherwise indistinguishable people that get piles of it. > The saner and wiser a person is, the less likely they are to contribute content. The design of the web selects for morons with neither any reputation to lose, nor foresight to worry. Absolutely.
    • femiagbabiaka 6y ago
      The paranoia coming from conservatives right now over this is almost hilarious if not sad. There are no squads going around beating up bloggers, they are beating up protestors though. Never miss an opportunity to play victim! And btw — nothing scientific about race science.
    • bobmaxup 6y ago
      Is there an author in the United States who has been killed in 2020? EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_American_writers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_American_wri... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_American_journalists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_American...
  • im3w1l 6y ago
    Can such assurances really be trusted?
    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      No. There is a slightly higher chance with NYT than say TMZ but still. I've read many people saying the journalist told them it was for a fluff piece or positive article.
  • solveit 6y ago
    I see no particular reason to believe that the piece was going to be positive.
  • himinlomax 6y ago
    Journalists obviously never tell their subject their piece is going to be negative. In fact, as far as I can tell from the few people I know who have been in that situation, they appear to routinely say the opposite.
    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      No doubt, it would be just as interesting of an article without his real name.
      • thinkingemote 6y ago
        In the News, to normal people reading an article, it's more interesting to hear about about a real person with a real life, with a real family, home etc than a pseudonym with no background. It sucks but that is how the News usually works, and how people like reading stories about other humans. Hopefully in this case they might see the damage that this might do.
        • himinlomax 6y ago
          I'm pretty sure Scott would have been more keen to share details about his personal life if his pseudonymity had been guaranteed; I know I personally would have in his stead.
      • Lio 6y ago
        ...and who would know if they'd just used his pseudonym? It's not like a large % of the NYT readers are going to know straight away that no one exists with the name used in the article deviate from it at all?
  • lmm 6y ago
    Journalists almost always tell the people they're interviewing that the piece will be positive. It means nothing.
  • lazyjones 6y ago
    Why are you so sure about this? Because the journalist who wanted to disclose his name said so? I've also been interviewed once by a magazine that assured me (and the marketing folks) that it would be a positive piece when in fact it was a hit piece apparently initiated by a major advertiser.
  • damontal 6y ago
    mostly positive
  • hackissimo123 6y ago
    It becomes a lot more explicable if you assume that the journalist was lying and the piece was not going to be positive.
• seven4 6y ago
  Edit: I'm 50:50 on whether they take the negative press hit of publishing this anyway. If they publish without name included - everyone still finds out the name of the "flippant" writer. If they don't it just concedes that their attitude was wrong to begin with. They are in a tough spot now - hard to feel sorry for them given the asympathetic position they assumed. ~~~ SlateStarCodex shutting down in direct response to the hubris/disregard of one NYT reporter hungry for a story. This parasitic appetite for airtime come-what-may approach to journalism needs to be checked. There's no reason the writer couldn't leave the real full name out of the article once requested and with legitimate concern aired by the person hes naming. I'm glad "Scott" is taking this stance if only for the fact that it puts the onus of hard/difficult decisions back on the NYT - i.e. why despite legitimate concerns are your writers comfortable doxxing people? The key highlight for me - "When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he just said that me having enemies was going to be part of the story. He added that “I have enemies too”. Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer. (though out of respect for his concerns, I am avoiding giving his name here.) After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks."
  • makomk 6y ago
    It's not just the New York Times either. Take a look at what happened to the NightJack blog in the UK (and in that case, it turned out that the Times had illegally hacked the blogger's email to get their information and then lied about it in court to dodge an injunction).
    • mijoharas 6y ago
      Wow, had not read about that!
  • RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
    > why despite legitimate concerns are your writers comfortable doxxing people? This is especially important to ask when a big complaint of the NYT staff about the Tom Cotton is editorial was that it was directly endangering their safety. Apparently the NYT does not have the same concern about other’s safety.
• sxp 6y ago
  > He told me it would be a mostly positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech, and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation. It probably would have been a very nice article. Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me. ... When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he just said that me having enemies was going to be part of the story. He added that “I have enemies too”. Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer. Wow. This is similar to Vice reporting on Naomi Wu and threatening to dox her while claiming to write a positive article about her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article
  • foota 6y ago
    Wow, hadn't heard that linked story before, what garbage for vice to act that way.
    • robk 6y ago
      Vice is the epitome of garbage so no surprise there
      • ooobit2 6y ago
        NowThis and that entire network of brands collaborating on radical politics. There has to be way to make this more obvious to people. I've watched VICE and NowThis alone radicalize perfectly decent people. I knew someone for over 10 years who was always highly observant, emotional but self-aware, would drop what he was doing to sit in my car with me in a dark parking lot and let me go through the wild ride of emotions I have about my ex. He knew we wouldn't ever be a thing. I sat with him one evening in a dark parking lot and let him go through his emotions on us just not falling into place, the existential crisis of seeing something desired within reach and being able to touch but not keep it. He's the person who taught me every second is independent from the next, that a bad feeling toward someone can be isolated, compartmentalized, only exist in a moment in the front of our minds. That if we're aware of that independence, we can turn off an emotion so quickly we hardly notice the effort. And today, I could be thoroughly enraged by someone's comment online, turn off my screen and be in a great mood before I even realize the transition occurred. A few years back, he started watching the VICE documentaries at work during his free time. And then he started watching the clips and cuts made by Buzzfeed and channels like NowThis. Then he started sharing them on social media. And the clips got more and more incendiary. It's like VICE news could do a 30-minute special on LGBT in Brazil, but he'd watch and re-watch the few seconds of Bolsonaro saying gays are bad and that's just his view. And then he'd repost the clips. And then he started posting them on people's timelines to make sure their friends saw the clips and his comments too. And it eventually spiraled out into him posting clips of Nazi propaganda and these detailed comparisons to the Trump administration. And then he got verbally abusive toward his family. My last conversation with him was me asking why he posted what read like a manifesto that white people, Nazis/KKK, cisgender people should be put into training programs and if they refused or didn't show rapid progress then they deserved to be dropped off somewhere remote and left there. I thought he was joking, but he said he was serious. He ranted for almost an hour at me, even after I closed Facebook. I got 13 or so message notifications on my phone. Just to clarify, his posts on Facebook and Twitter included his belief that 'cisnormativity' is a product of 'white mafias', that we're all accomplices and own a blood libel for the deaths of the poor around the world, that ISIS wasn't homophobic and only executed cishomos, that he'd force cishomos to have sexual intercourse with trans people even if it didn't fix them. Just insane, insane shit. These sites are the gateway drugs to violence. For all the talk about violent video games and movies, these indie (corporate) 'news' channels are the real danger.
• bonchicbongenre 6y ago
  Somewhat related — does anyone know an easier way to cancel one's NYT subscription than going through the rigmarole of waiting for/talking with multiple "customer service" reps? After NYT's all-too-credulous parroting of Barr's mischaracherization of the Mueller report I tried to cancel mine, but spent over an hour on the phone with no progress, and gave it up. I should have persisted — I don't want to give them my money any more, and this is all the more reason to cancel. At the same time, I don't have the time or patience to subject myself to phoning them again in the near future. Surely there must be an easier way? Certainly there should be.
  • Sebguer 6y ago
    Switch to a Paypal method of payment, and then remove the card you chose to add. Your NYT subscription will fail to renew.
    • edoceo 6y ago
      And you can cancel a PP based sub directly in PP, no waiting. NYT would get a we hook notice.
  • jaredtn 6y ago
    Credit card chargebacks really hurt, and are the appropriate response to a situation where they continue to take your money.
    • Sebguer 6y ago
      This is the more punitive action, and I will note that a credit card company will side with you as long as you made a decent effort at canceling. I considered it when I waited 3 hours for a chat without a response, but ended up doing the PayPal way because it required less dealing with a bank in this time of Covid-19 delays.
    • londons_explore 6y ago
      Most companies pay about $15 per chargeback (independent of if they win or not). Especially for low value things, even a few percent chargebacks will be really costly. Source:. Was selling $1 physical items online... The business was profitable until a few percent of packages started going missing in the mail, and rather than contacting us, customers would just chargeback, forcing me to double the price of the service.
• TMWNN 6y ago
  Reminiscent of CNN threatening the creator of a GIF that Trump retweeted with doxing if he didn't behave: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/5/15922224/cnn-blackmail-doxxing-hanassholesolo-reddit-wrestling-gif https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/7/5/15922224/cnn-blackmail-...
• jakeogh 6y ago
  I dont think the NYT is what it purports to be. Still run by the BBC's Mark Thompson I see. https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://imgur.com/VUdcIou https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg
• chillacy 6y ago
  This is a tragedy, Scott Alexander is such a thoughtful writer. I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed, like doctor or lawyer. Right now we all recognize how important journalism is but journalists themselves run the gamut from ethical investigative journalists to clickbait manufacturers. Imagine if journalists also had to adhere to the equivalent of attorney client privilege for sources.
  • jakeogh 6y ago
    A journalism license? I struggle to come up with a worse solution... No.
  • ericzawo 6y ago
    I 100% agree and talked about this a lot in j school. Would love to see some type of society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners (the only real framework that possibly stands to live past the inevitable calls about its legitimacy from the News Corp -owned bodies of media, honestly) and ideally backed by the biggest news media companies in the world. I would love to see a further membership based element where members of the public and journalists could critique reportage and possible ethical lapses all publicly, adhering to principles set by the society itself. Honestly I think it's time journalists take back some of the responsibility and importance of their roles that's been stripped by colleague and company malpractice (and the side effects of a business model twisted inside out in rapid succession), as many DO recognize their importance. But like politics any real "talk" of media quickly devolves into sports-like tribalism and never gets beyond hating the 'players' not the game itself.
    • rebuilder 6y ago
      You don't have a self-governing body for journalism?
      • tschwimmer 6y ago
        There's this, but I don't see much discussion about it: https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp
• heavyset_go 6y ago
  I'd take what Scott Alexander has to say about this with a grain of salt. He is a bit obsessed with people who criticize him on the internet, going as far as to write about his borderline paranoid suspicions behind people making fun of him online in several of his blog posts. Some people can't handle the judgment that comes with being a somewhat public figure, and Scott is one of them.
  • Kutta 6y ago
    Absolutely fucking no.
  • Smaug123 6y ago
    > He is a bit obsessed with people who criticize him on the internet… … is he? I think you've been reading a different blog to me; I have read all of SlateStarCodex. Can you give some examples?
  • femiagbabiaka 6y ago
    Exactly this. And the community plays into it. They imagine themselves to be Galileo —- persecuted by the state and society just for telling the truth.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    He's most likely aware that he can't handle that level of judgment. Lots of people can't! That's why he's elected not to become a public figure, and why it's so toxic for the NYT to try and make him one against his will.
  • himinlomax 6y ago
    What an utterly bizarre claim.
• maxwelljoslyn 6y ago
  I clicked on this expecting it to be Scott Alexander blogging about somebody else getting doxxed. I flipped like a boat when I realized what I was reading. Holy shit! I was just in SSC's Open Thread a few hours ago opening comment permalinks in tabs to respond to them. That NYT writer should be fired. I hope Scott recovers soon. SSC is my favorite place on the Web.
  • rachelshu 6y ago
    I don't think, given Scott's recent defense of Steve Hsu, that he'd really want people fired for doing ill-advised things, even if they could be reasonably construed as dangerous, unless harm was demonstrated. It's still disappointing that the journalist is making this choice.
    • stjohnswarts 6y ago
      I think it's just in general dangerous and disruptive for the entire world to know who you are online. They will find you and threaten you and everyone you love. Sure only 1% of them are actually dangerous but it only takes one bullet or knife in the back from a psychotic person to end everything. Or just someone doing some crazy made up nonsense like pizzagate. The loonies are out there.
    • maxwelljoslyn 6y ago
      Point taken regarding the Hsu case. Maybe I jumped the gun there. I don't want it to be the norm for any journalistic organ/employee to function/perform the way this one did. There are many ways to accomplish adoption of that norm, including (but certainly not limited to) firing people who do that.
    • AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      There is a clear division to be made between firing someone for what they do on their own time vs. actions they take in the course of their employment for you. When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• peteretep 6y ago
  I have increasingly lost faith in NYT as my faith in WashPo has increased
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Meh they also lost my respect with how they treated Snowden. Killed my account for digital subscription after this editorial. He revealed a far bigger evil than anything he ever did to get the info or what was revealed. They know if he comes back to the USA he will go to prison for life without parole. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesnt-deserve-a-pardon/2016/09/17/ec04d448-7c2e-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/edward-snowden-doesn...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• exanimo_sai 6y ago
  This is incredibly disheartening, I will miss the weekly reads - journalists position themselves as fighting the good fight for the truth. But increasingly just seems that in a world where there relevance is dropping fast they are willing to do anything for clicks. If you want to be the arbiters of truth perhaps start with a solid base of ethics.
• Meekro 6y ago
  Remember when Newsweek found this random guy named Dorian Nakamoto and told the world that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin? They were almost certainly wrong and the guy got harassed for years.
• matt_f 6y ago
  If you're pissed off by this, as I am, here's how the author politely suggests that you direct your support: > There is no comments section for this post. The appropriate comments section is the feedback page of the New York Times. You may also want to email the New York Times technology editor Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com, contact her on Twitter at @puiwingtam, or phone the New York Times at 844-NYTNEWS > (please be polite – I don’t know if Ms. Tam was personally involved in this decision, and whoever is stuck answering feedback forms definitely wasn’t. Remember that you are representing me and the SSC community, and I will be very sad if you are a jerk to anybody. Please just explain the situation and ask them to stop doxxing random bloggers for clicks.)
  • davesque 6y ago
    Note that the author also requests that people be polite in doing so. Everyone please model the behavior you want to see in this reporter. Update: Thanks OP for updating to include a note about this.
  • iagovar 6y ago
    Sorry for the unrelated question, but I'm not from the US and I'm curious, what does this mean? 844-NYTNEWS Do landlines phones have letters in the US? Is it pressing a number several times? And also mentioning that I'm grateful for SSC to exist. I rarely comment but it's a refreshing community.
    • kuschku 6y ago
      1 | 2 | 3 | ABC | DEF -----|-----|----- 4 | 5 | 6 GHI | JKL | MNO -----|-----|----- 7 | 8 | 9 PQRS | TUV | WXYZ -----|-----|----- * | 0 | # | + | Now 0800-INFO becomes 0800-4636 — you just press the key corresponding to the letter once.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • 6y ago
• justin 6y ago
  I've cancelled my NY Times subscription and encourage everyone here to do the same.
  • ovi256 6y ago
    Please contact them and clearly state why you are doing it. Enough people contacting them can change the editor's mind.
    • zrkrlc 6y ago
      Seconding this. A threat is only credible if known.
    • dave84 6y ago
      You HAVE to contact them to cancel, there's no way to do it without talking to a human that I can find.
      • jmkerr 6y ago
        Been there. To cancel the New York Times digital subscription, send an email to help@nytimes.com. You'll get a special offer, ignore that and you'll be unsubscribed.
  • teraku 6y ago
    Did the same and told them why
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • digianarchist 6y ago
    Of all the things the NYT has done over the last couple of decades this is a strange one to cancel your subscription over.
• tschwimmer 6y ago
  Edit: Looks like they updated the link and title. Thanks! @dang, you might consider somehow incorporating the name of the blog into the title. I almost didn't click on this because "his blog" is quite generic. Slate Star Codex is frequently posted on HN and is fairly notable.
  • dang 6y ago
    It's displayed after the title though. There's even a site guideline about this: "If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • tschwimmer 6y ago
      The link and title was changed. It was originally another site and a worse title.
      • dang 6y ago
        The link hasn't changed. The submitted title was "NYT threatens to dox blogger who often gets death threats. He deletes his blog", which broke the site guideline against editorializing, so we changed it.
        • tschwimmer 6y ago
          Thanks for clarifying!
• rtz12 6y ago
  This might be a controversial opinion, but I have just one word to describe most journalists nowadays: "scum". They seek exciting and sensationalist stories without regard for any consequences in the real world. They twist their stories to manipulate the readers towards their viewpoint. But worst of all, they have the gall to present themselves as the upholders of morality and the paragons of democracy. Any criticism you may have for these people is deemed "anti-democratic", which in most peoples heads already is a trigger word for "evil", no amount of arguments can sway them.
  • burntoutfire 6y ago
    There's a novel by Balzac (forgot which one), which shows the behind-the-scenes of mid-XIX century Paris journalism. It's essentially the same as you described, but also, the journalists don't flaunt their views, but rather their masters' (the owners of the papers).
    • TMWNN 6y ago
      Such has a long tradition in France, and lasted well into the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism#Modern_France:_1871-1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism#M...
    • dredmorbius 6y ago
      The nature of news, gossip, and propaganda predates 19th century France. The Roman god Fama, attendant to Jupiter, trumpeting his words, heedless of truth or falsity: "At the world's centre lies a place between the lands and seas and regions of the sky, the limits of the threefold universe, whence all things everywhere, however far, are scanned and watched, and every voice and word reaches its listening ears. Here Fama (Rumour) dwells her chosen home set on the highest peak constructed with a thousand apertures and countless entrances and never a door. It's open night and day and built throughout of echoing bronze; it all reverberates, repeating voices, doubling what it hears. Inside, no peace, no silence anywhere, and yet no noise, but muted murmurings like waves one hears of some far-distant sea, or like a last late rumbling thunder-roll, when Juppiter [Zeus] has made the rain-clouds crash. Crowds throng its halls, a lightweight populace that comes and goes, and rumours everywhere, thousands, false mixed with true, roam to and fro, and words flit by phrases all confused. Some pour their tattle into idle ears, some pass on what they've gathered, and as each gossip adds something new the story grows. Here is Credulitas (Credulity), here reckless Error (Error), groundless Laetitia (Delight), Susurri (Whispers) of unknown source, sudden Seditio (Sedition), overwhelming Timores (Fears). All that goes on in heaven or sea or land Fama (Rumour) observes and scours the whole wide world. Now she had brought the news [to Troy] that ships from Greece were on their way with valiant warriors: not unforeseen the hostile force appears." -- Ovid, Metamorphoses 12. 39 ff
• josh2600 6y ago
  Slate Star Codex is one of the most interesting blogs on the internet. If we doxx this voice, who do we doxx next?
  • fourcommas 6y ago
    Anyone who publishes content not approved by the regime. These blogs recklessly publishing free thoughts are sowing discord and disharmony, and even when they publish reasonable ideas, they only create a precedent for dangerous people to publish dangerous ideas. Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, and they should be regulated in the same way we regulated access to dangerous weapons.
• shalmanese 6y ago
  I had no idea The Last Psychiatrist stopped writing because he got doxxed. I enjoyed his blog and was sad it stopped updating.
  • norswap 6y ago
    psst: https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/ https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/ Might or might not be the same guy, but it's close enough to not matter.
    • arkades 6y ago
      I love you.
    • recursive 6y ago
      Trying to make sense of this reminds me of reading monad tutorials. To dense with references (self- and otherwise) and analogy for me to make sense of. It's definitely possible I'm just not smart enough to understand this, but how does one go about learning to comprehend stuff like this?
      • Psyladine 6y ago
        If you want to read Russian literature, you don't have to be Russian ('but it wouldn't hurt!'), you have to want to read Russian literature, i.e. learn the language and have sufficient interest in the material to seek out enough context to understand it. Unless of course you simply want to be seen as the type of person who reads Russian literature, in which case thelastpsychiatrist.com is probably better for reading...
      • norswap 6y ago
        The style is one of the appeal (without being the totality of it - I definitely would like the straigth version as well). Personally for instance, I read "Shame & Society" once, found it fascinating, but couldn't really pinpoint what I had learned, so I re-read it and took notes, as well as try to summarize and articulate the big points and how they related.
• wskinner 6y ago
  Edit: this comment was not constructive.
  • Smaug123 6y ago
    This behaviour is very much not going to help. One of the many reasons doxxing is bad is because "speculation" is so often wrong. Anyway, it rather diminishes the force of an argument that the NYT is in the wrong if a mob publishes someone's name in a spasm of outrage over the fact that the NYT wanted to publish someone's name.
    • wskinner 6y ago
      It’s not really the same. One person is a pseudonymous blogger who requested to keep their pseudonimity. The other is a reporter for the best known newspaper in the world. But I agree it’s a bad look, I have removed the comment.
• lazyjones 6y ago
  I thought he was smarter than this. Of course talking to the press would put him in the spotlight and the press doesn't like pseudonyms (it might be accused of making it all up). Just suppress the narcissistic instincts and don't talk to the press if you like your privacy. As for the NYT's actions... It's as good as many other occasions to rethink one's attitude towards that paper.
• qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
  When did "investigative journalism" become "doxxing"? Terminal internet brain.
  • Smaug123 6y ago
    Why is Scott's real name even relevant to the article? He has good reason not to want it published, and his real name is of no interest to most readers given that his entire public online presence is in the name "Scott Alexander". Knowing that Lewis Carroll was really called Charles Dodgson may be a piece of trivia that makes you win a pub quiz one day, and it may be of niche interest to someone who reads one of his mathematical papers and realises that the author is the same as the author of Alice, but Scott's real name won't even win you a pub quiz and has similarly niche publications that are not of remotely general interest.
    • qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
      If I was a writer I would not suddenly start using internet psuedonyms just because it sounds like a real person's name, much in the same manner putting down Groyper1488 in my article is ridiculous.
      • Smaug123 6y ago
        Really? "A popular blogger who writes under the name Scott Alexander…" isn't really any worse than "A popular streamer who uses the handle Day9" or something.
        • qq11ww22ee33 6y ago
          "Popular streamer <xyz> who uses the screen name <zyx>..."
      • xyzzyz 6y ago
        Scott Alexander is actually his real first and middle name. All he’s asking is for them to not use his real last name. Apparently, that’s beyond them, they simply must do it regardless of the cost to him and of how little relevance it has.
• Uhrheber 6y ago
  I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly stopped reading newspapers, and don't trust anything they write, without checking the facts.
  • zoul 6y ago
    That was bad journalism. Would you also stop trusting all doctors after meeting a bad one?
    • asparuh_kostov 6y ago
      The bar to be a doctor is higher than having internet and a blog.
      • neonate 6y ago
        Not that much higher.
        • dijit 6y ago
          One of these things requires 20 minutes and €5. The other requires more than half a decade of intense education, internships, tests and further verifications. (Not to mention thousands of Euros in education costs, if not state sponsored) I cannot think of a larger difference in terms of barrier to entry.
          • dazag 6y ago
            You don't seem to understand, that under capitalism, mostly any work or study has to be backed up with money. Doctors don't become doctors a different way a reporter becomes one. What they teach you in universities it's not whay you end up doing. A reporter doesn't mean to do bad when they start studying, neither does a doctor. The results are totally different.
• tschwimmer 6y ago
  A few relevant articles about how the New York Times claims to treat sources: [0]: "The Times sometimes agrees not to identify people who provide information for our articles...Sources often fear for their jobs or business relationships — sometimes even for their safety." [1] "If compassion or the unavoidable conditions of reporting require shielding an identity, the preferred solution is to omit the name and explain the omission. (That situation might arise, for example, in an interview conducted inside a hospital or a school governed by privacy rules.) " [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/reader-center/how-the-times-uses-anonymous-sources.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/reader-center/how-the-tim... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/guidelines-on-integrity.html https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/guidelines-on-in...
  • pvg 6y ago
    He wasn't really a source or a person in a hospital or elsewhere governed by privacy rules. As he says himself, his online persona is very lightly pseudonymous. It sucks that he's inconvenienced in this way but it's hard to see how these articles are relevant to his situation. If anyone actually wished him harm, they could probably find his name just as the reporter did before ever talking to him.
    • tschwimmer 6y ago
      I don't agree that he wasn't a source. He seems to be the subject of the article, but he made contact with the reporter and claimed to explain his concerns which were not heeded. I've seen the New York Times omit the names of refugees who face persecution in their home countries. (I'm trying to find an example, but it's surprisingly hard to search for.) This is a different case, but I think it's broadly comparable.
      • pvg 6y ago
        I replied to these concerns at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611034 [so we don't keep two parallel threads of the same going]
    • 6y ago
• alexashka 6y ago
  This is a very smart and calculated move on his behalf. One that is surely unexpected by the scumbag reporter. I predict the reporter will be forced to back off, he'll keep his job and go on shitting on other people's lives for a living, but SSC gets to keeps his privacy, for a while longer.
• Havoc 6y ago
  Amateur hour over at NYT. What happened to the whole protect your source journalism ethos there?
  • cameldrv 6y ago
    The NYT's institutional values died when A.G. Sulzberger became publisher at the beginning of 2018.
    • barry-cotter 6y ago
      The NYT published Walter Duranty’s denials of the Ukrainian Holocaust, and other warmed over Soviet propaganda. They were full on in their support for the Iraq war. Far less has changed about them than about your knowledge of them.
      • dredmorbius 6y ago
        Whilst true[1], that's history wholly irrelevant to the pressent story. The Times has explored and admitted its error.[2] ________________________________ Notes: 1. Generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor 2. One of numerous articles: "Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30's, Consultant Says" (2003) https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-pulitzer-from-30-s-consultant-says.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-puli...
        • throwaway29102 6y ago
          An apology and some pro-forma introspection doesn't render its past deeds irrelevant. This is part of a pattern, and it persists to this day.
    • stevenjohns 6y ago
      In 2015 their columnists were arguing for arming ISIS as a ‘homegrown Sunni resistance’ and the “last Sunni bulwark” against Iran[0]. That’s in the print edition too. It’s not like their ethos were suddenly made worse in 2018 with Sulzberger. As a bonus, that same columnist argued for arming a Kurdish-Shiite anti-Sunni militia in 2005 and fawning over a civil war. He’s got three Pulitzer Prizes. The cream of the crop. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-day.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-...
• tomp 6y ago
  Has anyone considered this is fake? After Steve Hsu was cancelled a few days ago due to the Twitter mob wilfully misinterpreting his words, I reqd a comment somewhere saying “Scott Alexander is next” (which could make sense, as he’s posted “wrong” opinions on his blog before). Maybe the NYT story is just a cover, or maybe the article wouldn’t be that “positive”...
  • Smaug123 6y ago
    I don't believe Scott would lie like that in that situation. Sure, it's a judgement call on his character; but I really do not think this is a likely thing we'd see from him if your scenario were the case.
  • Lewton 6y ago
    The journalist writing the NYT story have been in contact with several SSC commenters And I believe (not 100%) it started before the Hsu story
  • lazyjones 6y ago
    Have you considered that the NYT reporter might be a fan of this cancel culture?
  • dri_ft 6y ago
    A number of commenters mentioned over the last week or so that a journalist from the NYT had contacted them for interviews regarding SSC, so I believe it's real.
• paublyrne 6y ago
  > my patients – who run the gamut from far-left anarchists to far-right gun nuts This strikes me as an off way for a mental health professional to publicly refer to his patients, even anonymously ...
  • oh_sigh 6y ago
    "gun nut" isn't an insult to gun nuts.
    • slowmotiony 6y ago
      neither is "anarchists" to anarchists. Not sure what's the point OP is making
    • paublyrne 6y ago
      Yes I suppose that's true.
• forgingahead 6y ago
  Never trust a journalist - they are not in it to educate or inform, but rather for their own self-interest and celebrity.
  • jaspax 6y ago
    All Journalists Are Bastards (In precisely the same sense as All Cops Are Bastards, namely that they have a job which purports to be in the public interest, but which is highly distorted by a bunch of societal factors and mostly winds up serving powerful interests. Any given interaction with a journalist/cop has a chance of going badly, and if it does go badly you can be damn sure that you're going to the one that suffers, while the cop/journalist gets away with it.)
    • SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      I actually think there's quite a strong parallel. Both are necessary to the proper functioning of a society in small amounts, and large amounts of either go hand-in-hand with societal dysfunction.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• npstr 6y ago
  Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.
  • the-dude 6y ago
    Gell-mann Amnesia : https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
    • mratsim 6y ago
      I'm surprised they don't even get the show business right, I thought many publications were owned or actually in the show business and so they would have many subject matter experts available.
      • the-dude 6y ago
        The have long found out, it does not matter.
    • mattkrause 6y ago
      This always bugs me, because “science” is a giant spectrum of fields from astronomy to zoology. Nobody knows even a small portion of it, and yet we expect a few journalists to cover all of it, often on tight deadlines[0]. Politics is probably closer to many journalists’ backgrounds, and it changes slower—-last week’s background helps with this week’s scandal too. [0] The impetus for most articles is usually the publication of a new paper, but this always seems weird because it’s really more of a hook: papers are almost always incremental progress on a problem and most of the article ends up being background and context anyway.
      • arkades 6y ago
• natrik 6y ago
  Any thoughts on the importance of deleting the blog when various backups such as archive.org exist?
  • snet0 6y ago
    There's a difference between "Scott, who blogs at slatestarcodex.com" and "Scott, who used to blog before we threatened him, and now can be found only on archive sources".
• ghj 6y ago
  Am I the only one who is reading this as Scott flexing on NYT and that there's nothing to be sad about? > After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks. So his blog will be offline for a bit but it is clearly not permanent (if everything goes as planned). Great move and probably will gain him even more clout within the rationalist community.
• jwilber 6y ago
  I’ve seen a lot of criticism for the NYT as of late, and, sadly, it’s almost all been warranted upon inspection. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad. Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    This is why the NYT is going to blink. If they doxx this guy, then this becomes a huge grassroots story about how they are "fake news media" that doesn't uphold journalism ethics standards. (Even more so if the article is a negative hit piece w/ politicized overtones, as some people are - rightly or wrongly - speculating here. People _will_ stand up for him over his views, however controversial in some places.) He made the right call here; shutting the blog down and stating his concerns so clearly was the way to get everyone involved to face the issue.
    • thinkingemote 6y ago
      Lets be honest here. This will be a big story here in Hacker News for a few days, then we will get on with our lives. It will not spread out from that. This is ironically how the News works. It's new - novel, interesting, unique, temporary. We will stand up for Scott - but it won't really change anything, and it will be temporary. It's naive to think that what we find important for a bit will have any impact on the real world and real lives. Especially as this is literally what the News does and has done for a hundred or so years.
      • zozbot234 6y ago
        Perhaps. But this is also the kind of story that can go far beyond the HN niche, especially given how it can align with current political views. It depends whether they do publish the article, and what it's like.
        • thinkingemote 6y ago
• Fiveplus 6y ago
  Seeing all this negative press about NYT (their website's weird trackers) and spotting increasingly more propaganda articles in their editorial section in the recent past, I am now going to stop my NYT subscription. The last thing they deserve is my money.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • manuform 6y ago
    Same here, I'm trying to cancel now and they actually don't have a one click to stop the subscription.
    • flak48 6y ago
      Other comments on this thread are suggesting switching the mode of payment to PayPal which let's you cancel instantly. Or credit card chargebacks if you can document that you exhausted reasonable efforts to ask NYT to cancel the subscription
      • foofoo4u 6y ago
        You can also use privacy.com to create virtual credit cards that'll allow you to block transactions.
  • baryphonic 6y ago
    I gave up on them years ago when I noticed so much editorialization outside of their opinion section. Their news has become opinion; their opinion has become propaganda.
• oh_sigh 6y ago
  What exactly does naming him fully add to the article? Is there any journalistic reason to do it? The only way I could see it possibly being relevant is if Scott is a heavyweight in his field or is famous or well known for some other non blogging reason. But that doesn't appear to be the case if he lives with 10 roommates and is fearful of being fired from his job.
• saltedonion 6y ago
  Can someone tell this person that this site is probably still on way back machine? And he or she should request it to be removed.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    OP is quite aware of this, and it probably doesn't matter that much. He's made his point anyway.
  • noodlenotes 6y ago
    Scott didn't delete his blog to remove all traces of it from the internet. He deleted it so that if the NYT publishes the article, they'll be forced to include the story of how they threatened to doxx him. Can't publish an article about a blog that doesn't exist without talking about why it's gone.
• beshrkayali 6y ago
  This is exactly why people are losing faith in journalists and the media in general. NYT has been going downhill for a while now so this is not surprising. It's not the doxxing itself, but it's the hypocrisy. I'm willing to bet that the same person would not hesitate to call out anyone else of a differing opinion (especially politically) on how wrong doxxing is.
• throwaway713 6y ago
  I have become increasingly frustrated with the NYT's reporting practices. They are very hypocritical about criticizing tech while continuing to advertise heavily on the same services they criticize to promote their journalism. A lot of what they publish nowadays is often "technically correct" but misleading to the point of being dangerous. That, combined with the philosophy of the younger journalists working there to refuse having any contrasting opinions published (I say this as someone under 30), and it's clear that the NYT feeds off of bipartisan hatred and conflict in order to make money. It's astounding that the same practices they criticize others of they engage in themselves. The nation is becoming ever more deeply polarized, and I put much of the blame on the NYT and similar publications.
  • radomysisky 6y ago
    The NYT should be seen as a tech company. The New York Times Company is a multibillion dollar multinational. One can argue that its monetisation has improved even as its audience has narrowed. It’s not neutral. A direct competitor is not a neutral arbiter. $NYT is one of the hottest tech stocks this year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-05-28/five-things-you-need-to-know-to-start-your-day?sref=vuYGislZ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-05-28/five-t... > One that's doing phenomenally well is the New York Times itself. It's well known that many big tech companies (or at least their shares) are booming amid the Covid crisis. But so far this year, the NYT is doing better than names like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Of the tech megacaps, only Amazon is doing better. If it hasn't been clear before, it should be obvious to everyone now that the NYT is a tech company and a tech stock. It benefits from network effects and accelerating economies of scale like any other tech company. It's booming in the podcast space. It's got popular apps for cooking and games. It's even rolling out its own proprietary platform for online ad targeting next year, cutting off third-party players.
  • rorykoehler 6y ago
    It's Fox News for psuedo-intellectuals. My mother is a subscriber so I read a bit and it is absolutely atrociously biased and blatantly misleading in a similar way to how Fox News operate. The main difference is NYT add a minor sheen of intellectual language over the top to try obfuscate it.
• CanyonFern 6y ago
  2020 is the year that poaches all good things!
• tlear 6y ago
  I think it is more likely they are going after him over his support for Steve Hsu.
• thinkingemote 6y ago
  It doesn't take too much imagination to see how easy it would be to write a hit piece. Scott writes eloquently and in depth, but the news is not about either of those things. Scott has written a few times about problematic issues which have surfaced in recent months and it would be very easy to write "some people say that Scott is ${label}" with just a bit of superficial quotes. Today's climate of online mob justice in partnership with click bait news would not go well for Scott at all.
  • jychang 6y ago
    Scott is the type of individual where literally any side of a political debate can write a hit piece with some quotes, because he considers ALL the sides of a debate. Unfortunately, that's a rare trait these days.
    • lliamander 6y ago
      I don't think I've seen anyone right-of-center have anything really bad to say about Scott. I doubt any of those outlets (Breitbart, etc.) would want to do that to him. This may itself be reason for some people to distrust Scott, except that he's probably done more to bring people to a moderate or left-of-center position on some topics than all the people shouting "racist!" combined.
      • wutbrodo 6y ago
        I think this is just because the right is on the cultural defensive right now. Most people are really bad people; they don't process liberal principles intended to protect the powerless (on any dimension) as anything but a hollow tool, to be used when they're being protected and ignored (to the extent possible) when they want to crush their enemies. That is to say, those who are culturally out of power _need_ to act relatively civilized, because civilization is the only thing that protects them, while those that dominate norm-shaping are free to act as the monsters they truly are. It's no coincidence that so much of the left has started pretending that caring about free speech is only ever a tactical decision to protect unforgivable rightwing views: if you're the kind of morally hollow creature that can't conceive of holding a principle, you also can't conceive of anyone else holding one. (Not incidentally, this is why Scott is so often tarred as alt-right or alt-right-adjacent, despite being pretty firmly on the left). In the GWB years of an ascendant cultural right, Scott would have likely faced the same threats from the right as he does from the left, over different issues.
• radomysisky 6y ago
  If you haven't read it, I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup (archive link required now): https://web.archive.org/web/20200419232247/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200419232247/https://slatestar...
• bodono 6y ago
  Scott is such a clear and important voice today. I really hope the NYT sees their error and corrects it, with apology to Scott, asap and Scott comes back online.
• Tinyyy 6y ago
  I’m not trying to dox the author, but I just want to point out that he blogged about his own name on SCC(in 2019 no less), which is quite counterproductive if he wanted his last name private. https://archive.vn/d9HrI https://archive.vn/d9HrI Edit: The linked blog post was still live prior to the site takedown, so I’m assuming it’s acceptable to link to an archive of it.
  • jychang 6y ago
    You can easily find Scott's last name in multiple places. He makes a point though, being able to dig out his last name is very different from publishing it in the New York Times.
    • zozbot234 6y ago
      He was also concerned about people finding his blog starting from his name, mostly for reasons having to do with his work. He even mentions this in his post. People are saying that he didn't do a good job of protecting his privacy anyway - that's quite wrong, dude knows what he's doing.
    • numlock86 6y ago
      > being able to dig out his last name is very different from publishing it in the New York Times It's on Wikipedia. How's that "digging out"?
      • atroche 6y ago
        I can't see it on Wikipedia. Do you have a link?
        • numlock86 6y ago
          While I think it's complete bogus, I will respect the author's demand of staying pseudonymous and not post a direct link. But check the history of a certain article if you really need to look it up.
• zrkrlc 6y ago
  With this, the recent executive order suspending temporary work visas, the cancellation of Robert Hanson and Steve Hsu, the recession... Not a great time to be part of the grey tribe right now.
• scottytrue 6y ago
  I never trust the papers especially,or I am choosy on the news also you have to investigate and get the Truth always
• afarrell 6y ago
  This blog and its insights into the workings of the human brain has been a great source of comfort to me and helped me get past several places in my life that I was stuck.
• scottytrue 6y ago
  I never believe the newspaper and hard to trust the TV news you have to investigate and get the Truth always,they all want headlines and ratings, so always check it out before you believe
  • flr03 6y ago
    Truth with a capital "T" is a myth. If you ever think you've found it then you've lost your way.
• johan_larson 6y ago
  I'm sorry Scott has decided to shut down his blog. He posted many interesting things over the years, and the community of commenters that clustered in the blog's open threads was usually a joy to deal with. I was part of that for years. I'm sorry to see it go. That said, this decision to shut down the blog looks like an overreaction to me. Scott seems to think that he should be able to be both a prominent online pundit, on the one hand, and completely anonymous, on the other. That just isn't realistic. If you're someone who matters, people are going to want to know who you are. And there are people who make it their business to uncover such information. A part of being famous is a certain level of unwelcome attention. It's not just the good and kind that pay attention to you. It's the weird and threatening too. This should not be news to anybody. It seems to me Scott got his first brush with real fame (in the form of an article by a top newspaper), and discovered that even a modest helping of it was was more than he was willing to deal with. Goodbye SSC. It was good while it lasted.
  • dgellow 6y ago
    As Scott wrote in his post, there is a difference between being somewhat-anonymous (people who want to uncover his name will effectively do it) and having his full name shared publicly in one of the biggest newspapers.
  • zrkrlc 6y ago
    It wasn’t an overreaction given that it’s happened to him before. And people absolutely called his clinic to try and get him fired.
  • ImaCake 6y ago
    It doesn't seem like an overreaction when he states that he fears for his life and the welfare of his patients. He seems to say that when faced with being doxxed, his choice is to keep the blog and threaten things he cares deeply about, or hide the blog and thus protect those things. Clearly he has decided there are things more important to him than the blog.
  • Lewton 6y ago
    How is it an overreaction if the NYC was trying to make him famous and he didn't want to be (real-name) famous? Isn't shutting down his blog the only appropriate action then?
• zrkrlc 6y ago
  Saying that this is merely an “amateur mistake” or “bureaucratic oversight” is naïve. See Scott’s response on Reddit: https://imgur.com/PlXBJZI https://imgur.com/PlXBJZI
• pwer259 6y ago
  The hook-nosed kike’s name is (((Scott Alexander [redacted]))). ALL hook noses are fair game. Wish I could dox the (((NYT))) jewrnalist, too.
• noobermin 6y ago
  Personally not a fan of ssc but this does seem unfair. I guess I had the impression most reporters respect when someone wants to remain anonymous, why doxx the fellow?
• choeger 6y ago
  GDPR for the win. In Europe you could demand to be deleted from all databases at the time. You could demand them not to disclose any personal information without your consent. If they do regardless (and newspapers tend to think they are above data protection issues sometimes) you could sue them. They might have to pay enormous sums for deliberately not complying. I don't think that you would pocket that money, but you would have quite some power in the whole matter.
  • Grollicus 6y ago
    The GDPR is somewhat restricted for public figures as there is a "legitimate interest" in reporting about them. As Scott did publish his own name I don't think the GDPR would be a very sharp sword in this case.
• numlock86 6y ago
  Knowing well how NYT "operates" I don't believe this story, sorry. Surely this is about some sort of de-escalation or weird deal with them, but I don't buy the motivation about staying pseudonymous. It literally takes less than a minute of browsing Wikipedia to find his full name. And I just assume more people have access to Wikipedia than to NYT.
  • Tenoke 6y ago
    Currently if you google his real name SSC is not even on the first page of results. If the NYT publishes his name in an article about SSC it will be the top result. Also I am not sure what you mean about Wikipedia - I don't see a current article about him (there was an old one with a wrong name but it was marked for deletion).
• nullc 6y ago
  Anyone saying that it would be a non-issue because people could find out the information is they looked hard enough obviously haven't personally or had their friends/family subject to the Times' entirely unaccountable abuse of power and absence of ethics. There is a big difference between something being buried where people with the interest and competence could go find it and it being put up in lights. Particularly when the lights are the bonfire of a hit piece.
  • sullyj3 6y ago
    "people could find out the information is they looked hard enough" is also ridiculous because, yeah, that's trivially true - the journalist already found the information.
    • nullc 6y ago
      Not entirely, -- e.g. in some cases the information might only be available by breaching confidentiality. But the fact that it was technically openly available to some degree doesn't change the fact that the people most likely to cause harm with it often lack the mental facilities to actually do the work to dig it up. The same lack of judgement that makes someone more likely to engage in harassment or violence often also makes them less skilful researchers than a blinking NYT reporter. Maybe a way I'd express your sentiment instead: If it didn't matter because the information was already public then why write the article in the first place? -- after all, anyone else could also learn these things so no one needs the article. The answer is because articles do matter and by that same token we can't disregard the ethical considerations regarding their content, even if it's entirely derived from open sources. The theoretical open availability of the information also doesn't change the fact that many other venues (e.g. sites like Reddit and Wikipedia) will protect your personal information but not if the NYT has printed it with neon blinkers.
    • sixstringtheory 6y ago
      I propose an experiment. Create two separate web servers. Open both of their ports to the internet. Put a bitcoin on each one. Only publish the IP/URL to one of them on a website with millions of DAUs. My hypothesis is the address you publish will see its bitcoin disappear more quickly than the other. There's a difference between being able to easily find an answer, and knowing which question to ask. This is basically the entire point of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• Angostura 6y ago
  I was a journalist for 20 years working in the B2B IT magazine sector in the UK. We took what we did seriously, strove for accuracy and took pride in informative reporting. There are lots of journalists like this, so I am sad to see how many people are dismissive of the work. I can understand the anger at the NYT journalist's stance here, but I suppose I would say that we only have the blog author's view at the moment. I can think of situations where exposing an identity would be justified.
  • michaelt 6y ago
    > I can think of situations where exposing an identity would be justified. Sure, but is this one of them? I can think of situations where killing a guy would be justified - that doesn't mean it's justified in any other circumstance, though.
    • Angostura 6y ago
      > Sure, but is this one of them? I don't know - I don't know who the guy is, or what the journalistic justification may be. Hopefully the journalists's editor does.
  • SuoDuanDao 6y ago
    I support good journalism when I can, but I wish the profession as a whole would stop taking so much damnable pride. It's clearly edged over into widespread hubris. I mean no insult to you personally, but I think the worse a journalist is the less money there is to pay them with. Pride is still free though. I'd like to see journalists practice some professional humility.
  • flr03 6y ago
    Journalists are an essential gear of society and democracy that's why we need to defend them and encourage them to be better. I feel that we don't give any value to journalism anymore, ie people don't want to pay for articles or newspaper but they still want journalist to deliver valuable reporting and will trash journalist at the first occasion. As citizens, we should encourage journalism as a profession and value it.
• loraa 6y ago
  Remember the whole Russia thing?
• dan-robertson 6y ago
  Historically many well regarded news sources have had a public editor[1] or ombudsman who takes complaints from readers and looks into matters of ethics. It is the public editor of the New York Times whom one would ideally complain to about something like this. The New York Times didn’t have one for most of its history, though they had one from 2003 to 2017. Other cash-strapped newspapers have been removing or weakening the position too (eg the Washington post replaced their ombudsman position with a “readers’ representative” position; the guardian have a public editor who spends most of their time on holiday). Some broadcasters (eg npr, pbs) do have public editors. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_editor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_editor
  • forgingahead 6y ago
    "Cash-strapped" is a disingenuous way to describe them. The NYTimes is a $6 billion dollar media corporation with $800million in annual recurring revenue, and the Washington Post is owned by the richest man on the planet, whose company is currently worth 1.3 TRILLION dollars. Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?
    • dan-robertson 6y ago
      There are many newspapers that do not have as much money as the New York Times or Washington post, and many of them struggle with tight margins. It also seems likely that there would be other costs than the salary of a public editor: typically they would have a column which costs space on paper and the results of the editor’s opinions on ethics could increase other costs for the paper (higher standards, more discarded stories, being slower to print because of higher standards, possibly higher employee turnover or hiring difficulties or exposure to lawsuits)
      • forgingahead 6y ago
        All these seem like "fake becauses"[0]. Forget the rest, the NYTimes and the WaPo can certainly afford a team of public editors, if nothing else but for the long-term credibility of their own institutions, never mind the side benefit of keeping them honest. [0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/01/28/the-fake-because/ https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/01/28/the-fake-because/
• darawk 6y ago
  This is really sad. I hope SSC comes back. What the NYT is doing here is almost incomprehensibly shitty. I can't imagine why they would think it's so important to publish Scott's real name.
• dglksgtws3 6y ago
  Being named is EXACTLY what ((([redacted])))’s (((kind))) fears the most. (((They))) will flag this comment to silence the truth. THEIR NAMES ARE (((SCOTT [redacted]))) AND (((CADE METZ)))
• ceilingcorner 6y ago
  I grew up in a tiny town in the Midwest, idolizing the NYT as representative of a NYC intellectual culture that was sorely lacking around me. I used to read the Sunday edition every week at Starbucks, which was something of a novelty for the area at the time. It has been deeply disappointing to watch The Times devolve into a highly-partisan, clickbait, unprofessional shadow of their former self - the exact opposite of what we need a news organization to be in this day and age.
  • greenhatglack 6y ago
    > NYT as representative of a NYC intellectual culture that was sorely lacking around me. Pseudo-intellectualism at best.
• ajb 6y ago
  This is sad. Scott's writing is almost certainly more valuable than anything this NYT journalist will ever produce.
• FrankDixon 6y ago
  Wielding the spotlight of your publication as a weapon sounds like an interesting business model too. Like a private detective being payed by a group of subscribers, interested in finding wrongthink. Given the current climate and the pretty safe assumption that the NYT author knows that the general public would never read through SSC (because the posts are too long and you actually have to make an effort to "consume" that blog) make me suspicious of the "positive" piece.
• codeisawesome 6y ago
  New York Times has been a piece of shit lately.
• sub7 6y ago
  I stopped trusting reporters when I was 14. Did some cool CS shit that got national press - reporters wrote ridiculous made up things in articles all over. Most common was putting words in my mouth, less common was using my words without attribution. That's about when I started reading multiple sources to figure out wtf happened anywhere. It's super prevalent. If a reporter wants to chat, tell them to fuck off.
  • geranim0 6y ago
    Nice little plug here m8
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sov 6y ago
  Unfortunate, for sure. The NYT has no real reason to post his name (as far as I'm aware--the tone of the article could affect that conclusion), so I'm not really sure why they'd dig their heels in here. Though, he really does post a lot of personal and identifying information on his blog--literally any motivated party could find his name very easily. I thought "maybe he doesn't want his real name to link to his blog if a patient googles it"--but, it already does that. In fact, it's a suggested search in google! Ultimately though, in some respect, I do think Scott's trying to have his cake and eat it too a bit here. I think when he starts trying to influence certain events in the real world; eg. like his Signal Boosting for Hsu to give an example within the last week, where he takes umbrage against the Grad student organization at MSU to drum up support in defense of Prof. Hsu--whether or not you agree with Hsu or you agree with the graduate students at MSU, Scott is decidedly an outsider attempting to exert his influence. People have mentioned that these sorts of actions legitimize the "fair play" of the NYT revealing his real identity, and I'm having a hard time finding umbrage with that statement. I don't think the NYT should post his full name but I also do think Scott has been playing fast and loose; both with revelatory facts about his identity and by putting himself in situations where there are legitimate reasons for blog-outsiders to inquire about his real identity. Hopefully there will be an amicable end to this conflict.
  • FeepingCreature 6y ago
    > People have mentioned that these sorts of actions legitimize the "fair play" of the NYT revealing his real identity, and I'm having a hard time finding umbrage with that statement. I don't see how these things legitimize each other at all, unless you're advocating or favoring personal harassment as a legitimate political strategy.
    • sov 6y ago
      No, I don't think harassment in any form is acceptable. I do think the case of Hsu is worth using as an example here: an intra-university conflict; a group of grad students is petitioning for a professor that they believe is actively harmful to the institution to step down as director of research. Now, I don't think it really matters what you or I think about any of this--whether or not we agree with the students or the prof is immaterial. This is an issue for the university, the students at the university, the professor, and any professional relations the professor has within his field of academia. If I'm a student at the school, and I'm pro-grad student faction, I'd probably be rightly annoyed and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting an erroneous cause via his immensely popular website. If I'm a professor at the school, and I'm pro-prof faction, I'd probably be rightly bewildered and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting, albeit for a good cause, via his immensely popular website, with no apparent reason to do so, seeing as how he doesn't seem to be a geneticist or faculty. It would definitely give me pause, to say the least. I can think of things even in my personal life or business where, if an outsider were involving himself trying to "signal boost" a resolution (even if in my favor), I think I'd very rightly want to know the motivations and identity of said person. The above examples don't illustrate that he should be identified, rather, that he's presenting people with a compelling reason to want him identified. I don't think he should be ID'd, but if a campus paper wrote an OP-ed about it, I'd have a hard time faulting them. I don't think anyone should harass anyone else, which I think is somewhat what Scott has been doing (perhaps for a righteous cause) with this affair (as, by nature, signal boosting pro-prof draws some fire upon the grad student faction in question), so his response here rings a little bit hollow to me. But, to be crystal clear, even if I think Scott is using his platform to ever so slightly browbeat institutions via his followers (in the most mild sense & with the best of intentions), I still think the NYT is very much clearly in the wrong.
• randompwd 6y ago
  Geez, patio11 was sure quick to jump in with nonsense: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1275346993296969730 https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1275346993296969730 > I feel like Slate Star Codex and the NYT are coming at each other from a substantial expectations gap regarding risk management. > The culture of participating under one’s own name is normative for much of the professional class but not all of it. Maybe stop trying to explain away that which is unabated shitty behaviour by the reporter.
  • PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    Agreed. This feels similar to how armchair security experts will tweet about bad opsec every time someone is identified. Obviously, Scott didn’t expect the blog to be so big or his anonymity to be such and issue when he started using his real first and middle names. It’s self-congratulatory to imagine that you would have made a different decision given the full benefit of hindsight. It’s not like Scott could go back and change his online name to something more anonymous after the blog became more popular. > In the financial industry we get around that most commonly by giving people “desk names.” If you’ve called and spoken to Sarah Smith, you are very likely not speaking to someone who answers to Sarah or Smith outside of work. His Tweetstorm is a long-winded way of saying “Scott should have used a completely fake name instead of a partially fake name.” That’s not really a guarantee that his real name wouldn’t have been discover. It’s also missing the point of the issue.
    • ThrustVectoring 6y ago
      I read the desk name comment as a suggestion to have psychiatrists perform their jobs pseudonymously.
    • greenhatglack 6y ago
      Patrick is loser who made bingo cards and later a bunch of failures to only end up working for Stripe. Why the fuck would anyone listen to that blabber mouth hack who hasn’t achieved anything than tricking dumb people he has shit of value to say like a fucking Mullah.
    • 6y ago
• krtkush 6y ago
  This is so frustrating and rage inducing! I enjoy reading blogs like gwern and SSC. The fact that the blog has just gone away because somebody threatened to doxx the author against his will is sad and a loss to the community. Scott, on Reddit[1], has mentioned that there is a possibility for the blog to come back but it all depends on how things pan out in the next few months. So I hope NYT just dumps the story, apologises and reevaluate their ethics. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog_deleted_due_to_nyt_threatening_doxxing_of/fvpx1rv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
• reedwolf 6y ago
  Scott Alexander is reaching Scott Aaronson levels of hysterics.
• hn_check 6y ago
  This story provided the perfect opportunity for HN's seedy MAGA crowd to pour out of the dirt to tell us how terrible reporters are, the "MSM", etc. What a delightful set of ridiculous anecdotes and tales of personal awakening. "The day I stopped listening to the lyin' MSM and started getting all of my bullshit from blogs, infowars and Joe Rogan." - HN Because of a story that we know close to nothing about. By one side giving their very biased take. Because an investigative reporter literally did their job. Note that they didn't get him to reveal his identity and then break his trust. They literally simply did what anyone could do and did a small amount of investigation, which surely anyone plying such "death threats" would do. And of course the death threat thing is farce. No, he isn't worried about death threats. He's worried about professional and personal embarrassment. LOL.
• h91wka 6y ago
  I don't understand why traditional media still exists in modern days, when p2p communication between people is possible. In the best case, a journalist is a middleman who will misunderstand and garble information unintentionally, since they are working under deadline to get stuff published ASAP. Not only experts, but even enthusiasts spend much more time researching than journalists. In the worst and most common case, they just push agenda or slander groups of people to attract hate clicks. I cringe every time when mainstream media article ends up on HN.
  • flr03 6y ago
    P2P information is not only "expert blogs". Expert and enthusiasts blogs are the media of niche communities. And believe it or not they can also be biased and push an "agenda". They don't have the monopoly of ethicsm, they are just less scrutenized. The mainstream P2P communication is your Uncle of whatsapp and random people on Twitter. Journalism might not always be great but I'll take it over that.
    • h91wka 6y ago
      You missed my point. Sure, blogs are written by "some guy on the internet", and anyone should be skeptical about anything they write. But journalists are also "some guys on the internet"! They should be kept in the same security ring. There's no difference in competence or accountability between a rando and an entitled journalist.
      • flr03 6y ago
        I didn't miss you point. I just very much disagree that there is no difference in competence between a rando and a journalist, and there are not just some guys on internet. Reporting news and investigating is very complicated, so complicated that yes some people are professionals and paid to do it. This is type of job where people easily say "why they didn't say that", "why they reported it this way", "I would have done it better", truth is it's not that simple. I personally think it's a difficult job to do and try not to diminish it.
• pointillistic 6y ago
  Dark ages are upon us and NYT leads the way. This is the most significant blog in the last decade plus. NYT should be canceled before they cancel every shred of independent thinking in the country.
  • hn_check 6y ago
    I literally laughed out loud at this. And then I realized you are actually serious and I pondered the decline of Western civilization. And to be clear, the claim is that the NYT "cancelled" this blog by easily finding who the author is. No, the author cancelled this blog because they feel uncomfortable correlating the things they say with their professional persona. He could have done a better job with anonymity if that was really so important. This author was outed well more than a year ago, at the time doing a foot stomping "I am not responsible for my words" plea and stating they would stop writing about contentious topics (where their opinion amazingly veered far right on virtually every topic). I hardly think these imaginary death dealers are waiting for the NYT when the information was out there a year and a half ago.
    • DuskStar 6y ago
      > where their opinion amazingly veered far right on virtually every topic If you think SSC, the blog that sources anything remotely controversial, is alt-right for the conclusions it comes to... Maybe you should show the issues in the logic that led him there? But I think you're doing a great job of demonstrating why he's afraid of having his name published.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• gringoDan 6y ago
  Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those who are already powerful. 2. What You Can't Say, by Paul Graham Reflection on how to separate truths that will endure from "moral fashions" particular to a time and place in history. Written over 15 years ago and more relevant today. > What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed. [1] https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence [2] http://paulgraham.com/say.html http://paulgraham.com/say.html
  • dilandau 6y ago
    Both of those are right on point, and match my observations within my own circles. For me stallmans cancellation was a big turning point. I'm using a pseudonym everywhere now. I can't risk someone pulling up a comment or post years from now and using it to ruin my reputation or career, simply because i may have voiced an unpopular or controversial opinion that did not age well. It seems, too, that making jokes is very risky. With text online it's just far too easy to take something out of context and misrepresent or weaponize a person's words. I have had this happen to me personally and it's unbelievably frustrating. People aren't allowed to make mistakes, it seems. It is just too fraught, and even sincerity and honesty are not safe.
    • projektfu 6y ago
      You have to make giant, sweeping mistakes a part of your career or personality. Rush Limbaugh lost one tangential job, but is still influential and wealthy.
      • 6y ago
• getlawgdon 6y ago
  How did I know some of the comments would devolve into questioning whether NYT is "real media" and other right-wing dogwhistling?
• tempodox 6y ago
  Wow, those are effing serious reasons to stay pseudonymous. If that doesn't convince a reporter to not publish that name, they should really ask themselves how mercenary they've become.
• Kiro 6y ago
  Has the post been changed? I remember it containing some quotes from the journalist in question.
• Fellshard 6y ago
  It's specifically telling that they would choose to do this with Scott Alexander and not another psychiatrist prior to this point: the NYT has in the last few weeks been overcome from the inside by a new moral zealotry, and Scott makes a prime, juicy target for the moral assaults that will gain it plaudits among other zealots. This will make the backroom media Slack quite pleased, I'm sure, especially if the article attempts to tie him back to white supremacy. It'll be seen as a good score, and might appease the mob for a short time. But they'll be back again for fresh blood soon enough.
  • hackissimo123 6y ago
    "In the last few weeks"? The NYT has been going in this direction for years.
    • Fellshard 6y ago
      Correct, but the Tom Cotton op-ed in context of all other events lit a spark that caused a lot of internal tension to snap. One of the most interesting pieces of insight we got at the time was from Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media, who tweeted[1] about discomfort with what was going on in a private media Slack group the day the NYT was reportedly going through turmoil. The tweets were shortly deleted, for clear reasons. From his description, it sounded like an effective struggle session was taking place in the Slack channel, which had been kicked off by the Cotton op-ed. So the direction has been mounting for years, yes. But the significant shift in internal leadership, direction, and principles within the last few weeks cannot be overestimated. [1]: https://twitter.com/JimLaheyTPBs/status/1268718489654697984 https://twitter.com/JimLaheyTPBs/status/1268718489654697984
      • hackissimo123 6y ago
        I saw those tweets from Yglesias when he posted them; I didn't realise he'd deleted him. To clarify: you say that Yglesias deleted his tweets "for clear reasons" - are the reasons really clear (e.g. Yglesias confirmed his reasons) or is that just your surmise? Also, you mention a private media Slack group but the tweet thread you linked doesn't say anything about a Slack group - is there another link where I can learn more about this? I remember there was some other woke controversy at the NYT a couple of years ago where a private NYT Slack thread was leaked; I can only imagine the inner turmoil at the NYT given recent controversies (and an extra two years' worth of new, woke graduates entering the org.)
• jka 6y ago
  There's quite a lot of scope for interpretation of this statement: > Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me. It's not clear from the post whether there was any conversation with the journalist about this aspect of the planned article, and/or whether there were any requests not to include the person's full name. I think most of us agree that staying well-informed is useful and important, and I'd argue that news organizations contribute effectively to that. Blogging and tweeting are useful additional mediums, but they can't always achieve the same results as publications that have research teams, archives, experienced investigative reporters, and legal teams to defend them when they encounter powerful opposition. It could be worth taking a pause and waiting for more details before attributing all of the blame to the NYT (or even more wildly, journalism as a whole) here. Edit (append-only): as noted elsewhere (see child comments) there had been some two-way conversation with the journalist regarding publication of the author's name. It could be useful to learn more about what the nature of NYT's policy on publishing real names is, and the intent and reasoning behind that.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    > It's not clear from the post whether there was any conversation with the journalist about this aspect of the planned article, and/or whether there were any requests not to include the person's full name. There were; this has been made clear elsewhere. The reporter was also made aware that the blog would be shut down if it came to that, and still refused to redact OP's real name from their article. (Allegedly, it seems that NYT general policy can allow a person to be anonymous if warranted, but it's less clear that pseudonimity is contemplated.)
    • jka 6y ago
      Thank you - could you provide a link about those requests and discussion? I'd like to update my understanding (and comment) based on those.
      • Lewton 6y ago
        https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog_deleted_due_to_nyt_threatening_doxxing_of/fvq3il7/ https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
• projektfu 6y ago
  It would be a little less galling if the NYT didn’t let anonymous sources throw shade on people so readily. It shows the class divide here.
• macspoofing 6y ago
  >He told me it would be a mostly positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech, and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation. (emphasis mine) That sounds like the reporter was buttering him up before dropping the hit-piece.
• fny 6y ago
  I am cancelling my NYT subscription.
• zwright 6y ago
  Never trust a journalist
• KingOfCoders 6y ago
  I still miss 'Alone' a lot.
• voxic11 6y ago
  Isn't this a double standard? The NYT was one of the many papers that decided not to publish the name of the whistleblower in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. They published many articles on the scandal and his name is definitely known to them as they did a profile on the wistleblower without naming him and he has been named by the president's son and many others in government (and no, he was not a source for the NYT. He was a whistleblower who went through official channels to blow the whistle, he didn't go to the press). I am not going to post his name here as it tends to get comments deleted. Youtube will even automatically delete your comment if it contains his name (maybe even relieving his gender goes too far, I guess we will find out). If anyone doubts this you can just try it yourself. Or just believe the company's own spokesperson https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/tech/facebook-whistleblower-name/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/tech/facebook-whistleblower-n...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • sugarpile 6y ago
    The idea that the public "can't be trusted" with information like this has always deeply frustrated me. Information should be openly shared and this story serves as another demonstration that journalists are not a special class of citizens that can be trusted with the information. His name is Eric Ciaramella for anyone else wondering. Took me a frustrating 30 minutes of googling to figure it out.
• lumberingjack 6y ago
  I'm sure that blog has been archived somewhere pretty hard to just delete stuff from the internet. Take for instance this website I use an RSS feed aggregator to pull the top stories out of this site and put them on my feed within the last year I would say most of the stories are flagged removed basically somebody trying to remove a certain opinion.
  • awinder 6y ago
    Author dives into this in the post a bit, it's more about how would the NYT write the article about a blog that's no longer there without having to explain their part of poisoning the story. They also talk about prior run-ins with doxing and people calling their practice to try to get them fired off reddit witchhunts, so I think they know this, it's all about preventing a NYT-sized catastrophe when they've already seen low-yield reddit-sized explosions.
• 737min 6y ago
  It’s clear that the NYTimes is in the wrong here & doxxing an anonymous blogger, possibly b/c some of his views don’t align with theirs. Everyone: please take a minute & send a very polite email to the NYT so we can get SlaterCodex back.
• EE84M3i 6y ago
  Anyone that cared to try already knew Scott's real name. It was a simple Google dork away because of bad opsec from the beginning.
  • doubleunplussed 6y ago
    It's harder the other way around: starting with his real name and finding slatestarcodex, which is what he's concerned about since his patients will be googling his real name. Now, for me google autocompletes "scott $REALNAME slatestarcodex", but it's not clear whether that is personalsied to me since I'm an avid slatestarcodex reader and have been googling this all over the place.
• awinder 6y ago
  People in the thread are really gravitating towards using this as a damning piece of evidence for the entire system, and regardless of that might be a fair thing to do, I think this demonstrates opportunity. So the NYT does not have a blanket policy of unmasking everyone, but it does make better stories when sources are named. A reporter with more scruples is going to act differently in this situation and it's all about pushiness & how you present this (do you work with the source? do you push them and pretend like there's no option? do you realize you can wrap your article in EVEN MORE MYSTIQUE by having an anonymous person angle?). Having an independent record of how individual actors in a distributed system act would be incredibly helpful as an interviewee to have before meeting to know what they're getting into. And it'd also help readers to understand more about the kind of person who's writing their news and how that might bias their angle.
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  Some time ago, I mentally reformulated the journalism industry as an information processing engine which ferrets out and then publicizes secrets -- any secrets -- for advertising revenue. Your secrets: our clickthrough bucks. While this was pointed at government corruption, this had some kind of utility. When it was used to find a neglected neighborhood bistro of thirty years that was going under due to the loss of foot traffic, this was laudable. Now it seems as if any sort of secret at all is fair game, and the more you want to hide something the more they want at it, whether or not it is of value, privacy be damned. Right now, these secrets are hunted, devoured, and excreted for the howling Twitter mob to fixate on in a permanent hurricane of outrage, bashing its way up and down the coast, as a result of the temperature of the Internet climbing up, and it has been incredibly convenient for these journos to at least try to guide the storm to whatever targets they've had their eye on in the long march through the institutions, but the collateral damage is immense. We're seeing it here.
• pps43 6y ago
  > he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article So it's an OPSEC failure. Why not learn from it and start a new blog under a different, better pseudonym, then avoid giving details that can get you doxxed.
  • bonoboTP 6y ago
    He would have to stop going to meet-ups etc. as well. Really sad that it has come to this. People have to go underground and be paranoid and distribute material like the samizdat of Eastern Europe under the communist dictatorships. Scott is such a nice, open-minded, compassionate and careful, educated, well-Red intellectual who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, goes out of his way not to be mean to his critics. If even he gets thrown under the bus, it's a sign of bad times coming. I'd say I'm glad I'm in Europe, but "we're all living in America", these things spread quickly over the pond. I fear that this whole debacle will attract enough attention to him that many curious people will doxx him and his job could be at great risk. I hope I'm wrong. But it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle, once it's out.
• mmm_grayons 6y ago
  Wow, screw the new york times. I was recently directed to this site by an HN commenter, and found that there was quite a nice community of smart people who wanted to discuss different ideas and potentially even change their minds. A piece by the new york times covering that would destroy it. And it's irresponsible for a reporter to insist on publishing a name in a situation like this "becAUsE PolIcY".
• boltzmann_ 6y ago
  If you have not read Scott Alexander blog posts before I only can say you are missing out of an internet gem. Some personal favorites: - Meditations On Moloch - I can tolerate anything except the outgroup
• mcculley 6y ago
  I am confused about how the New York Times and journalism in general treats the pseudonymous and anonymous. I am continually annoyed at how often articles use unnamed "sources close to" a matter. It fosters a culture of government unaccountability. But the post says that it is "New York Times policy to include real names". Are there some subtle rules involved here that are not obvious to me?
  • sp332 6y ago
    If you can give a reporter ongoing "access" to less-public information, you can extract concessions from them. Scott Alexander doesn't have enough weight for them to worry about burning a bridge with him.
• newacct583 6y ago
  I have to wonder why no one here seems to be ignoring the most obvious interpretation: Scott Alexander's identity is probably newsworthy. We might very well know him or her from other associations and the authorship of this blog would be notable and interesting. I mean, obviously it's not the case that newspaper policy demands identifying sources. The Times writes about anonymous people all the time. If this article about a pseudonymous blog was going to stand alone, they'd run it. My strong suspicion is that they have a juicier story about why Someone Important is writing a pseudonymous blog. And that changes things, IMHO.
  • ksdale 6y ago
    His real identity is not particularly hard to find, and as far as I know, he is actually just a psychiatrist and the author of SSC (among other things).
    • newacct583 6y ago
      That assertion seems rather at odds with "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name", doesn't it? Again, the idea that journalists routinely burn their sources as a matter of course is clearly wrong. Source anonymity is inviolate, especially at the level of papers like the Times. They just don't do what is being alleged here. If they want to tell us who he is, it's because his identity IS the story.
      • ksdale 6y ago
        He has fairly good reasons for caring about the distinction between “possible to discover” and “connected to the blog via the NYT”. The story that does or doesn’t get published will tell us how central his identity is, I suppose!
        • newacct583 6y ago
          Again, I'm just struck by how much credence you're giving an anonymous blogger vs. the Times here. I mean... do you have a good example of an article where the Times burned a source in a situation where the story was about something other than the source's identity? I'll say it the last time: what is being alleged here (that the Times is "doxxing" someone for political reasons) simply Does Not Happen in real journalism. It just doesn't.
• emiliobumachar 6y ago
  Thank you for all you have written, Scott. Hopefully this will be resolved quickly. I wish you the best.
• kerkeslager 6y ago
  Damn. I've been reading Slate Star Codex for a long time, and he's always been one of the most insightful voices on the internet. I'm really sorry to see him go. After reading this, I looked up NYT's policy of using real names, and it turns out this isn't the worst time that the NY Times has done this[1]. I've long said that if you want to know who an organization serves, see where its money comes from. The NY Times gets 60% of its money from subscriptions, but it also gets 30% of its money from advertisers[2]. Keep in mind that subscribers can be hard to court, and losing one advertiser is a bigger chunk of money, so the NY Times is likely to be disproportionately influenced by the 30% of their income that comes from advertisers. We're better off with organizations who receive their money from donations. I have been constantly impressed with the reporting of Mother Jones[3] and ProPublica[4] and would encourage you to both read and donate. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/26/new-york-times-trump-ukraine-whistleblower-published https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/26/new-york-times... [2] https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/5gNimvTR/New-York-Times-Revenues-How-Does-New-York-Times-Make-Money- https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/5gNimvTR/New... [3] https://www.motherjones.com/ https://www.motherjones.com/ [4] https://www.propublica.org/ https://www.propublica.org/
  • alecbenzer 6y ago
    The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?
    • kerkeslager 6y ago
      Hm, I don't know if I'd draw the cause/effect so directly. To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that. I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.
      • stupendousyappi 6y ago
        I have a hard time seeing how the statistic that the Times receives twice as much money from readers as from advertisers is evidence that the NYT "serves advertisers rather than readers". I think that probably puts them in the top 10% of media outlets in terms of how financially independent of advertising they are.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  It was predictable that Scott Alexander would be called out for his blog and the people attracted to it. For people driving change in society today, he's the most problematic type of person of all: reasonable, moderate, thoughtful, and a fair minded person who equips intelligent and charismatic people with critical tools for deflecting histrionics. Journalism is broken. What was news in its imagined golden age, and what news is now are very different things. The essential ingredient that makes a story news is conflict. If there is no conflict, there is no news story. Without it, it's a puff or a think piece, or a listicle, or comment, it's not news. What's missing in news is the legitimacy of the conflict. The problem, and the reason editors and journalists themselves can't understand it, is that what people popularly call "fake news," is not necessarily about fabricated facts. Reporters and editors will say stuff like a quote is a quote, those were your own words (basically) and you don't get to define context or how people interpret them. The problem of "fake news" is that it is not necessarily the facts, but the conflict itself that is manufactured. Setting up the subject of a story in opposition to someone who doesn't have standing in their field, elevating fringe views to being on an equal shared platform with mainstream ones, propping up a weak straw man to represent unpopular opinions vs. a protected establishment figure, are all examples of standard news items that people reject as fake. Outing Scott Alexander's personal identity is a way to set up a manufactured conflict between the individual psychiatrist as an imperfect man, and a mob who see his charitable views as equipping their opposition. What once may have been an interesting battle of ideas among public intellectuals is now just a series of predictable fixed fights, using the same hackneyed tropes, and the same story line over and over again of victims and their oppressors, with the same stock underdog characters triumphing over the same cast of cliche villains. Throwing people to an angry mob is manufactured conflict - and therefore I would argue, fake news. It would be just as harmlessly entertaining as professional wrestling if it weren't the gate keeping institution for public discourse being reduced to a propaganda mouthpiece for an ideology that is predicated on belief in permanent struggle and conflict for its own sake. Alexander is one of the more popular writers online and his view is important and essential to public discourse. It would be a shame to see him cancelled too, but it is a predictable stage in a path we've marched down before. If nothing else, his blog should be seen as a canary for some grim inevitabilities to come.
• throwaway894345 6y ago
  > Or at least the story will have to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks. In fairness, they overtly slandered a group of schoolchildren and sent a nationwide mob after them (including celebrities who made very thinly veiled threats against them on social media). That didn’t seem to drive much ethical change within the NYT, so I don’t have much hope for this (“merely” doxxing a psychiatrist/blogger) to reform them.
• emiliobumachar 6y ago
  Original title: "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog" HN title as of this writing: "I Am Deleting The Blog" I propose we change the HN title to match the original title. If length is a problem, then I propose "NYT About To Doxx Me, So I Am Deleting The Blog".
  • gringoDan 6y ago
    He updated the title of the blog post after this link was posted to HN. The title of the HN post is reflective of the original title of the blog post.
• cagenut 6y ago
  I'm not super clear what this blog is or the overall context, but after reading the post my takeaways is "this guy did an interview with a reporter, on the record, and then asked not to be quoted by name". Is that accurate? Being quoted by name is not being doxxed. If you don't want to be named in a newspaper article, do not talk to a newspaper reporter. My main takeaway here is that this is yet another example of people co-opting the language of woke victimhood to avoid accountability.
• simonbarker87 6y ago
  For those of us out of the loop could someone take 2 minutes to give us some context please? Thanks
• zajio1am 6y ago
  I have been reading Slate Star Codex for a long time and consider it a source of many great texts, but i do not really get this step from Scott Alexander. Term 'doxxing' is a loaded term that may describe both revealing private information and revealing personal information researchable from public sources. While the former is condemnable, the later is more neutral and part of basic journalist work, especially if the exposed is a public persona. Seems to me that for impartial third person it would look like a reporter wrote a neutral article about SSC mentioning authors name, SSC author overreacted and punished himself and its readers by removing the blog, and by Streissand effect much more people would know autors name now.
  • DataGata 6y ago
    > the later is more neutral and part of basic journalist work, especially if the exposed is a public persona. This is where the problem comes in-- best practice on the Internet is to let people who want to be anonymous stay anonymous. This is analog world culture butting into digital world culture, and in this case _digital world culture is right_, and also a case of the NYTimes being hypocritical. The guy who wrote the NYTimes Resistance piece is allowed to stay anonymous, but a guy who writes about the efficacy of different depression medications isn't? [0] It's ridiculous. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house...
  • Paul-ish 6y ago
    Doxxing is new term reflecting new online norms. This strikes me as a clash of internet culture and traditional newspaper culture.
    • mudita 6y ago
      Is it really just new online norms? As a German I am astonished that this is even legal, let alone journalistic norm. Here in Germany a “right to informational self-determination” is legally well-established going back to a judgement in 1983 and journalists know that they have to weigh freedom of press and public interest against this right. I am pretty sure that what the times is doing in this case would actually be illegal here, if they cannot justify why public interest in knowing Scott’s real name would outweigh his right to informational self-determination. Does anybody know what the legal situation regarding doxxing is in the US?
• kerkeslager 6y ago
  Some highlights of Slate Star Codex over the years (I'm missing archives for two of these, and I'd appreciate anyone linking to archives if you have them): Mediations on Moloch: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar... I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar... Proving too Much: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/
  • FBT 6y ago
    Proving Too Much: https://archive.md/M1XHf https://archive.md/M1XHf
    • kerkeslager 6y ago
      Thank you so much!
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  This is a shame. I've read Scott's blog for years and have always been impressed with his intelligence, decency, and intellectual honesty. It's unfortunate that the current environment is forcing out people like Scott and replacing him with others who aren't nearly so conscientious and fair.
• SonOfLilit 6y ago
  There really is no reason for the NYT to expose his therapist-name. Scott is far from anonymous in any sense that matters - his identity as a blogger is very public, everything he does online is connected, and people can and do scrutinize and criticize it when appropriate. The public's interest is well served. Scott's blog will be sorely missed. Some of the best writing on the internet.
• iron0013 6y ago
  If I was able to find out Scott’s real last name with literally a single Google search, I hardly think writing that name in a news article can be called “doxxing”
• wayoutthere 6y ago
  I unsubscribed from the NYT after the Tom Cotton editorial. That's when it became clear to me that their ethics were driven by a need to drive traffic to their site and I wanted no part in it. Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.
  • fullshark 6y ago
    I think that decision was worse than a sign that they have given in to market forces. They have given in to internal activists who have no desire to learn, think, or report the truth, merely use the paper as a weapon for social change.
    • nickthemagicman 6y ago
      That's Matt Taiabbis proposition too. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
      • rendall 6y ago
        Awesome! Another reader of Taibbi's. By the way, the Post Gazette seems to have stolen that article, so maybe don't drive business their way. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1274747185507246081?s=20 https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1274747185507246081?s=20 Instead, here is Taibbi's substack. If you're off a mind, a subscription is only $40 per year, but the stolen article is nevertheless free. https://taibbi.substack.com/ https://taibbi.substack.com/
        • nickthemagicman 6y ago
          Hey thanks! I just grabbed from the first google link. That's SUPER messed up. I hope he sues. Will update. Love Taibbi!
      • tomjakubowski 6y ago
        A response: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/taibbi-cotton-free-speech/ https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/taibbi-cotton-fre...
• abstractbarista 6y ago
  Sad times. I saw this coming. People are mean. :/
• mshron 6y ago
  I am genuinely baffled how Scott Alexander's post has turned into hundreds and hundreds of comments on cancel culture, as if it was anything near the #1 reason why he'd be in danger if his name was revealed. Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get. Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience." [0] The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous. [0] https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/ https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/
  • derefr 6y ago
    > I am genuinely baffled how Scott Alexander's post has turned into hundreds and hundreds of comments on cancel culture, as if it was anything near the #1 reason why he'd be in danger if his name was revealed. People in comments sections (doesn’t matter which) don’t really “react to” or “engage with” the article very often. What they’re really doing is being reminded by the article of some thought that’s been affecting them in their own lives lately—which they then hold forth about. Sometimes the tangential thought can be supported by quoting the article (either literally, or in rebuttal); but this is still different from engaging with the article itself, per se. For most people, the article is grist for the idea-mill of their own “blogging”, which they happen to do in the form of a comment. (Heck, that’s what I’m doing right now, to your comment!) People who genuinely respond to a post as if they were in conversation with the original author are few and far between, and tend to put their responses on professional blogs rather than comments sections. (Which is funny, because "comments sections" are nominally for engaging with the post. We've all become very mixed up somehow.)
    • bachmeier 6y ago
      > People in comments sections (doesn’t matter which) don’t really “react to” or “engage with” the article very often. What they’re really doing is being reminded by the article of some thought that’s been affecting them in their own lives lately—which they then hold forth about. Don't want to go off on a tangent, but HN trains its users to do that by posting one article after another that's behind a paywall. Of course there will be comments vaguely related to the article when you've created a culture of commenting without reading.
• coderunner 6y ago
  What does he normally write about? It seemed to be a pretty popular blog but I never dug into the content and now the content is offline.
  • savanaly 6y ago
    If all you're interested in is a list of topics he wrote about, the table of contents on that page serves that function reasonably well. Some of the links in it are even live because they are to places he wrote other than SSC. I. Rationality and Rationalization II. Probabilism III. Science and Doubt IV. Medicine, Therapy, and Human Enhancement V. Introduction to Game Theory VI. Promises and Principles VII. Cognition and Association VIII. Doing Good IX. Liberty X. Progress XI. Social Justice XII. Politicization XIII. Competition and Cooperation [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vwqLfDfsHmiavFAGP/the-library-of-scott-alexandria https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vwqLfDfsHmiavFAGP/the-librar...
• ErikAugust 6y ago
  Feel free to use Trim to remove all paywalls and JavaScript from places like the New York Times: https://beta.trimread.com https://beta.trimread.com.
  • nillium 6y ago
    How is this not theft? Journalism is expensive. Of course, there are other business models (full disclosure, we're building one too: https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/ https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/) but circumventing a paywall is not the answer. Yes, the NYT is one of the few outlets that is doing reasonably well right now. But many newspapers are going out of business, or at least furloughing employees -- employees who already were not earning huge salaries. If you read the article, and they ask for money to let you do that -- then honor that request. Just because you can hop over a paywall doesnt mean you should.
    • tengbretson 6y ago
      Loading a page and choosing not to run the code they ship with it is not theft.
      • jaredwiener 6y ago
        Evading a paywall is.
        • TremendousJudge 6y ago
          Really? What have they lost in this theft? The electricity needed to run the server serving the request?
        • Spivak 6y ago
          You don't deserve the downvotes. Just because the technical measures used to protect the content are weak doesn't grant you the right to circumvent it. Hacker-types always seem have this fallacy of "if I can do it, I'm allowed to do it. I understand it -- we're all hackers because we get joy out of breaking technical locks and using things for purposes they weren't intended and rule-layering digital systems. But just because someone uses a cheap lock it doesn't mean you have the right to break it. Who even cares about the copyright violation vs theft distinction at this point? They're offering access to their content for a price, they're not bothering with draconian DRM and so it's a dick move to just take it.
• flr03 6y ago
  Can you be an influential character and asked to remain anonymous? If you have opinions and you've broadcasted them you can assume them. We blame politics, journalist but at least they sign their articles. Don't you think they receive death treats all the time ? You can blame NYT but at least they have a clear policy, whether you agree with it or not. I feel a lot of people here are reacting emotionally, as part of the SSC community. Is the problem a journalist revealing a name, or is it virtual trolls and mobs?
  • exo762 6y ago
    > We blame politics, journalist but at least they sign their articles. Don't you think they receive death treats all the time ? 1. They are professionals. SSC is a hobbyist. 2. No, I don't think they receive a lot of threats. This days people expect very very little of journalists. Many consider journos to be the lowest form of life.
  • mshroyer 6y ago
    > You can blame NYT but at least they have a clear policy, whether you agree with it or not. Given that NYT has been happy to preserve Banksy's anonymity in their reporting, or that of Virgil Texas, their policy certainly isn't clear to me.
• nickthemagicman 6y ago
  I applied for a job with the NYtimes a year ago and they treated me very poorly in the application process. Long waits for minimal communication, and then they just ghosted me. Then I read Taiabbis article and cancelled my subscription. It's becoming the Fox news of the left.
• aiscapehumanity 6y ago
  Can we now stop linking to NYTimes? I have complained about the encroachment of having bulk paywalled stuff on here before, but now with this, it's like anyone linking to these journos are promoting them (Especially now, seeing how badly the ethics is). The best we can do is try to avoid them.
• danielam 6y ago
  Worth noting archived material on the Wayback Machine[0]. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/*/slatestarcodex.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/slatestarcodex.com Edit: there are some references in the comments already (didn't spot them because I missed the "More" link).
• malwarebytess 6y ago
  I've been reading this guy off and on since he was Yvain on Less Wrong. This is a really fucking strange place to take a stand when his name has been public knowledge for...almost forever. The guy physically meets people at conventions and the like and introduces himself with his full name. It's been less of a secret than who The Stig (top gear) is. NYT may or may not be doing a big wrong here, but it's a fruitless act by [insert name here] given that his name always already public. Strangely emotional though he claims it's out of fear for his safety (which would have already been compromised.)
  • michaelkeenan 6y ago
    That seems covered by this paragraph: "Some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. And I recently learned that someone on SSC got SWATted in a way that they link to using their real name on the blog. I live with ten housemates including a three-year-old and an infant, and I would prefer this not happen to me or to them. Although I realize I accept some risk of this just by writing a blog with imperfect anonymity, getting doxxed on national news would take it to another level." Do you feel that that addresses your concerns? It seems reasonable to predict that he'd have more of those safety problems if the number of people who know his real name increases by 2+ orders of magnitude, and if it appears prominently on a website with a high rank on Google.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • arkades 6y ago
      > Do you feel that that addresses your concerns? Many of the responses critical of his decision seem to read as "Here's reason X that his decision is non-sensical, and I didn't read the actual link where he clearly and reasonably addresses reason X."
• deleted 6y ago
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• deleted 6y ago
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• PatrolX 6y ago
  This is a very dumb move on his part. He just went from "big interesting blog" to "very suspicious behavior". Think about it from a reporter's perspective, they were about to write about an interesting blog, and suddenly the blog gets deleted because his real name will be revealed. Well, that's a pretty big reaction, so big we can't ignore it. The reporter's first question now will be "Wow, what's he trying to cover up?" One thing is certain, reporters are now trying to dig up the thing that they're imagining he's trying to cover up. And maybe he does have something to hide given his irrational behavior, who knows? This won't end now until reporters find something, and they're gonna go to great lengths to find something.
  • zozbot234 6y ago
    On the contrary, it's a smart and deeply reasonable move. Scott is being quite transparent about the reasons for his choice, and the NYT reporters' and editors' behavior will look far more suspicious than anything he's doing.
    • PatrolX 6y ago
      Except a journalist isn't going to sit back and take his "reasons for his choice" as true and go away, they're going to dig even more and he's smart enough to know that. He just made things worse for himself by deleting that blog and drawing attention to himself. Now it's not just the original reporter looking into this story, a whole bunch of journalists have dived in, and are now looking for an even bigger story.
      • zozbot234 6y ago
        They're going to "dig" in obscure web archives to try and make him look bad? Anyone could do that, but good luck trying to sell that as reasonable after you've doxxed the guy. It would be so obvious that this is what they're doing, they probably wouldn't even bother. And Scott has no reason to care about "drawing attention to himself" at this point - you can't beat a NYT article (even a sympathetic one!) as far as "attention" goes, and that was already in the cards.
  • 6y ago
• gautamcgoel 6y ago
  The NYT has reported on Bansky without revealing his name. Why is this different?
• arkades 6y ago
  In addition to any emails one might send the relevant editor at the NYT, you may also email your concerns to editors@cjr.org The Columbia Journalism Review does a lot of "reporting on reporting," and has a very high profile in their field. I CC'd them on my email to the NYT section editor.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• polynomial 6y ago
  This really highlights the difference between sources and subjects in journalism. Has a 2-tier system been hiding in plain sight all this time? If so, this would indicate an almost systemic bias behind the facade of neutrality. One which escaped notice, even during an earlier period of debate about forcing use of real names on the Internet vs. handles or nicks.
• mundo 6y ago
  I've also been reading SSC for a long time. I'm sad, but honestly, who's surprised? I mean, he defended Steven Hsu the other day for being on the wrong side of the whole "race/IQ differences" thing, despite having written probably a dozen essays over the years about the phenomenon of prominent people losing their jobs for being on the wrong side of the race/IQ differences thing. Scott's had a pretty amazing run of being able to write edgy-enough-to-possibly-get-you-cancelled essays on the internet without getting cancelled, and on a personal level I've found him to be extremely kind and thoughtful and I wish this weren't happening to him, but at the same time it seems as inevitable as the flooding of a house built on low ground.
  • computerphage 6y ago
    Honestly, I'm surprised. This doesn't look like getting cancelled for being edgy. There's no mob that I can see pushing to doxx him. It looks to me more like the reporter decided that Scott's refusal to use his real last name was a weird request, not a legitimate security concern for his patients and himself. The reporter just doesn't get it. It's not like it adds to the story. Every on the internet knows Scott as "Scott Alexander". I didn't even know it wasn't his real last name until today. It just seems so cruel to insist on doing this to Scott when I can't see any good reason to do it.
    • blaser-waffle 6y ago
      > The reporter just doesn't get it. Full-time reporters don't get why a source might not want to be named? Dude that's a high-school level journalism discussion. If you're a full-timer at the NYT you get why, and are either complying with a corporate policy or grinding a political axe.
      • csa 6y ago
        > If you're a full-timer at the NYT you get why, and are either complying with a corporate policy or grinding a political axe. Or you are just an asshole. There does not seem to be a good reason to refer to him by his full name rather than Scott Alexander. But there are a lot of bad reasons. The main way I could see using Scott’s full name as being valid is if the reporter is outing some sort of malpractice, which I do not think is the case. I struggle really to think of any other good reasons.
• 7402 6y ago
  What is an appropriate theory of when a journalist should reveal the name of someone who doesn't want that name revealed? Some simplistic possibilities: 1. Never. 2. Always. 3. Don't, if they're a 'good' person. Do, if they're a 'bad' person. My theory is that it's a sliding scale, depending on one's judgement of the following: Where does this person fit on the public/private scale? The more public a person, the less right to privacy. How influential is this person? The more influential, the less right to privacy. How much of what brought them into public interest was of their own choice? What threats might the person come under if the name is revealed. The greater the threat, the more right to privacy. Also, are these threats physical, economic, or social? How sophisticated is the person? Do they know what reporters do for a living? Do they understand the conventions of "off the record" and "pre-interview negotiations"? I'd like to see more discussion of this and less of "cancel my subscription."
  • iforgotpassword 6y ago
    How much does it add to reveal the name? If it's about a blog and its content, I don't see what is won by adding the name of the author if they don't agree. Quite the opposite literally in this case.
  • beagle3 6y ago
    As others have noted, NYTimes had dozens of articles about Banksy, whose identity has been known by many and could easily be discovered by the NYTimes (if they don't already know it - I suspect they do). By any possible scale, Scott's real identity deserves less publicity than Banksy's. The "cancel my subscription" wave is well warranted, because that's the only vote people have with the NYTimes.
• slvrspoon 6y ago
  the ability to speak pseuodononymously and or separate out your personal and professional life is critical. we can try to help you - at least a bit - JoinDeleteMe.com
• ajani 6y ago
  But that's not entirely effective. The blog is accessible on archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/20200609065651/https://slatestarcodex.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200609065651/https://slatestar...
  • beagle3 6y ago
    It's effective enough to force the hand of the NYTimes to respond -- likely by removing his name or removing the article altogether.
• geodel 6y ago
  Seems reasonable. If you can't deplatform someone than dox them. This looks like a service in favor NYT's increasingly rabid readership.
• Apocryphon 6y ago
  Surprised that P.Z. Myers is such a critic of SSC https://twitter.com/pzmyers/status/1275381580182073346 https://twitter.com/pzmyers/status/1275381580182073346
  • generationP 6y ago
    P.Z. Myers has been a bullshit generator for several years now. Here's him on Steven Hsu: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/06/18/look-for-the-helpers-hsu-has-some-peculiar-friends/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/06/18/look-for-... Money quote: > I’m with Kevin Bird. Seeing the oppressive capitalist foundations of American wealth inequality getting shaken up is a good start. It’s not quite the change we saw with the fall of the Berlin Wall, though — we’re going to need to see Wall Street dethroned from its power and influence on government to be comparable.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      That's a particularly polemical point, but the rest of the bullet points are clarifications on Soviet history of science, which seems substantiative.
  • doubleunplussed 6y ago
    I'm not. PZ Myers was on the Atheism+ side of the schism in online Atheism in 2011 (from which my pseudonym derives), and Scott was firmly on the other side. They've been on opposite sides of the culture war since either of them became aware of it. But even if you didn't know that ancient history, Myers is orthodox progressive, Scott is heterodox. They're natural enemies.
    • Apocryphon 6y ago
      Funny how an anti-ideology that purports to be not a religion but rather the absence of religion would spawn so many schisms and holy wars.
      • doubleunplussed 6y ago
• Tester49 6y ago
  Yet another person allowing others to control their life, sad, very sad.
• jazzyk 6y ago
  Where was NYT's policy of using real-names when they: - quoted anonymous source behind the White House "Op-Ed", - used "well-connected", (but anonymous) sources reporting on the "Russia collusion" news? I must be missing something here?
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  I would encourage people to stop linking to and submitting New York Times articles, I didn’t read Slate Star Codex but having just read the clear reasons Scott wanted to keep his anonymity I am disgusted the NYT would abuse someone’s trust like this. I’m going to pretend they don’t exist from now on and I expect a lot of others will too. I won’t read another article by the New York Times no matter how click baity the headline. It won’t really make a difference but this sort of immoral shit seems to happen everywhere now. Once an institution of quality journalism it’s now click baiting with peoples livelihoods. Fuck them.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• tomohawk 6y ago
  More background: https://freebeacon.com/media/well-known-blogger-shuts-down-site-for-fear-of-nyt-doxxing/ https://freebeacon.com/media/well-known-blogger-shuts-down-s... NYT has a history of selective doxxing.
  • JenniferRM 6y ago
    I scrolled to the bottom of the discussion, and have been scrolling up... THIS article is the best article on the subject I've read so far (including cited comparisons to other situations that are similar but slightly different) and I regret that I have but one upvote to give it.
• rotekja 6y ago
  Easy extra income for all. All is easy and free. https://www.ysense.com/?rb=59429643 https://www.ysense.com/?rb=59429643
• rotekja 6y ago
  Extra money for moms bradlohhy@gmail.com
• mcherm 6y ago
  It took me quite some time to get through, but I DID call the New York Times to cancel my membership and share the following note: https://www.mcherm.com/journalistic-ethics.html https://www.mcherm.com/journalistic-ethics.html Interestingly, the person I reached was initially engaging with me but when I began to describe the reason for cancelling my account he sighed and said, "Oh, That." Clearly I was far from the first person to raise the issue today.
• asdfk-12 6y ago
  When political figures name specific media as being the 'enemy of the people', what seemed absurd rings true in this instance. So much insight, perspective and open discussion going away here. It's sad. This blog was a beacon to many, and I will surely miss it.
• deleuze 6y ago
  Scott Alexander uses "hyper-rational critism" to push race science that borders on straight on bigotry. Even worse, he's allowed a community to build around him that views iq heritability as the main essentialist frame with which to view the world. This kind of mindset is unfortunately common in technology spaces, and the world will only be better as these kinds of people are pushed out of the overton window.
  • radford-neal 6y ago
    "...he's allowed a community to build around him that views iq heritability as the main essentialist frame with which to view the world" This is complete nonsense. Anyone who has read SSC knows that both Scott Alexander's posts and the comments cover a very wide range of topics. Occasional mentions of scientific views of human biology that don't fit your ideological preconceptions are a dominant part of the blog/community only in your distorted perceptions.
    • deleuze 6y ago
      I read this as "occasional dalliances with race realism are acceptable because he talks about other topics."
      • radford-neal 6y ago
        No. It means that anyone who is not a hopeless ideologue knows that a just and humane society cannot be created on the basis of compelling people to assert things that anyone sane understands are simply not true.
        • deleuze 6y ago
          > cannot be created on the basis of compelling people to assert things that anyone sane understands are simply not true. Ah, so am I to understand here, that you are admitting you are a "race realist"?
      • svat 6y ago
• theptip 6y ago
  (Meta) I’m curious why this isn’t on the front page, given the number of upvotes. Has this been flagged or is it in some way being hidden?
• matteoyang 6y ago
  I can see
• vogon_laureate 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/gary_weiss/status/1275879266450919427?s=19 https://twitter.com/gary_weiss/status/1275879266450919427?s=...
• fallenpegasus 6y ago
  Of interest, about that particular NYT journalist: https://medium.com/@garyweiss_86200/cade-metz-pulls-a-deep-capture-on-slate-star-codex-da649e8efe7 https://medium.com/@garyweiss_86200/cade-metz-pulls-a-deep-c...
• sukilot 6y ago
  Wishful Anti-Doxxing is untenable. The arc of technology is destroying the concept of anonymity. The only hope for avoiding the harm of doxxing is to create a society where being known isn't harmful or every single person is prevented from doxxing (not merely punished, though that may be part of a solution.) It's also not clear to me that someone with such a huge public audience deserves anonymity. Scott had a choice -- he could post anonymously to message boards and not be exposed to doxxing. But he chose to cultivate fame. And he used two-thirds of his real name and his publicly licensed profession.
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