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Update on My Situation

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Re: Update on My Situation

#101

Post by edanm »

edbob wrote: post #97
pas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the promises that are problematic. The long term plans and interests of Substack are not so well aligned with Scott's. Every future development has to either treat him as a special snowflake (so they have to implement a VIP tier) or eventually bulldoze every perk of his blog back into uniformity. I don't understand why doesn't he goes full patreon.

If cancel culture is causing him problems, then Patreon is the last place he wants to be.

Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.

Re: Update on My Situation

#102

Post by stevenwliao »

pas wrote: post #94
stevenwliao wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimal for maximizing the chance of the publicity going away and him continuing his job status quo. Most people aren't going to write about a dead blog. This solution is fine now that there's no chance.

But the blog is very important for him, just as psychiatry.

Yes, but we can infer from his initial actions that he preferred keeping his job over maintaining the blog.

Re: Update on My Situation

#103

Post by BTCOG »

divbzero wrote: post #15
stevenwliao wrote: post #12

So the lesson for those who maintain anonymous or pseudo-anonymous identities online- As your pseudonym's popularity grows, chances increase that someone will be interested in unmasking your identity. The only solutions are to reduce your pseudonym's visibility or staying fully anonymous in the first place.

Incredibly sad but true. There seems to be two opposing imperatives for online social identity. On one hand you want reputation and accountability for what people say to fight trolling, bullying, and misinformation. On the other hand you want some level of anonymity to encourage free speech and expression. I don’t know if this core tension can ever be fully resolved but our current online environment is clearly far f…

It's not sad at all, it's the nature of the beast. Nobody should ever be making all their real life identity and actions public online. Doing so is incredibly vapid and irresponsible. The internet still is for consuming information, and regardless of if 5 billion people do the incorrect thing or not, should not be used as a popularity contest gambling with one's real life identity.

Re: Update on My Situation

#104

Post by BTCOG »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #78
divbzero wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredibly sad but true. There seems to be two opposing imperatives for online social identity. On one hand you want reputation and accountability for what people say to fight trolling, bullying, and misinformation. On the other hand you want some level of anonymity to encourage free speech and expression. I don’t know if this core tension can ever be fully resolved but our current online environment is clearly far f…

This is a solved problem, just rarely implemented in real life on a large scale. Karma systems. You can be anonymous and at he same time have some valuable history of past interactions. Slashdot, Stack Overflow, etc. are good examples.

And yes, this is how all online interaction should work. Similar to other PGP pseudonymous internet identity. The world needs the 1990's identity segregation via handles once again. Social media is a fad that simply brings out negative.

Re: Update on My Situation

#105

Post by glial »

mindfulhack wrote: post #60

> At this point I think maintaining anonymity is a losing battle. > I may start my own private practice, where I’m my own boss and where I can focus on medication management – and not the kinds of psychotherapy that I’m most worried are ethically incompatible with being a public figure. This is why privacy is important - to maintain boundaries between different parts of your life, like work and personal. We are all c…

I wish people downvoting you would explain why. Your comment seems eminently reasonable to me, but there are no replies to it.

Re: Update on My Situation

#106

Post by edbob »

edanm wrote: post #101
edbob wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cancel culture is causing him problems, then Patreon is the last place he wants to be.

Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.

He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.

Re: Update on My Situation

#107

Post by MrLeap »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #45
dragonwriter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These days it might be possible to "cancel" someone for something that they didn't even say/do It always has been. And, often the “cancelling” has been total and irreversible, not, as it often is with the “cancel culture” of recent complaints, just a reduction in current popularity with a particular segment of society (frequently accompanied by profitable celebrity status with an opposing and at least roughly equiv…

>> These days it might be possible to "cancel" someone for something that they didn't even say/do > It always has been. This is a significant plot point in Musashi . ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musashi_(novel) )

I really loved this book. He was cancelled so thoroughly he had to change his name, and people were STILL trying to dox him, 500 pages later.

Re: Update on My Situation

#108

Post by motohagiography »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #34
motohagiography wrote: post #24

Sad that Alexander has had to leave his job because some petulant reporter thought he was a sufficiently public figure for a takedown, but good for him and Substack for making sure he landed on his feet. A personal hit job by one of the most powerful institutions on the planet (or rather, their mouthpiece) is no small life event.

It doesn't appear that's true, unfortunately - there's no takedown or article :/ As he notes, it was essentially the Streisand effect.

So far he has averted the one that he removed his blog over, and in response, someone else did one instead. It's like there is a war on truth itself or something. I recommend looking the article up.

Re: Update on My Situation

#109

Post by edanm »

edbob wrote: post #106
edanm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.

He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.

I mean, Scott himself says that there was no ill intent on NYT's part.

I don't consider this a part of cancel culture because there was no specific attempt to cancel him.

Re: Update on My Situation

#110

Post by edbob »

edanm wrote: post #109
edbob wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.

I mean, Scott himself says that there was no ill intent on NYT's part. I don't consider this a part of cancel culture because there was no specific attempt to cancel him.

From the original article, "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog" "Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me." "I’m not sure what happens next. In my ideal world, the New York Times realizes they screwed up, promises not to use my real name in the article, and promises to rethink their strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks."

So maybe he's saying that the Times doesn't realize they screwed up, so there's no "ill intent". But in my moral system, if you know you are causing serious harm to an innocent person for no good reason but are so callous that you don't even care, you are still responsible for that harm.

I don't want to split hairs over cultural terms. I will accept your definitions for you.

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