I Am Deleting the Blog • Hacker News Board

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#841

Post by Veen » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

cuspycode wrote: post #838

holtalanm wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been this way for a while. Outrage/cancel culture is an absolute pox upon our population that really needs to stop.

I am very likely naive in these circumstances, but I honestly don't understand how cancel culture can work at all. So there are some voices on twitter who loudly express their immature mob mentality. Why don't all the sane people just block them and ignore them, and then go on with their lives as if nothing happened?

If it was just a few voices on Twitter, it would be less of a problem. But it's also journalists, academics, grievance entrepreneurs of various stripes — all of whom exert an influence on the general public. It's businesses that don't want to get on the wrong side of those people. And it's employees of those businesses who don't want to get fired.

"Cancel culture" is just a new spin on scapegoating, behavioral contagion, and public shaming, all of which have a very long history.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#842

Post by travmatt » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

dbt00 wrote: post #335

dmix wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW the publisher/top editor of NYTimes changed in 2017 and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger's [1] stepped down letting his son AG Sulzberger take over [2]. This is around the time it started becoming really clickbaity and 24/7 news channel level intentionally misrepresenting or spinning stories for reactions. I believe his father took on a more old school approach to keeping the news as neutral as possible, while still havin…

I mean, the NYT during the Clinton and Bush years was hardly some golden age of journalism. Off the top of my head, there was Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, the Jayson Blair thing, and the Judith Miller / Curveball / Iraq war stuff.

You didn’t even mention their piece de resistance - killing a story on a nationwide illegal mass surveillance program, then being scooped by their own reporter years later as he’s publishing his story on how the NYT is complicit in keeping the program out of view of the public. I’ve personally lost faith in the NYT and prefer other papers of record in the US.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#843

Post by kopochameleon » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:51 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #543

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…

Interestingly in https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/women-gaming-stream... from today they seem to possibly withhold discoverable legal names:

> (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#844

Post by kelnos » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #616

alecbenzer wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?

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.

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?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#845

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #824

derefr wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 affecti…

> 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 cours…

I don't think that's it. HN trains its users for that by means of culture voting interesting things - because such tangential comments and resulting discussions are often much more interesting than the submitted article.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#846

Post by gilbetron » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

lhnz wrote: post #614

gringoDan wrote: post #394

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…

The events of the last 4 years, make it clear to me that we are rapidly heading towards totalitarianism. I finally understand the answer to the childhood question of "But, how could this every happen here?" that used to be an automatic response to being taught about awful events in history. When there is extreme moral certainty about societal problems, people can feel that for the problems to be dealt with they will…

> The events of the last 4 years, make it clear to me that we are rapidly heading towards totalitarianism.

Question is, what totalitarianism do you think we're headed towards? Trump/MAGA totalitarianism or Left/Cancel culture totalitarianism?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#847

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

mshron wrote: post #642

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: "T…

Scott has been harassed by cancellers for years. It's a well-documented history, which was a serious issue for him and led to banning culture war topics in SSC-affiliated reddit section. There are still people and AFAIK organized communities on Reddit that target him. There were calls to his employers to get him fired and to friends to get them socially shunned.

Now imagine how much more of this one would get if their real name (and, by extension, address, employer, family, etc.) is published by NYT and easily accessible to anyone with rudimentary typing skills. Cancel culture is not the reason for NYT doxxing, but it makes the doxxing orders of magnitude more dangerous. And NYT must know that.

Yes, there are also random crazies. But I don't think I've read any storied about random crazies getting people fired from their jobs. I've read the last one about cancel culture doing that today. And have been reading them almost daily for a while.

> The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.

It can be both.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#848

Post by foob4r » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #814

catacombs wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story. If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional. I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.

Regardless, revealing someone's real name is orthogonal to clicks or ad revenue.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#849

Post by jazzyk » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:01 PM UTC

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?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#850

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

nogabebop23 wrote: post #607

holtalanm wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been this way for a while. Outrage/cancel culture is an absolute pox upon our population that really needs to stop.

Isn't a large part of this down to the forum of communication vs. the level of discourse? I mean, if you want to have a nuanced, balanced discussion about a potentially sensitive topic you just can't do that on twtter, SMS, message board, etc. Even on HN you see issues and that's will pretty tight tribal norms, moderation and topics where commenters aren't usually deeply or emotionally involved. I agree with your ove…

I think if by some divine miracle Twitter disappeared and some mysterious supernatural force prevented re-creating it by any means - our culture probably would be much better off. There are some excellent people on Twitter but by now they're just giving legitimacy to the cesspool. Twitter adds nothing to them and they'd be as well - probably much better - on a different platform.