Comment by maxwelljoslyn
6 years ago
I clicked on this expecting it to be Scott Alexander blogging about somebody else getting doxxed. I flipped like a boat when I realized what I was reading. Holy shit!
I was just in SSC's Open Thread a few hours ago opening comment permalinks in tabs to respond to them.
That NYT writer should be fired. I hope Scott recovers soon. SSC is my favorite place on the Web.
I don't think, given Scott's recent defense of Steve Hsu, that he'd really want people fired for doing ill-advised things, even if they could be reasonably construed as dangerous, unless harm was demonstrated. It's still disappointing that the journalist is making this choice.
Point taken regarding the Hsu case. Maybe I jumped the gun there.
I don't want it to be the norm for any journalistic organ/employee to function/perform the way this one did. There are many ways to accomplish adoption of that norm, including (but certainly not limited to) firing people who do that.
There is a clear division to be made between firing someone for what they do on their own time vs. actions they take in the course of their employment for you.
When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.
I think it’s completely unreasonable to fire someone for one instance of wrong behavior (with very narrow exceptions for something like stealing or sexual abuse).
I’m very happy to live in a country where you cannot fire people just like that, even if they do something wrong. You have to give people second chances. I don’t get this “fire them” approach to anything wrong something does.
People make mistakes. That just happens. To always fire people because of that makes no sense to me.
4 replies →
I think it's just in general dangerous and disruptive for the entire world to know who you are online. They will find you and threaten you and everyone you love. Sure only 1% of them are actually dangerous but it only takes one bullet or knife in the back from a psychotic person to end everything. Or just someone doing some crazy made up nonsense like pizzagate. The loonies are out there.
> That NYT writer should be fired.
I don't think this is a "that one writer" issue; I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue. Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
> I don't think this is a "that one writer" issue.
I think the problems with journalism are bigger than this one writer. Simultaneously, I would like to see NYT take a stance against its writers doing what this one did to Scott.
> I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue.
Point taken, but I didn't claim to speak for him.
> Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
Agreed. I wrote another comment in response to 'rachelshu, adjusting my original comment to something more reflecting my actual views.
Proposition: The NYTimes editorial board has long addressed the matter of revealing identity of anonymous bloggers on interent.
From a political point of view, anonymous (and more critcally, independent) bloggers are a threat to the (local/global) establishment's propaganda organs. This may in fact be editorial policy, as you suggest. It doesn't matter of the blogger is 'friendly' in terms of political views.
Furthermore, Scott has repeatedly argued against trying to get other people fired as a way of expressing disagreement.
Response to my own comment because I can't edit it:
Scott Alexander has been giving more information in the SSC subreddit, including the comment I've quoted below. Having read what he has to say, I've changed my mind, and don't think the journalist should be fired.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
> I honestly got the impression that the reporter liked my blog and wanted to write a nice story about it.
> When I told him I didn't want my real name in the article, he talked to his editor and said the editor said it was NYT policy all articles must include real names.
> I got the impression he felt bad about it but had spent weeks writing the article and wasn't going to throw out all that work just for my sake.
> When I threatened to take down the blog, I think he did the decision-theoretically correct move of not giving in to threats.
> Overall I think this is a story about the NYT having overly strict real-name policies that unfortunately put a guy in a bad situation.
Fired? Let's not repeat the same mistakes we're complaining about. How about: that NYT writer should be persuaded and treated empathetically.
It's not the writer anyhow. It's the editor and probably a policy, though I'm sure they'd have no trouble bending their policy if they wanted to.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
Please see my revised position in a comment to 'rachelshu.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611133
That said: I don't understand how I'm repeating a mistake here. "Cancel culture" has become a problem because people get fired from their day jobs (or suffer other consequences) for opinions not pertaining to their day jobs, which are expressed outside their work hours.
In contrast, the NYT writer engaged in crappy professional conduct.
I agree that the writer is not the root problem. I've changed my mind about whether firing should happen; other solutions addressing journalistic incentives, or this journalist's team, or whatever, would probably go further.
No idea who Scott is or what his blog was about but regardless it's fucked he's in this situation because of an unapologetic tabloid.