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Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

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Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#61

Post by twic »

mrkurt wrote: post #32
whatshisface wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your last name? I think an extremely small fraction of the accounts here would want to tell people their full real life names.

My last name is easy to find. My first name is Kurt, I live in Chicago, I work on startups. I've published with my last name within the last decade. Scott Alexander's last name is also easy to find. His first name is Scott, his middle name is Alexander, he's a psychiatrist, and he lives in Michigan. This is all information he publicized. And he has also published under his last name, even on SSC, within the last deca…

Scott Alexander wasn't worried about readers of Slate Star Codex finding out his real name, he was worried about patients who knew his real name finding Slate Star Codex. Using a pseudonym on the blog was a reasonably effective trapdoor function.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#62

Post by 627467 »

whatshisface wrote: post #20
alex_young wrote: post #13

Can you really be both a public figure and keep your identity hidden by way of asking? There’s a playbook for this. Look at Banksy for example. If you don’t want your identity out there it’s your job to protect it. Not the New York Times.

Banksy is an interesting example because the NYT probably does know who he is. It's not that much of a secret.

Yeah, that's why now I want to know what NYT had to write about SSC that "required doxxing the source against their will".

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#63

Post by JoblessWonder »

tripletao wrote: post #28

What an ugly article. A couple quotes: > It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage. The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either…

FWIW, the Internet Archive is willing to remove content if you can prove you are the owner and request it using the proper methods.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#64

Post by undefined1 »

modeless wrote: post #31
alex_young wrote: post #13

Can you really be both a public figure and keep your identity hidden by way of asking? There’s a playbook for this. Look at Banksy for example. If you don’t want your identity out there it’s your job to protect it. Not the New York Times.

Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page for anyone who really wants to know. I think NYT and other media are keeping him "anonymous" by way of asking. They could easily publish his name if they wanted. Unlike SSC, Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing along. The only truly anonymous public figure I'm aware of is Satoshi Nakamoto and I'm pretty sure that the only…

> Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page

Maybe, but it's not confirmed.

"Banksy's name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy#Personal_life_and_dis...

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#65

Post by luckylion »

atdrummond wrote: post #23
TulliusCicero wrote: post #12

> For one thing, the S.S.C. code prioritizes semantic precision, but Metz—if Alexander’s account is to be taken at its word—had proposed not to “doxx” Alexander but to de-anonymize him. Oh? From Wikipedia: > Doxing, or doxxing (from "dox", abbreviation of documents), is the Internet-based practice of researching and publicly broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying informatio…

It seems the goal lines have been moved to KiwiFarms’ brand of doxxing. As to whose ends that serves, I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader.

Have they? The real name of anyone posting anonymously or under a pseudonym has always been the gold standard of doxxing.

It's usually easy to go from full real name to business and private addresses, emails and phone numbers, especially when the person has a web presence, but also for anyone with a few bucks to spare who's happy to pay a data broker.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#66

Post by michaelt »

commandlinefan wrote: post #3

Not that the NYT has any business printing somebody's name who doesn't want it to be printed, but I kind of feel like he had been looking for an excuse to shut down the blog for a while - it had been a long time since any of his posts really felt inspired like they were even a year ago. This gives him an excuse to make a clean break.

> Not that the NYT has any business printing somebody's name who doesn't want it to be printed,

I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Surely newspapers should be able to name Brock Turner or Donald Trump no matter how much they'd dislike that?

At the very least, we'd have to be able to articulate some line that Scott Alexander was on the other side of.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#67

Post by charia »

mrkurt wrote: post #24
atdrummond wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this canceling occurring? I saw quite a few people here, as well as the two SSC subreddits, going out of their way to encourage polite outreach to the editor and to avoid antagonizing the actual author. So far as to discourage the naming of the author. Not denying it may be happening, it just does not seem to jive with the majority response (in my bubble).

I'm not sure how directly the cancelling is affiliated with SSC, but the #ghostnyt hashtag is a pretty good cancellation motion. The only thing that's really reached my bubble has been outrage and cancellation, though. https://twitter.com/hashtag/ghostnyt

I'm fairly sure that #ghostnyt was a reaction to the NYTimes airing of the Tom Cotton op-ed. I don't doubt that some SSC fans latched onto it, but I'd be surprised if even a third of those using #ghostnyt were from SSC aligned people.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#68

Post by hirundo »

> This plea ... in this case, it seemed to lend plausible deniability to what he surely knew would be taken as incitement.

That's unfair given that the alternative was supine acceptance. He made a good faith attempt to amplify his reasonable criticism while leashing the inevitable jerks. Can the author of this article say as much?

This is a formula to silence any popular speaker by association. Here's a dangerous person who listens to you, therefore you lose the right to complain in public.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#69

Post by zozbot234 »

ajkjk wrote: post #49
tripletao wrote: post #28

What an ugly article. A couple quotes: > It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage. The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either…

It didn't strike me as ugly as all.

It's definitely a bit ugly (perhaps most clearly so wrt. SA's broadly sensible defense of Scott Aaronson being described as an angry "screed" against feminism) but overall, it's as fair a treatment of SSC as could appear in the elite media at this point.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#70

Post by chrchang523 »

dondawest wrote: post #22
commandlinefan wrote: post #3

Not that the NYT has any business printing somebody's name who doesn't want it to be printed, but I kind of feel like he had been looking for an excuse to shut down the blog for a while - it had been a long time since any of his posts really felt inspired like they were even a year ago. This gives him an excuse to make a clean break.

I’m genuinely surprised that getting doxxed wasn’t part of his playbook. It’s not like he went to the greatest of lengths to hide his identity, Bay Area psychiatrists named Scott is a pretty small pool of people. This is pure speculation but my hunch is that the Scott Alexander of a few years ago wouldn’t care about being doxxed. I agree with your take on this. Become a well known writer on the internet and doom your…

"It’s not like he went to the greatest of lengths to hide his identity, Bay Area psychiatrists named Scott is a pretty small pool of people."

This is a misunderstanding. He was not trying to prevent "Scott Alexander" -> real name inferences. He was only trying to limit the rate of incidental inferences in the other direction; the primary effect of greatly increasing that rate is to harm his professional life.

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