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.
I Am Deleting the Blog
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen moral fashions. What's happening now is bigger, rarer and worse. It's known as a "purity spiral" (Haynes), "mass movement" (Hoffer), "political religion" (Voegelin).
It's unclear which country and which side of the spectrum you're referring to. This is why I like to use science as a guide (not a decision point), for then there is a chance to be self-correcting.
Why is this comment being downvoted?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#503People 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.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#504Reading 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…
This self censorship is most often meant when someone criticizes political correctness. It doesn't mean that you should unnecessarily put people off with inflammatory language. But I think it could still get you fired if posted on Twitter, at least a few years ago. Some people with especially large incomes seem to be immune though.
Hah, yes, like JK Rowling! If you are a self made billionaire, you are pretty immune from the twitter mobs, and can make controversial statements such as "there are only two genders."
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#505If 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…
Do you guys really feel that you're on the right side of history by harassing an investigative journalist?
Harassing?
Investigative?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#506Reading 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…
Where can one go to learn these controversial truths? I would love to see a list of these facts that apparently only insiders can talk about. Are they literally so confronting/offensive that they don’t exist on the internet?
It's not the "truth" and the "facts" that people are afraid to discuss. It's their opinions about truth and facts.
When you see phrases like "wrong/right side of history" and you see things happening like mass cancellation of brands or people for their opinions, you are seeing it. When a police officer is immediately fired and then charged with murder for performing his job the way he was trained to do it, you are seeing people fear the mob more than they care about the truth.
JK Rowling and Terry Crews are two famous people that come to mind who recently stated unpopular opinions and were attacked by mobs of people. There was no desire on the part of the mob to look for logical reasons for someone to have a valid opinion that differs from the mainstream.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say this forum is exactly this. How often have I self censored because I just don't want the downvotes?
This feels like an instance of negativity-bias. If you're willing to self-censor to avoid downvotes shouldn't you also be willing to shill / virtue signal for upvotes? My problem with downvotes isn't the effect on my score. It's the fact that the font becomes paler. Dissenting opinions are singled out in a way that makes them look bad/wrong. I also don't like how the UX doesn't represent the distribution. A post with…
What about if you have say 7 downvoted comments in a row, you might be shadowbanned [forever]?
That seems much worse. As well as not being transparent at all.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#508Reading 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…
Paul's post has always felt like a wordy defense of the "well, actually". Lots of us passionate techies like to weigh in on every topic and forget that not everything is academic. Sometimes the world doesn't need to hear our opinion. That doesn't mean we're being censored.
Do you think regular people out there who are not experts in housing, policing, government, economics should remain silent and not express opinions on things they don’t have insight to?
Everyone has a right to express their opinion even on topics they are woefully unqualified for. Including clueless techies.
The only instance I agree is when celebrities spout opinions as fact (or promote a pet diet or cause) only because it could send millions of people on wild goose chases. That said it’s more of a wish and really not a desire to censor them.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#509Some 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.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#510Reading 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…
I'd say this forum is exactly this. How often have I self censored because I just don't want the downvotes?
I self censor for a different reason. What if someone decides to find that one political comment I made few years ago after I am back on my legs again to drown me?
What I have learned from struggling a lot with issues normal people don't face (at least going by majority) is that we are all toxic to each other. Some things are more visible and easily understandable for others while many aren't. It may feel pretty shitty for a disabled person inside a room of normal people complaining about very trivial things and calling for others to become disabled as a joke. Some autism jokes may actually invoke sad memories for others. But there are groups of young people who do all those and don't think it is toxic. Joking about depression is another. There are many examples where line of toxicity isn't so visible for a specific majority.
People have difficulty imagining the scale of time and when that difficulty helps them form a tribalistic decision to justify their own biases, it's much more easier to do that than fight against the urge.
The rise of short attention span only means people are much less empathetic than they seem to think they are by social media.
It's only my opinion but an empathetic person will look beyond that this person has some horrible political opinions and I want to run a witch hunt. A tweet out of 20k tweets in isolation doesn't say much about the person especially if it's old. They might be having a bad day, may want attention and said something controversial to get it. Maybe they do have medical problems (I know I do, I am on meds and my behavior changes a lot). And even if that person is officially shitty, I don't see why would you try to burn their house. It's ok to inform others but what's the point of attacking someone that they think "nobody" cares about them?
If nobody cares about improving those people, then they might as well become too extreme in their opinion. If nobody wants to hear them, they might as well be racist. We all strive for connection and the reason why we don't want discrimination to exist is we don't want to lose our ability to interact with people we care about. If all racists can get are other racist people or no one, why would they change?
Side note, most if not all outrage on social media (esp twitter and youtube) seems to be created by sufficiently motivated individuals. It's as obvious as a bright sky. So I wonder if you can live sharing your opinions while not getting bad side on one of those twitter mob groups.