7 ms·

> reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which the NYT is obligated to help with the attempt Just framing the issue this way tilts the playing fiel

by pdonis 6y ago

> reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which the NYT is obligated to help with the attempt Just framing the issue this way tilts the playing field in the NYT's favor. As Scott says in the article, in the NYT's worldview, they start with the right to dox anyone they like, but if you make a strong enough case, maybe they'll decide not to dox you. But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default?

ridaj 6y ago
Media in the US is a competitive field, so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway. In the US it's ok to republish facts that were published elsewhere, even if someone had sought at some point for the facts to remain secret. The same principle also gives us things like revenge porn, mugshot publishing, and the like. Some places might have more protections against publishing information, for example when it relates to private persons, but usually in the US what I've seen is that it ends up considered to go against the principle of free speech.
- sigstoat 6y ago
  > so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway and yet, a bunch of other news organizations wrote about the issue without disclosing his name.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Which news organizations are you thinking of? The top tier newspapers are the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times. It's less interesting if, like, Reason wades into the controversy about story and doesn't deliberately poke a stick in Alexander's eye. Frankly, at the point where we're batting the process story around rather than the substantive piece about Alexander, even the NYT would be unlikely to use his real name; what would be the point?
    - jdminhbg 6y ago
      > Which news organizations are you thinking of? The top tier newspapers are the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times. Does the New Yorker meet your standards? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-st...
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Sure, but again, this is a story about the controversy. I knew Alexander's real name when the story broke a few months ago, and I flagged posts here that used it, because again: what would be the point? But in a profile of Alexander in the NYT? With his name so obviously available? Why would the NYT be obligated to pretend they didn't know what his name was, or to collaborate with Alexander on how best to portray him? They're reporting on Alexander, not for him.
        jdminhbg 6y ago
        First, you responded to a comment saying other news organizations wrote about "the issue" without using his name with a request for examples, so the New Yorker is one. Second, the NYT isn't obligated to withhold his name, just like the NYT isn't obligated to pretend what Trump says makes sense, or to fact-check its own Iraq WMD reporting, or to publish Tom Cotton, or to publish CCP apologia for the Hong Kong crackdown. It's just making a bunch of decisions that positively and negatively impact its reputation. [Considering] publishing Scott's last name was one that negatively impacted it with no appreciable upside; nobody who read a putative article about him without his real last name would have cared.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think the proposed Alexander article hurt the NYT's reputation among a cohort of potential readers who firmly believe in Crichton's Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect and have weird ideas about journalism to begin with. I don't think it cost them meaningfully. I am certain that the way Alexander handled the situation more or less ensured that his name would be on the tips of lots of people's tongues --- that's the infamous "Streisand Effect" in action. I don't so much care about Alexander. I won't use his real name, because there's no upside to it for anyone here or on HN. I do care about the idea of Reddit norms infecting journalism; that sounds horrible, because Reddit is atrocious at journalism.
fnord123 6y ago
> But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default? If there is no danger (legal (i.e. whistleblower sources) or physical) then accountability for people to stand by their /should/ reduce 'fake news' where people can just say whatever they like. Don't forget that we've just come from a world where the US president would continually cite "people are saying". Which people? Name them.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  But the nytimes wasn't try to hold him him accountable. They were writing a positive piece about his blog. The question isn't should you dox your enemies who you are trying to hold accountable. It's should organizations just default to doxing anyone online they write about even when their full name has no relevance to the story and that persons asks them not to? Should it be illegal? No. Was the NYT a dick about it? Yes
- pdonis 6y ago
  > accountability for people to stand by their /should/ reduce 'fake news' where people can just say whatever they like The way you do that is to look at what sources the person gives for the claims they are making. Not by revealing personal details that the person has chosen to keep private, and which are irrelevant to the claims they are making. Scott Alexander was pretty meticulous about citing sources, so to say he should have been doxxed to "preserve accountability" is way off the mark.
  - fnord123 6y ago
    I was responding very specifically to "But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default?". I'm not speaking in the context of the article because the article depends on a whole bunch of other articles that were deleted, not linked to, or not published: > I think the New York Times wanted to write a fairly boring article about me, but *some guideline said they had to reveal subjects' real identities, if they knew them, unless the subject was in one of a few predefined sympathetic categories (eg sex workers)*. I did get to talk to a few sympathetic people from the Times, who were pretty confused about whether such a guideline existed, and certainly it's honored more in the breach than in the observance (eg Virgil Texas). But *I still think the most likely explanation for what happened was that there was a rule sort of like that on the books, some departments and editors followed it more slavishly than others, and I had the bad luck to be assigned to a department and editor that followed it a lot.* That's all. Anyway, *they did the right thing and decided not to publish the article*, so I have no remaining beef with them.
tptacek 6y ago
The notion that everyone is entitled to cooperative anonymity is a message board meme, not an actual norm of society. It has never been the case that journalists have honored a right to public pseudonymity. I am allergic to the argument that, because something is a norm on HN or Reddit, that norm binds on the rest of the world. HN and Reddit are in a variety of ways fucked up places that operate on principles not necessarily compatible with civil society --- nor is that HN's job! There are comparable norms on HN that you can imagine someone trying to infect the real world with. For instance: on HN, it violates a norm to pull in things someone has said on other sites (like Twitter or Reddit) as a way of impeaching their authority in a discussion here. That norm makes sense on HN; the collaborative discussion we are having here doesn't work if people flagrantly violate it. But that's a downright dysfunctional norm to import into ordinary life, where the things people say in different places are profoundly relevant to their reputation and credibility. In multiple very real ways, "journalism" is about doxing, the way medicine is about pharmaceuticals, or woodworking is about joinery.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > It has never been the case that journalists have honored a right to public pseudonymity. Even if this is true, that doesn't make it right. > ordinary life, where the things people say in different places are profoundly relevant to their reputation and credibility That depends on why you are interested in their reputation and credibility. I'm not saying there are never cases where it's justified to reveal things the person would rather not reveal. But "we're writing a story and we have a policy" is not enough justification (even if the policy is consistently understood by all the newspaper's employees, which it doesn't seem like it was in this case). There needs to be an actual reason why people have a right to know details about a person that that person would rather keep private, and it has to be a strong enough reason to outweigh that person's choices. In this case, we're talking about someone's blog, and the whole point of a blog is that it stands or falls by what is written there and what is referenced there, and personal details about the writer that aren't included are irrelevant. So it seems like this is an obvious case where a choice to remain anonymous should be respected.
  - tptacek 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by pdonis 6y ago

ridaj 6y ago

Media in the US is a competitive field, so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway. In the US it's ok to republish facts that were published elsewhere, even if someone had sought at some point for the facts to remain secret. The same principle also gives us things like revenge porn, mugshot publishing, and the like. Some places might have more protections against publishing information, for example when it relates to private persons, but usually in the US what I've seen is that it ends up considered to go against the principle of free speech.

sigstoat 6y ago
> so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway and yet, a bunch of other news organizations wrote about the issue without disclosing his name.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Which news organizations are you thinking of? The top tier newspapers are the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times. It's less interesting if, like, Reason wades into the controversy about story and doesn't deliberately poke a stick in Alexander's eye. Frankly, at the point where we're batting the process story around rather than the substantive piece about Alexander, even the NYT would be unlikely to use his real name; what would be the point?
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    > Which news organizations are you thinking of? The top tier newspapers are the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times. Does the New Yorker meet your standards? https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-st...
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Sure, but again, this is a story about the controversy. I knew Alexander's real name when the story broke a few months ago, and I flagged posts here that used it, because again: what would be the point? But in a profile of Alexander in the NYT? With his name so obviously available? Why would the NYT be obligated to pretend they didn't know what his name was, or to collaborate with Alexander on how best to portray him? They're reporting on Alexander, not for him.
      - jdminhbg 6y ago
        First, you responded to a comment saying other news organizations wrote about "the issue" without using his name with a request for examples, so the New Yorker is one. Second, the NYT isn't obligated to withhold his name, just like the NYT isn't obligated to pretend what Trump says makes sense, or to fact-check its own Iraq WMD reporting, or to publish Tom Cotton, or to publish CCP apologia for the Hong Kong crackdown. It's just making a bunch of decisions that positively and negatively impact its reputation. [Considering] publishing Scott's last name was one that negatively impacted it with no appreciable upside; nobody who read a putative article about him without his real last name would have cared.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think the proposed Alexander article hurt the NYT's reputation among a cohort of potential readers who firmly believe in Crichton's Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect and have weird ideas about journalism to begin with. I don't think it cost them meaningfully. I am certain that the way Alexander handled the situation more or less ensured that his name would be on the tips of lots of people's tongues --- that's the infamous "Streisand Effect" in action. I don't so much care about Alexander. I won't use his real name, because there's no upside to it for anyone here or on HN. I do care about the idea of Reddit norms infecting journalism; that sounds horrible, because Reddit is atrocious at journalism.

fnord123 6y ago

> But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default? If there is no danger (legal (i.e. whistleblower sources) or physical) then accountability for people to stand by their /should/ reduce 'fake news' where people can just say whatever they like. Don't forget that we've just come from a world where the US president would continually cite "people are saying". Which people? Name them.

JamesBarney 6y ago
But the nytimes wasn't try to hold him him accountable. They were writing a positive piece about his blog. The question isn't should you dox your enemies who you are trying to hold accountable. It's should organizations just default to doxing anyone online they write about even when their full name has no relevance to the story and that persons asks them not to? Should it be illegal? No. Was the NYT a dick about it? Yes
pdonis 6y ago
> accountability for people to stand by their /should/ reduce 'fake news' where people can just say whatever they like The way you do that is to look at what sources the person gives for the claims they are making. Not by revealing personal details that the person has chosen to keep private, and which are irrelevant to the claims they are making. Scott Alexander was pretty meticulous about citing sources, so to say he should have been doxxed to "preserve accountability" is way off the mark.
- fnord123 6y ago
  I was responding very specifically to "But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default?". I'm not speaking in the context of the article because the article depends on a whole bunch of other articles that were deleted, not linked to, or not published: > I think the New York Times wanted to write a fairly boring article about me, but *some guideline said they had to reveal subjects' real identities, if they knew them, unless the subject was in one of a few predefined sympathetic categories (eg sex workers)*. I did get to talk to a few sympathetic people from the Times, who were pretty confused about whether such a guideline existed, and certainly it's honored more in the breach than in the observance (eg Virgil Texas). But *I still think the most likely explanation for what happened was that there was a rule sort of like that on the books, some departments and editors followed it more slavishly than others, and I had the bad luck to be assigned to a department and editor that followed it a lot.* That's all. Anyway, *they did the right thing and decided not to publish the article*, so I have no remaining beef with them.

tptacek 6y ago

The notion that everyone is entitled to cooperative anonymity is a message board meme, not an actual norm of society. It has never been the case that journalists have honored a right to public pseudonymity. I am allergic to the argument that, because something is a norm on HN or Reddit, that norm binds on the rest of the world. HN and Reddit are in a variety of ways fucked up places that operate on principles not necessarily compatible with civil society --- nor is that HN's job! There are comparable norms on HN that you can imagine someone trying to infect the real world with. For instance: on HN, it violates a norm to pull in things someone has said on other sites (like Twitter or Reddit) as a way of impeaching their authority in a discussion here. That norm makes sense on HN; the collaborative discussion we are having here doesn't work if people flagrantly violate it. But that's a downright dysfunctional norm to import into ordinary life, where the things people say in different places are profoundly relevant to their reputation and credibility. In multiple very real ways, "journalism" is about doxing, the way medicine is about pharmaceuticals, or woodworking is about joinery.

pdonis 6y ago
> It has never been the case that journalists have honored a right to public pseudonymity. Even if this is true, that doesn't make it right. > ordinary life, where the things people say in different places are profoundly relevant to their reputation and credibility That depends on why you are interested in their reputation and credibility. I'm not saying there are never cases where it's justified to reveal things the person would rather not reveal. But "we're writing a story and we have a policy" is not enough justification (even if the policy is consistently understood by all the newspaper's employees, which it doesn't seem like it was in this case). There needs to be an actual reason why people have a right to know details about a person that that person would rather keep private, and it has to be a strong enough reason to outweigh that person's choices. In this case, we're talking about someone's blog, and the whole point of a blog is that it stands or falls by what is written there and what is referenced there, and personal details about the writer that aren't included are irrelevant. So it seems like this is an obvious case where a choice to remain anonymous should be respected.
- tptacek 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]