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> It's just not a nice thing to do No, this goes far beyond "not nice" This is an attempt to bully competition (both in ideology and in business) off the inte

> It's just not a nice thing to do No, this goes far beyond "not nice" This is an attempt to bully competition (both in ideology and in business) off the internet by putting their personal well-being in danger. This kind of defamation+doxxing is just utterly despicable. Journalists who repeatedly pull this kind of stunt should be fired. And setting aside how this type of thing affects the individual victim, consider how it harms journalism as a whole, by painting journalists as untrustworthy immoral backstabbing asshats. Put bluntly: when populists like trump call the media liars, the saddest part is that they're not wrong.

downandout 6y ago
What’s sad is that most people, whether on the left or right, are decent, hardworking people that would never set out to so violently steal someone’s privacy like this. There are perfectly rational reasons for people to lean either left or right. But members of the media are stoking the fires of division to satisfy their lust for money and attention. It’s wrong, and I hope that everyone can see these actions for what they are. The NYT and the reporter that wrote the article should be roundly criticized by both sides for what they did here. They should be canceled.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  Indeed. Most discussions I've had other than on reddit and similar platforms have tended to be very pleasant and rational. It is possible to discuss something with someone who holds completely different opinions on the topic in such a way that everyone walks out of the discussion understanding it a bit better than before. How this flips around into the mirror-world that is social media, is beyond my understanding. Either people who discuss on large platforms and those that do it offline or in more personal online communities are two distinct groups of people with little overlap, or some magic switch just flips in peoples heads when they put their hands on a keyboard. The media are ultimately just following the market: outrage sells, so they deliver. Sure, we can blame them for abusing their power in cases like these, but more importantly, we should ask the question how they ended up in a position where everyone just blindly trusts what they read in a newspaper.
  - ben509 6y ago
    I think a discussion platform is a complicated dynamic system. Social media has various algorithms and even layout decisions (how comments are sorted) that promotes stuff that gets engagement. Then they have a mess of filters that tries to limit some of the worst behavior. I suspect what makes it really hard to understand is there's a training effect as users subconciously learn what things get more attention, and what attention they see as favorable is a moving target depending on their emotional state. So you really have no idea what changing the kind of attention they get will do, and even if you did, when you try to make changes to see what happens, you have to wait on the timescale of human learning to see what the result of those changes are; how the dynamic is settling into a new stable state.
PartiallyTyped 6y ago
I have trouble understanding why the above comment was downvoted, especially here of all places.
- downandout 6y ago
  Ironically, they are proving the point of his comment. There is a pretty large group of people here that will downvote anything that is critical of actions taken by the left, even when that criticism is fully justified. The NYT doxxes people that they believe disagree with them...HN just downvotes them into oblivion. This comment, and likely yours, will also get many downvotes.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway_19sz 6y ago
    You are wrong here, at least in my case. I feel very strongly that the NYT was wrong to dox Scott Alexander, and I cancelled my subscription over it. But I also downvoted the comment you are referring to, because I think it lowers the quality of the discussion and even weakens the argument against the NYT. See my other comment nearby for more explanation.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - DataWorker 6y ago
    False flag down votes are real too.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
    > they are proving the point of his comment Except my comment had nothing to do with downvoting on HN, nor was it a general attack of "the left" (fuck, I am on the left myself) so it isn't really proving anything. Unless, of course, this the NYT staff raiding HN downvoting comments, but something tells me that's neither the case nor what you're talking about.

downandout 6y ago

What’s sad is that most people, whether on the left or right, are decent, hardworking people that would never set out to so violently steal someone’s privacy like this. There are perfectly rational reasons for people to lean either left or right. But members of the media are stoking the fires of division to satisfy their lust for money and attention. It’s wrong, and I hope that everyone can see these actions for what they are. The NYT and the reporter that wrote the article should be roundly criticized by both sides for what they did here. They should be canceled.

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
Indeed. Most discussions I've had other than on reddit and similar platforms have tended to be very pleasant and rational. It is possible to discuss something with someone who holds completely different opinions on the topic in such a way that everyone walks out of the discussion understanding it a bit better than before. How this flips around into the mirror-world that is social media, is beyond my understanding. Either people who discuss on large platforms and those that do it offline or in more personal online communities are two distinct groups of people with little overlap, or some magic switch just flips in peoples heads when they put their hands on a keyboard. The media are ultimately just following the market: outrage sells, so they deliver. Sure, we can blame them for abusing their power in cases like these, but more importantly, we should ask the question how they ended up in a position where everyone just blindly trusts what they read in a newspaper.
- ben509 6y ago
  I think a discussion platform is a complicated dynamic system. Social media has various algorithms and even layout decisions (how comments are sorted) that promotes stuff that gets engagement. Then they have a mess of filters that tries to limit some of the worst behavior. I suspect what makes it really hard to understand is there's a training effect as users subconciously learn what things get more attention, and what attention they see as favorable is a moving target depending on their emotional state. So you really have no idea what changing the kind of attention they get will do, and even if you did, when you try to make changes to see what happens, you have to wait on the timescale of human learning to see what the result of those changes are; how the dynamic is settling into a new stable state.

PartiallyTyped 6y ago

I have trouble understanding why the above comment was downvoted, especially here of all places.

downandout 6y ago
Ironically, they are proving the point of his comment. There is a pretty large group of people here that will downvote anything that is critical of actions taken by the left, even when that criticism is fully justified. The NYT doxxes people that they believe disagree with them...HN just downvotes them into oblivion. This comment, and likely yours, will also get many downvotes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway_19sz 6y ago
  You are wrong here, at least in my case. I feel very strongly that the NYT was wrong to dox Scott Alexander, and I cancelled my subscription over it. But I also downvoted the comment you are referring to, because I think it lowers the quality of the discussion and even weakens the argument against the NYT. See my other comment nearby for more explanation.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DataWorker 6y ago
  False flag down votes are real too.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  > they are proving the point of his comment Except my comment had nothing to do with downvoting on HN, nor was it a general attack of "the left" (fuck, I am on the left myself) so it isn't really proving anything. Unless, of course, this the NYT staff raiding HN downvoting comments, but something tells me that's neither the case nor what you're talking about.