Don't De-Anonymize Scott Alexander

https://www.dontdoxscottalexander.com/

by mxschumacher • 6 years ago

118 49 6 years ago

blondin• 6 years ago

i am having a hard time with this one. really. this is getting blown out of all proportions. seeing some names there is very surprising to me!

lhnz3• 6 years ago

He is constantly harrassed and smeared on Twitter so it's unsurprising that he doesn't want this turned up to 11 by the NYT.

vlz• 6 years ago

This seems to be the context:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

leadingthenet• 6 years ago

Noooooooooooooooo....

CuriousReader13• 6 years ago

Can anyone please ELI5 what this is about? What does the phrase "Slate Star Codex" mean? Now that all his blog posts were gone, what topics had he generally written about that attracted so much attention?

bobmaxup3• 6 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/sitemap/https://slatestarcodex.c...

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander

wizzwizz42• 6 years ago

The RationalWiki article isn't very good – they've got an axe to grind against him. There's some information, but treat it like it came out of 4chan.

IdiocyInAction• 6 years ago

He was a blogger who used to blog on controversial issues with somewhat heterodox opinions (not since 2017 anymore though) and generally blogged about interesting stuff, related to cognition and psychiatry; I was somewhat of a fan and thought he was a great writer. He attracted a large community, some of who were a bit, well, let's say "controversial", but it is also one of the most interesting communities I have ever encountered. He was part of the rationalist ideology/movement.

He also wrote Unsong, which is a very interesting work of fiction and blogged about various other stuff.

lhnz3• 6 years ago

An archive of his blog can be found here: https://twitter.com/Altimor/status/1275539748686163968

And a popular article was "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" although I think the non-political articles are actually far better (e.g. "My IRB Nightmare": https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VpJS0s...).

One of my favourite articles is actually a work of fiction ("The Proverbial Murder Mystery": https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KNe8Ic...).

mcphage3• 6 years ago

His short story “Sort by Controversial” was also quite excellent.

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

Scott said that the NYT was going to publish a piece containing his real name, so he deleted his blog (slate star codex) which at this is point famous.

Plot twist: Scott's real name has been easily findable for at least a year, based on his own words. So I don't understand why he went full nuclear.

It's also an assumption by everybody that the NYT article was going to be a hit piece, even though there's no evidence of that whatsoever. It was simply going to contain his real name. Scott didn't want that. Therefore Scott deleted his entire 5-8 year history because the big bad NYT was going to do something that Scott didn't like that totally wouldn't impact his life anyway.

Look, I'm a big proponent of anonymity. Heck, I was pseudonymous for years. Sometimes there are valid reasons. But often, it becomes a perpetual thing of "I'm doing this for the sake of doing it, not because people are out to get me."

Scott also recently published a piece raising questions about racism (a good piece, worth reading, but nonetheless ruffled some feathers). So this is possibly a well-timed deflection move.

kreetx• 6 years ago

Read the single article on his blog, he is not anywhere near fully nuclear. He's just playing a fair game with them, helping NYT "be more considerate". What would they get from this real name policy anyway?

Secondly, the content is not gone, just hidden (and probably reachable elsewhere).

mcphage3• 6 years ago

Plot twist: Scott's real name has been easily findable for at least a year, based on his own words. So I don't understand why he went full nuclear.

He pointed out that there’s a difference between googleable by looking up someone’s words, where you have to do a bit of work to find it, and it being published in the NYT.

It's also an assumption by everybody that the NYT article was going to be a hit piece, even though there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

Is that the assumption? Again, going by his words (as well as others who were interviewed for it) it was going to be a generally very positive article.

Viliam12344• 6 years ago

Scott's real name has been easily findable for at least a year, based on his own words. So I don't understand why he went full nuclear.

Findable in the opposite direction, and that is an important difference.

If you know about Scott's private life, you can find his job. But if you only know about his profession and full name, googling for his full name will show you his professional life, not his private life.

There are many Scotts, many Alexanders, even many Scott Alexanders, and some of them are relatively famous (there is a screenwriten, and a baseball player). Unless you already read Scott's blog, there is no reason to assume he would be the same person as the doctor you are looking for, and the blog will not be shown on the first page of results for his full name.

But if NYT publishes the article as originally planned, when Scott's potential patients enter his full name in search engine, the article about him and his blog can easily be the first result. This is exactly the outcome Scott wants to avoid.

emiliobumachar• 6 years ago

Be warned that I didn't read the post I'm commenting on, site seems to have succumbed to the high load.

what this is about? NYT was about to run a story about Scott and his blog. By policy, they'd reveal his real name, and they told him so in advance. Scott tried to negotiate, but that failed. So he took down the blog, sort of in protest. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

What does the phrase "Slate Star Codex" mean? It's the blog title, an almost anagram of "Scott Alexander", missing the "n", doubling the "s". I don't think it has any deeper meaning.

I won't address the final question on the content, others have summarised it.

detaro• 6 years ago

previous about the same story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23626449

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23621466

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23617887

IHLayman2• 6 years ago

A petition about protecting pseudonymity... and a full name is required to sign it.

gambiting• 6 years ago

Yeah I don't really understand. Is this like....satire? A joke about something that happened before?

OscarCunningham3• 6 years ago

It's not analogous because signing this doesn't link your real name to any other names you might use.

IHLayman2• 6 years ago

I am under the impression that they expect a real name. In fact, they give a section to allow further proof in case you are someone famous, so that someone isn't trying to impersonate you:

"Let us know it's actually you? (Optional) For high-profile signees (CEOs, authors, people with 100k+ twitter followers, etc), we'd like to make sure nobody is impersonating you. Feel free to give us an official email address to confirm (we will not use it for any purpose beyond validation and will not share it with anyone), or link to a public post/tweet where you say you signed this petition."

statictype• 6 years ago

I don’t really understand this. You can literally find his name by just asking Google for it. Isnt it already deanonymized?

Or is this about some larger point?

AkshatM• 6 years ago

Scott Alexander is not his full name. His last name is still unknown to the public, and is what Scott doesn't want to release.

beaconstudios• 6 years ago

His last name is not unknown to the public, but it requires conscious effort to find. Posting it in the NYT is much more significant and means people who google his real identity will find his online one, as well as the reverse.

lhnz3• 6 years ago

He will be fully exposed to harassment if the New York Times prints his name.

There's a large difference between the New York Times printing your name, and it being possible to find your name with careful digging for it.

OscarCunningham3• 6 years ago

He doesn't want to prevent people from finding his real name when they search for 'scott alexander', he wants to prevent people finding his blog when they search for his real name.

mumblemumble4• 6 years ago

I'm guessing it's about some much smaller point.

His employer is probably very unlikely to decide one day to idly google, "slate star codex author real name", figure out that it's him, and make any major decisions based on what they find.

However, almost any employer, upon finding itself unexpectedly exposed to frothy-mouthed Internet rancor as a result of a major news outlet writing a story about the online persona of one of its employees, would at least seriously consider firing them over it.

mumblemumble4• 6 years ago

Another thought: this sort of thing has the potential to seriously harm his relationship with his clients. In a way that could be professionally damaging for him, yes, but, even more importantly, could adversely affect the health of his clients.

bobmaxup3• 6 years ago

He might be "doxxing" himself in the process. This non-story might have more SEO traction than the story would have.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...

jordanpg2• 6 years ago

SA was being interviewed for an article -- was this detail not discussed beforehand?

Did the NYT violate an informal agreement not to use his real name?

Could SA have reasonably expected that a reporter would not trivially find his real name as part of routine research, and thus include it as background?

SA's wishes should be respected by NYT -- the piece should be abandoned -- but his judgement on entering into an interview in the first place is questionable.

hirundo2• 6 years ago

The interview started with his request that they not disclose his full name. When the reporter declined, contacted his editor and declined again, the interview went no further. They told him they would run the story and disclose his name either way.

jordanpg2• 6 years ago

That narrative is not expressed in the post here: https://slatestarcodex.com/

Where does your account come from?

If I had to infer what happened from SA's post, it is that he agreed to an interview, did the interview, learned that they intended to use his name, and then raised these objections.

abetusk2• 6 years ago

Vice doxxed Naomi Wu a little while back [1]. It seems like reporters are increasingly becoming unethical to push their stories forward (or maybe they were always this unethical?).

[1] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/127566532567417241...

mcphage3• 6 years ago

or maybe they were always this unethical?

The term “Yellow Journalism” is a hundred years old, and I doubt it was new then, either.

abetusk2• 6 years ago

Aka "tabloid journalism" [1].

NYT and Vice are not tabloid publications nor are their journalists generally considered to be tabloid journalists.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

qqn• 6 years ago

Interestingly tied to Pulitzer, for anyone who likes trivia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Origins:_P...

Viliam12344• 6 years ago

In this case, the journalism isn't the thing that changed. It was also possible to dox someone 100 years ago. But unless it was an important person, people would read the paper and quickly forget it.

With search engines, if someone is doxed once, you can find it years later when you search their name. The same behavior now has more serious consequences.

krick• 6 years ago

This was unexpected (never would occur to me he is a controversial media-person, even though I don't agree with most of what he writes myself), and a pity, since I still have a bunch on his blogposts on my to-read list, that now appear to be gone, but what I actually don't understand is why journalists still have so much freedom to harass people. I'm pretty sure these pesky parasites are responsible for more total length of nerves burnt, than all robbers combined. Is there really no legal action that an ordinary, not massively rich person could realistically take against NYT in such cases?

Viliam12344• 6 years ago

Being an asshole is often not illegal. The law would be incredibly suffocating if we tried to legislate away everything unpleasant. Also, different subcultures or social classes have different norms; it would be hard to define one model of nice behavior for everyone.

Usually, there is a social punishment for being an asshole. You are not legally required to be nice to people, but the natural punishment is that the nice people will avoid you, you won't get invited to nice parties, etc. The "karmic punishment" for assholes is that they can only associate with other assholes, because everyone else tries to avoid them. Also, unless they are physically very strong, they probably get punched a lot, as a natural reaction.

There are situations, such as online journalism, where the usual mechanisms punishing the assholes do not apply, and it can even become a source of income.

nl• 6 years ago

He goes by his own full name in a published book, and his chapter names the blog he deleted in the very first sentence.

Why wasn't the outrage over that? Is that because it's a Rationalist Community book, whereas the New York Times is Outgroup?

bathtub365• 6 years ago

Is this “real name policy” documented anywhere public? I was under the impression that journalists protected confidential sources all the time and a policy of revealing identities could be ruinous to a newspaper’s ability to shine a light on activity happening behind closed doors.

samfriedman• 6 years ago

There is a difference between someone who is a confidential source on a story, and someone who is the subject of a story - it appears the NYT argue that those who are a story's subject are fair game for full-naming. However people have found a number of past stories which respect subjects' wishes for pseudonyms or anonymity, so it appears to be a rule that is unevenly enforced at best.

mumblemumble4• 6 years ago

I am going to give the NYT itself the benefit of the doubt and guess that, if there is a policy, it's not one that says that reporters must use real names in situations like this. One would hope that it actually says that reporters MAY use real names, at their discretion.

That said, considering what a crappy track record the press has with respecting the privacy of pseudonymous Internet personalities (I'm thinking Naomi Wu, sure, but also that one article where the author shamelessly put way way way too much work into trying to track down and out _why), perhaps that's pollyannaish of me.

hollerith• 6 years ago

I signed the petition.

Don't De-Anonymize Scott Alexander

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