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

newyorker.com

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

#141

Post by mrkurt »

baddox wrote: post #129
chrchang523 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That seems at best a very narrow sense of "doxxing." If his name is for all practical purposes already public, and he just does not want readers of a specific newspaper to see his name mentioned, does that really count as "doxxing?"

It shouldn't. It's so weird that the outrage just ... glosses over that.

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

#142

Post by memexy »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #139
memexy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> What is the summary? Ugly? If so then I agree, SSC was an ugly place. And yet, the original context of you asking what was ugly was > Your points are valid but what is the point of calling the article ugly? You somehow managed to forget your own comment in the space of a few minutes.

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

#143

Post by jdminhbg »

memexy wrote: post #99
MattGaiser wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is essentially a summary of their opinion.

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> If you read his last letter he clearly intended to rile up his followers into a frenzy and get them to attack the reporter that was going to write the piece.

He didn't even name the reporter in his last post, much less ask people to attack him.

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

#144

Post by eqvinox »

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 does strike me as ugly because there's just one "off" piece after the other.

The thing about hiding posts from reporters while they know there's an ebook.

Saying the NYT "isn't about clicks" while most of the news industry is drowning.

Arguing that "de-anonymizing" Scott shouldn't be a problem because it was easy for them to do.

Arguing that Scott should've expected unruly people to contact the NYT while drawing a complete blank that that's exactly what Scott would've been facing, except with possible physical violence rather than angry e-mails...

There's more but I'm lazy. My "wat?s per minute" were significantly above average. It went far enough for me to call it "ugly."

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

#145

Post by Tyr42 »

NicolasGorden wrote: post #45
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's disingenuous, he knows the blog posts are compiled into an ebook and says as much.

He also quotes extensively from SSC, so he clearly has an archived version of it open.

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

#146

Post by TulliusCicero »

memexy wrote: post #142
TulliusCicero wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the summary? Ugly? If so then I agree, SSC was an ugly place. And yet, the original context of you asking what was ugly was > Your points are valid but what is the point of calling the article ugly? You somehow managed to forget your own comment in the space of a few minutes.

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I'm not the one who called it ugly.

I'm just pointing out that you either forgot your own comment, or were using a weird rhetorical trick where you pretend that the other commenter was calling the blog ugly, instead of the article.

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

#147

Post by anoncareer0212 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #132
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #102

> so the reporter is either stupid or disingenuous IMO your comment would be better without the ad-hominems > anyone expressing heterodox opinions is likely to write something that a reporter working for a mainstream outlet considers "a creditable reason for negative coverage" I get that you're angry, but this is unsubstantiated by anything you or the article says.

> ad-hominems That's not what an ad hominem is. The word you're looking for is "insult".

you're the 3rd reply saying this so I don't have much hope of fighting the crowd, but, this is pretty much as ad hominem as it gets. The reasoning provides two and only two options for which flaw the speaker exhibits as evidence for the argument

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

#148

Post by Natsu »

charia wrote: post #97
isoprophlex wrote: post #6

NYT can talk a big talk but... if your source wants to remain anonymous, why still expose them? What a sorry excuse for journalism.

This is a mistake in the understanding of the situation. The NYTimes and all major press outlets anonymize sources. For example for this article, the NYTimes journalist gave people who spoke with him about SSC the choice to remain anonymous. The article was going to frame Scott as a subject. The real debate is if subjects of articles also deserve full anonymity. The NYTimes' policy is to generally not give subjects a…

No, this part of the situation is both well known and already rebutted. Look at ggreer's comment up thread. They've made multiple exceptions to this policy in the past.

The harm to Scott's patients and their ability to have continuity of care alone should outweigh any supposed interest in needing to know the man behind the pseudonym when the writing under the pseudonym is all that's relevant here.

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

#149

Post by haberman »

> The Times, although its policy permits exceptions for a variety of reasons, errs on the side of the transparency and accountability that accompany the use of real names. S.S.C. supporters on Twitter were quick to identify some of the Times’ recent concessions to pseudonymous quotation—Virgil Texas, a co-host of the podcast “Chapo Trap House,” was mentioned, as were Banksy and a member of isis—as if these supposed inconsistencies were dispositive proof of the paper’s secret agenda, rather than an ad-hoc and perhaps clumsy application of a flexible policy. Had the issue been with Facebook and its contentious moderation policies, which are applied in a similarly ad-hoc and sometimes clumsy way, the reaction in Silicon Valley would likely have been more magnanimous.

This is a weak defense. What is the actual rationale for doxxing a blogger over their vigorous objection? How do you actually justify this decision on the merits?

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

#150

Post by [deleted] »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #146
memexy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I'm not the one who called it ugly. I'm just pointing out that you either forgot your own comment, or were using a weird rhetorical trick where you pretend that the other commenter was calling the blog ugly, instead of the article.

[deleted]
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