6 ms·

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.
  - kerkeslager 6y ago
    I think any amount of money from advertisers is toxic. There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
    - philh 6y ago
      > getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). Not fundamentally. A lot of advertising may be well be outright lying, or close enough as makes no difference. But... I used to go by a shop named "Cards Galore", it had its name in reasonably sized letters hanging over the sidewalk, and then when I wanted to buy a card I knew where I could get one. Nothing lying about that. I think there's a lot of advertising which is like that. Something weaker might be true, like "large-scale advertising will inevitably lead to large-scale lying". But "advertising is fundamentally lying" is not true.
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        I don't really consider labeling a business to be advertising, though. That's like if I go to Wikipedia and see the Wikipedia logo--it's just showing me where I am. Internet advertising is pretty much all lying. Even when what an ad says is factual, they're not telling you the whole truth, they're telling you a partial truth that leaves out pieces of information which they know would be relevant to you--that's a lie because their intent is to deceive you. And by the way, I do get it: in a lot of businesses you have to advertise because your competitors are advertising. Advertising is a blight on society that infects everyone: opting out of advertising isn't a viable option without major sacrifice. I'd like to see a future where we all agree to stop advertising and rely on consumer-reports-style reviewers to obtain unbiased product information.
        20after4 6y ago
        Reviews are also advertising. They are usually, if not always, biased.
      - kelnos 6y ago
        While there's a good amount of advertising that's truthful, I think it's safe to label all (or at least nearly all) advertising as emotional manipulation, and on those grounds I try to avoid advertising. Companies toying with my psychology in order to get me to buy something from them... well, that doesn't sit well with me.
    - osmarks 6y ago
      SlateStarCodex itself used to have advertisers on it, and the adverts seemed pretty much fine - just banners and descriptions from a bunch of sponsors, which were pretty relevant to the blog and, I guess, the people likely to visit it. Advertisement doesn't have to lie, it can just provide useful information you haven't seen yet. Although it generally does.
      - kerkeslager 6y ago
        Advertising is like a stopped clock: even when they present some part of the truth, it's not information, because you don't know if it's true or not. You have to obtain information via other means. And even when they make statements of fact, it's still lying because they leave things out with the intent to deceive.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > Advertisement doesn't have to lie, it can just provide useful information you haven't seen yet. Although it generally does. That's the crux, though. It technically doesn't have to be like this, but it almost always is - so "advertising is a bunch of consumer-hostile lies" is a more accurate generalization than "advertising informs people".
  - vlthr 6y ago
    I take the point about subscribers being hard to count to mean that even though most of the money comes from subscribers, each individual subscriber doesn't have much leverage or bandwidth to communicate their desires to NYT. On the flip side, each individual advertiser commands some sizeable chunk of NYT's revenue as leverage.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      The NYTs is also known to hassle subscribers who want to unsubscribe. The only reason a company would do that is because they know some people will give up, effectively disenfranchising them.
      - quickpost123 6y ago
        Anecdotally, it took ten minutes to unsusbscribe this morning (going through an online chat service rather than calling them), which is much longer than it should take, but worth it. It may be worse now due to this incident.
        catalogia 6y ago
        I think it's beyond the pale that they require you to chat with a sales representative to cancel a subscription. To reiterate, the only reason a company would do this is because they know it will suppress the number of people successfully unsubscribing. The NYTs is using the same sort of strategy commercial gyms are infamous for, albeit in a less extreme form. Contrast it with Netflix's model of unsubscription, which you can do at any time with a single click. They've even gone as far as automatically cancelling inactive accounts. Netflix is obviously a company with confidence in their own product, so they don't resort to any dark patterns in their unsubscription process like the NYTs does.
        quickpost123 6y ago
        Strongly agree. My original plan on unsubscribing was to come back if they blinked on SlateStarCodex (everyone makes mistakes), but after being made to jump through these extra hoops, I'm through with this company.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I think it's equally plausible that the NYT believes that doxxing sources does serve their readers. Perhaps a significant portion of the NYT's paying subscribers are against anonymity in sources? Who knows. Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
- notatoad 6y ago
  >NYT doxxes sources not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
  - WalterSear 6y ago
    I understood article subject to be social groups during Covid.
  - LoSboccacc 6y ago
    the object of the article is an intentionally anonymous blog tho
gwbas1c 6y ago
I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.
- catacombs 6y ago
  Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession. In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story. Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.
  - gwern 6y ago
    Using anonymous sources to relay secret information like government insiders is very different from public pseudonymous writers. 'Scott Alexander' is of interest only as 'Scott Alexander'; he is famous for writing as 'Scott Alexander'; if you want to find criticism of Scott Alexander, you will find it by asking people about 'Scott Alexander'; and he blogs about general topics with reference to publicly verifiable things like scientific research, as opposed to focusing solely on his anecdotal experience; what does knowing his real name add or let a journalist verify? Does it somehow let you verify that he does in fact blog at SSC...? (Yes, he sometimes talks about his psychiatric patients, but like all psychiatrists, he blends and tweaks stories to protect his patients, and knowing his real name is John Smith gives you no more way of verifying said stories than when they were written by 'Scott Alexander'.)
    - zaroth 6y ago
      It’s even worse than not having his name being irrelevant. By forcing the issue the NYT has now become the story. Whatever piece the NYT originally wanted to write is now subsumed by their own actions. I am not a journalist, but I have to imagine that “don’t become the story” is pretty high up on the list of journalistic ideals. When it’s someone the NYT feels they want to protect, they will go to any length, even jail time, to protect them. It’s very hard for me not to conclude ill intent on behalf of the NYT in wanting to draw fire toward SSC based on Scott’s ideology. Asking the question “why this story now” in the current hyper-partisan and cancel-rage environment brings me to one obvious conclusion even though Scott himself doesn’t make such a leap.
catacombs 6y ago
> The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers? This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story. Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures based on names.
- crazypython 6y ago
  Well, in that case, the journalists should adapt and give credibility through pseudonymity.
  - catacombs 6y ago
    Which is possible through the use of other sources. But it depends on the situation. A pseudonym is appropriate for victims of sex crimes and exploitation.
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Anonymity and/or pseudonym are appropriate in certain situations. In this situation, you have a source you know which is credible (you know their name), and they ask you not to publish their name. In such a case, it is standard journalist ethics in The Netherlands to not disclose the name. Sex crimes and exploitation are two (good) examples of such, but there are other examples as well. Consider for example a whistle blower, a (former) member of a cult, or -to put it generally- someone who can, realistically, be threatened when their real name is released. Such is the very case here. I am in awe that The New York Times does not adhere to the very same principles as the Dutch media do, although I am aware that the vow has been broken here as well (such as in the case of Rob Oudkerk and Parool's Heleen van Royen).
      - catacombs 6y ago
        > In such a case, it is standard journalist ethics in The Netherlands to not disclose the name. That's in The Netherlands, a country with different laws and regulations for the press. This case is specific to the United States, with its own rules and protections.
nillium 6y ago
Advertisers do not directly care about real names. What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.
- lvh 6y ago
  An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details. In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence. These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion. There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave). I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around. There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
closeparen 6y ago
Generally it's anonymous sources who tell the wild and not-necessarily-true stories that drive clicks. A policy limiting their use is intended to make the publication more sober. But that's supposed to happen by just not printing the story. Outing people who don't want to be outed is something else.

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.
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  I think any amount of money from advertisers is toxic. There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
  - philh 6y ago
    > getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). Not fundamentally. A lot of advertising may be well be outright lying, or close enough as makes no difference. But... I used to go by a shop named "Cards Galore", it had its name in reasonably sized letters hanging over the sidewalk, and then when I wanted to buy a card I knew where I could get one. Nothing lying about that. I think there's a lot of advertising which is like that. Something weaker might be true, like "large-scale advertising will inevitably lead to large-scale lying". But "advertising is fundamentally lying" is not true.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      I don't really consider labeling a business to be advertising, though. That's like if I go to Wikipedia and see the Wikipedia logo--it's just showing me where I am. Internet advertising is pretty much all lying. Even when what an ad says is factual, they're not telling you the whole truth, they're telling you a partial truth that leaves out pieces of information which they know would be relevant to you--that's a lie because their intent is to deceive you. And by the way, I do get it: in a lot of businesses you have to advertise because your competitors are advertising. Advertising is a blight on society that infects everyone: opting out of advertising isn't a viable option without major sacrifice. I'd like to see a future where we all agree to stop advertising and rely on consumer-reports-style reviewers to obtain unbiased product information.
      - 20after4 6y ago
        Reviews are also advertising. They are usually, if not always, biased.
    - kelnos 6y ago
      While there's a good amount of advertising that's truthful, I think it's safe to label all (or at least nearly all) advertising as emotional manipulation, and on those grounds I try to avoid advertising. Companies toying with my psychology in order to get me to buy something from them... well, that doesn't sit well with me.
  - osmarks 6y ago
    SlateStarCodex itself used to have advertisers on it, and the adverts seemed pretty much fine - just banners and descriptions from a bunch of sponsors, which were pretty relevant to the blog and, I guess, the people likely to visit it. Advertisement doesn't have to lie, it can just provide useful information you haven't seen yet. Although it generally does.
    - kerkeslager 6y ago
      Advertising is like a stopped clock: even when they present some part of the truth, it's not information, because you don't know if it's true or not. You have to obtain information via other means. And even when they make statements of fact, it's still lying because they leave things out with the intent to deceive.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > Advertisement doesn't have to lie, it can just provide useful information you haven't seen yet. Although it generally does. That's the crux, though. It technically doesn't have to be like this, but it almost always is - so "advertising is a bunch of consumer-hostile lies" is a more accurate generalization than "advertising informs people".
- vlthr 6y ago
  I take the point about subscribers being hard to count to mean that even though most of the money comes from subscribers, each individual subscriber doesn't have much leverage or bandwidth to communicate their desires to NYT. On the flip side, each individual advertiser commands some sizeable chunk of NYT's revenue as leverage.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    The NYTs is also known to hassle subscribers who want to unsubscribe. The only reason a company would do that is because they know some people will give up, effectively disenfranchising them.
    - quickpost123 6y ago
      Anecdotally, it took ten minutes to unsusbscribe this morning (going through an online chat service rather than calling them), which is much longer than it should take, but worth it. It may be worse now due to this incident.
      - catalogia 6y ago
        I think it's beyond the pale that they require you to chat with a sales representative to cancel a subscription. To reiterate, the only reason a company would do this is because they know it will suppress the number of people successfully unsubscribing. The NYTs is using the same sort of strategy commercial gyms are infamous for, albeit in a less extreme form. Contrast it with Netflix's model of unsubscription, which you can do at any time with a single click. They've even gone as far as automatically cancelling inactive accounts. Netflix is obviously a company with confidence in their own product, so they don't resort to any dark patterns in their unsubscription process like the NYTs does.
        quickpost123 6y ago
        Strongly agree. My original plan on unsubscribing was to come back if they blinked on SlateStarCodex (everyone makes mistakes), but after being made to jump through these extra hoops, I'm through with this company.
kelnos 6y ago
I think it's equally plausible that the NYT believes that doxxing sources does serve their readers. Perhaps a significant portion of the NYT's paying subscribers are against anonymity in sources? Who knows. Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
notatoad 6y ago
>NYT doxxes sources not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
- WalterSear 6y ago
  I understood article subject to be social groups during Covid.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  the object of the article is an intentionally anonymous blog tho

gwbas1c 6y ago

I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.

catacombs 6y ago
Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession. In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story. Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.
- gwern 6y ago
  Using anonymous sources to relay secret information like government insiders is very different from public pseudonymous writers. 'Scott Alexander' is of interest only as 'Scott Alexander'; he is famous for writing as 'Scott Alexander'; if you want to find criticism of Scott Alexander, you will find it by asking people about 'Scott Alexander'; and he blogs about general topics with reference to publicly verifiable things like scientific research, as opposed to focusing solely on his anecdotal experience; what does knowing his real name add or let a journalist verify? Does it somehow let you verify that he does in fact blog at SSC...? (Yes, he sometimes talks about his psychiatric patients, but like all psychiatrists, he blends and tweaks stories to protect his patients, and knowing his real name is John Smith gives you no more way of verifying said stories than when they were written by 'Scott Alexander'.)
  - zaroth 6y ago
    It’s even worse than not having his name being irrelevant. By forcing the issue the NYT has now become the story. Whatever piece the NYT originally wanted to write is now subsumed by their own actions. I am not a journalist, but I have to imagine that “don’t become the story” is pretty high up on the list of journalistic ideals. When it’s someone the NYT feels they want to protect, they will go to any length, even jail time, to protect them. It’s very hard for me not to conclude ill intent on behalf of the NYT in wanting to draw fire toward SSC based on Scott’s ideology. Asking the question “why this story now” in the current hyper-partisan and cancel-rage environment brings me to one obvious conclusion even though Scott himself doesn’t make such a leap.

catacombs 6y ago

> The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers? This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story. Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures based on names.

crazypython 6y ago
Well, in that case, the journalists should adapt and give credibility through pseudonymity.
- catacombs 6y ago
  Which is possible through the use of other sources. But it depends on the situation. A pseudonym is appropriate for victims of sex crimes and exploitation.
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    Anonymity and/or pseudonym are appropriate in certain situations. In this situation, you have a source you know which is credible (you know their name), and they ask you not to publish their name. In such a case, it is standard journalist ethics in The Netherlands to not disclose the name. Sex crimes and exploitation are two (good) examples of such, but there are other examples as well. Consider for example a whistle blower, a (former) member of a cult, or -to put it generally- someone who can, realistically, be threatened when their real name is released. Such is the very case here. I am in awe that The New York Times does not adhere to the very same principles as the Dutch media do, although I am aware that the vow has been broken here as well (such as in the case of Rob Oudkerk and Parool's Heleen van Royen).
    - catacombs 6y ago
      > In such a case, it is standard journalist ethics in The Netherlands to not disclose the name. That's in The Netherlands, a country with different laws and regulations for the press. This case is specific to the United States, with its own rules and protections.

nillium 6y ago

Advertisers do not directly care about real names. What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.

lvh 6y ago
An anonymous source seems materially different from a pseudonymous source, especially when that source is being quoted about their enormous body of work.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details. In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence. These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion. There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave). I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.

coffeemaniac 6y ago
The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around. There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

closeparen 6y ago

Generally it's anonymous sources who tell the wild and not-necessarily-true stories that drive clicks. A policy limiting their use is intended to make the publication more sober. But that's supposed to happen by just not printing the story. Outing people who don't want to be outed is something else.