> (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)
There's no mystery here. Scott belongs to a class of people for whom sympathy is not culturally trendy at the moment.
White fragility.
This is not a matter of reasoned skepticism, it's knee-jerk ego defense; the above poster recognizes white fragility as a probable truth that traps him in a state of cognitive dissonance, and it makes him so uncomfortable that he has no choice but to respond. However, the response that truly rejects my initial premise would have been no response at all; the fact that he responded lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response.
My point is precisely that "the fact that X responds, i.e. objects to premise Y lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response" is a pointless and, indeed, content-less rhetorical trick, not an intellectually honest argument; moreover, that there are good reasons to be aware of this trick being played on you. You can call that "reasoned skepticism" or "knee-jerk ego defense", but that's not so important; indeed, I am quite willing to admit my "hostility" and "bald-faced rejection" of any such pointless tricks, no matter what their surrounding context might be.
Illustrating the idea that you can't help yourselves is meaningful.
What you describe is less any case of "white fragility", and more a degree of irritation at misapplication or dishonest application of rhetorical technique.
Anyone who has had any exposure to classical rhetoric sees the structure of what you're trying to do, and is trying to inform you that you are undermining your own credibility by doing what you are doing.
>It's indeed a rhetorical trick (many of the most illuminating arguments lead you unknowingly to their point)
No, most good good faith rhetoric doesn't "unknowingly lead you to their point". It invites you to think. To ponder and consider. What you, and other adherents of white fragility are doing is not that. You're taking any counter rhetorical engagement as an a priori proof of your conclusion, which is an example of circular reasoning.
It's like saying a parent or guardian is demonstrating parental/guardian fragility because even though a child or ward makes a mistake they can't help themselves but to attempt to correct them. No. It isn't a failing on parent's/guardian's part. The ward has done something derp, and they care enough to call them out, and attempt to remediate the faux pas so that it doesn't continue making the ward's life more difficult than need be.
Same dynamic is going on here, without the implied authoritative relationship. In an exchange of ideas amongst equals with different viewpoints, instead of taking any further attempts at counterargument in good faith as an indicator you might be doing something in error, missing something, or as an invitation to broaden your view by considering from a different point of view, you instead double-down by asserting that it is an illustration of bad faith on the part of the person reaching out and trying in good faith to commiserate with you. In that sense it is little more than an overly elaborate rhetorical exchange stop point, as there is no further room for exchange of meaningful information if all you're going to do in the end is shunt further exchange into the "Haha, White Fragility" bucket.
Just figured I'd point that out in case no one else can figure out a way to make the point more obvious.
>Illustrating the idea that you can't help yourselves is meaningful.
No, it isn't. Eliciting a response to rhetorical bad form is like saying that a compiler is fragile because it calls out syntax errors.
No amount of talking around the issue takes away from the original point: the original "white fragility" post was an invitation to speak intelligently with one's silence. As with a parent who simply walks away from a tantrum, or a friend whose silence conveys dissent, simple acceptance of circumstances is all that was necessary to prove to the contrary the raised notion. The people who responded made themselves into case studies; that's all.
You're simply doing logic wrong. Everyone here knows it, and most are probably too embarrassed to point it out. Consider this your Emperor's New Clothes moment.
You cannot say "X exists, and if you challenge me, it only proves X exists". That is circular reasoning by definition. X, therefore X. Before you go around attributing to others the quality of "white fragility" which you define in reference to itself as "white fragility is the phenomena by which whites must argue that white fragility doesn't exist", then you should not be surprised when anyone with any sort of background in formal logic drops by and attempts to get you sorted out.
Further:
>I'm not here to "exchange ideas."
Good!
Now that that's clear, I can cease conversation with you with a clear conscience. There is nothing more distressing to me than seeing someone seemingly trying to make what may be a valid point, but running into difficulty due to stumbling due to poor structure of their arguments. I tend to feel obligated to speak up at that point, as trying to disambiguate or deobfuscate hard to communicate things is something I often engage in.
If you are not actually interested in a good faith exchange of ideas, then I bid you adieu, and good night. Do work on the arguments. The world is prone to fallacious reasoning enough without people running around doing it wrong knowingly and intentionally.
I am white and had no problem hearing about the idea of white fragility, even though I fully recognize the closed loop in the idea that disputing a thing proves the thing.
You know what an actually resiliant person does when someone calls them fragile? Any number of things, most frequently nothing at all, but never "that's a linguistic trick and it doesn't prove anything and it's totally unfair! #notallwhites"
I'm surprised you didn't try to cite a great list of examples of white people not being fragile. Good thing too, because I had already fallen off my chair laughing, I'd had had to get back up just to fall off again.
If someone accuses you of shouting, the one thing you cannot do to clear your name of that charge, is to shout that you are not shouting.
And if you're not white and trying to make this argument for some reason, save it. I'm white and my reaction was "yeah pretty much".
It does not follow that only those who are fragile would find reason to speak out against poor argumentation. There are many forms of rhetorical one ups that are intended to strike at and incite an emotional response that render themselves vacuous and empty of meaning on further reflection. One is more than justified calling someone else out for spreading inflammatory, vacuous rhetoric.
>I am white and had no problem hearing about the idea of white fragility, even though I fully recognize the closed loop in the idea that disputing a thing proves the thing.
Good for you. Guess what? Neither did I. Seemed rather logical and intuitively explained several things at first blush. I even went ahead and bounced it around, tried it on, and realized something about it's use. It resembled another argument I grappled with long before. Does this ponderer suffer from white fragility? Does that dog demonstrate Buddha Nature? Mu! Once you realize it's a non-sense bearing statement, you break out of complacent acceptance and the analytical mode of in which the thing is given the assumption of positive existence and realize what's actually going on. It's a fundamental lashing out on the peace of those in the area, and a deliberate seeding of disharmony and enmity between those in the environment. I believe this would count as a micro-aggression, and the perpetuation thereof is staunchly discouraged, is it not? If not right in one direction, why should it be accepted in the other?
Furthermore, "the intentional upset of the peace of those around you is worth calling out, regardless of the personal character of the one calling it out, and if you truly accept the closed loop you claim, you'll have to forgive me if I assume all your out to do is to incite hostility. Since one truly interested in dismissing the charge would remain silent and accept his just deserts.
>If someone accuses you of shouting, the one thing you cannot do to clear your name of that charge, is to shout that you are not shouting.
If someone accuses me of shouting, and I haven't, I'm most interested in wondering why someone would think I'm shouting. Are they wearing a hearing aid? Are they ill? Are they alright? Can I help? Generally I'm rather interested in the people with whom I cross paths, the circumstances that led to our paths crossing, why people think the way they do, and why they do the things they do, how that affects me, and how what I'm doing may be affecting them.
Given all that you think I'm not going to put 2 and 2 together when I see other people sowing distress and disharmony to people that I see no indication of those individuals having ever met before and not trying to figure out and defuse the situation with every faculty, especially when I see it popping up and escalating all over the place?
If that's fragile, then screw it, I'm fragile. That still isn't going to stop me from listing the ways that what you and others are doing is disruptive, insulting to those around, apparently bringing you delight, completely void in logical validity, and what kind of person really enjoys doing that anyway? To which I'm left with a single solitary answer. Though that one I think I'll keep to myself. Good night to you, sir/madam/whatever your preferred pronoun may be. May your path in life be long, interesting, and orthogonal to mine. Spread your message far and wide if you want. I'll still be here calling it out.
"white fragility" is inherently bad faith (both because it's inherently racist but also because "fragility" is a kafka trap as previously discussed), and you immediately clarified that you were, in fact, using it in bad faith: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634713.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement."
If I'm right about my theory of the reduced propensity to upvote with a higher quantity of good comments, there could be a tipping point where quality of discussion does go down as good but controversial comments sink to the bottom. HN isn't there yet, but it's something to watch out for.
Also women (and men) faced threats of sexual assault and violence for critiquing the media. But NYT very deliberately choses to ignore one set of threats and doxxing.
It's more sympathetic to women than men. They won't directly tell you: "We protect women but not men", but that's the implicit policy of many institutions, especially mainstream media.
Is that how the numbers work out in your state? Because I don't know of any state in the US where that is the breakdown.
You know come to think of it.. there are way more orphanages for kids than for adults. Man that is so unfair. Clear bias in the system there!
That's irony, right? It's hard to tell these days.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534
Famous for saying things like, "Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men" and "Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins" and "white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants".
And when this was pointed out, the NYT stood by her, claiming that in fact it was all because she had been harassed and, "For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers".
One rule for straight white men, another for women is classic NYT. It's not new.
The evangelical Christian/Jewish/Political Liberal hybrid - who runs the NYT sees 99.9% of Americans as out-groups. It's what happens when contrarianism causes people to inhabit their caricature - Stormfront and the NYT have strange symmetry.
It's bigotry with access to better writing skills. You often need to be a member of the in-group to spot the submarines.
Scott Alexander is a real Liberal without the pathology and that is why they hate him. He is reminding them of what Liberal ideals used to be and that makes him register as a threat.
Discrimination comes both as "negative" and "positive" (both of which are usually in fact negative). E.g. people saying people of a certain ethnic background are better at math - on the surface a "positive" thing to say, but in fact fostering certain stereotypes and stereotyping people usually hurt a lot of people.
To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that.
I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.
Contrast it with Netflix's model of unsubscription, which you can do at any time with a single click. They've even gone as far as automatically cancelling inactive accounts. Netflix is obviously a company with confidence in their own product, so they don't resort to any dark patterns in their unsubscription process like the NYTs does.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
Not fundamentally. A lot of advertising may be well be outright lying, or close enough as makes no difference.
But... I used to go by a shop named "Cards Galore", it had its name in reasonably sized letters hanging over the sidewalk, and then when I wanted to buy a card I knew where I could get one. Nothing lying about that. I think there's a lot of advertising which is like that.
Something weaker might be true, like "large-scale advertising will inevitably lead to large-scale lying". But "advertising is fundamentally lying" is not true.
Companies toying with my psychology in order to get me to buy something from them... well, that doesn't sit well with me.
Internet advertising is pretty much all lying. Even when what an ad says is factual, they're not telling you the whole truth, they're telling you a partial truth that leaves out pieces of information which they know would be relevant to you--that's a lie because their intent is to deceive you.
And by the way, I do get it: in a lot of businesses you have to advertise because your competitors are advertising. Advertising is a blight on society that infects everyone: opting out of advertising isn't a viable option without major sacrifice. I'd like to see a future where we all agree to stop advertising and rely on consumer-reports-style reviewers to obtain unbiased product information.
And even when they make statements of fact, it's still lying because they leave things out with the intent to deceive.
That's the crux, though. It technically doesn't have to be like this, but it almost always is - so "advertising is a bunch of consumer-hostile lies" is a more accurate generalization than "advertising informs people".
not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures based on names.
If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional.
I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.
That's in The Netherlands, a country with different laws and regulations for the press.
This case is specific to the United States, with its own rules and protections.
I doubt the NYT has a lot of pieces on "Declan MacManus" in their archives -- if they can just use "Elvis Costello", they could certainly stick to calling the SSC guy by the name he uses online.
I am honestly starting to think real name policies are just about hating anominity at this point.
However, if your information is revealed, don't be shocked when someone approaches you with that information because you didn't cover your tracks.
What about not revealing sources? Didn't journalists used to go to jail for that one?
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, famously refused to reveal their FBI source, Deep Throat, for decades. Of course, they didn't go to jail.
In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence.
These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion.
There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave).
I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.
If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".
And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.
Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
Under US politics it is clear on the left side. It is not far left, but its not center either.
Is it more left than Fox? Sure. But even in the graph you cite[1], it's maybe 5% to the left. Calling it part of "the modern left" is at best ambitious. Thinking it's left enough that it would be on a crusade to silence SSC is... creative interpretation of the reality.
Is their "we must cite real names" policy dangerous? Yes. Is it aggravating they cause SSC to shut down? Yes. But let's keep in the realm of reality, please. It's not a NYT crusade.
[1] That thing is brutal on any PDF viewer I tried. If I were to read the source, I'd find the entire yarn of spaghetti as a million individual line elements, wouldn't I? ;) For people wanting to look - have patience, it takes time to load. On macOS, most PDF viewers actually fail to display it. FineReader OCR succeeds, after 25s load time.
There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-p...
We're talking about a guy who once put up cartoons of people making fun of nerds/gamers next to Nazi propaganda to show how they were the same. If that's where you're getting your "arguments" on workplace sexism and police violence, you're probably a reactionary.
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.
I am not a journalist, but I have to imagine that “don’t become the story” is pretty high up on the list of journalistic ideals.
When it’s someone the NYT feels they want to protect, they will go to any length, even jail time, to protect them. It’s very hard for me not to conclude ill intent on behalf of the NYT in wanting to draw fire toward SSC based on Scott’s ideology. Asking the question “why this story now” in the current hyper-partisan and cancel-rage environment brings me to one obvious conclusion even though Scott himself doesn’t make such a leap.
While he doesn’t directly state it, I got the impression that he felt the motive for doxxing him was that very reason. I may be reading between the lines too much, but I got that impression none the less.
Correct. Anyone, whether it's an individual or group of people, can be "Scott Alexander."
What does it add? It makes the story more credible under scrutiny.
So what? The story isn't about who Scott Alexander is. The story is about the blog. Anyone can go to the website and read the blog (or at least they could before the NYT pulled this screwup). If the NYT wants their story about the blog to be credible, they just need to tell the truth about what the blog says.
It's about the blog and its author. It's like writing about a controversial book without any mention of the author. That's not possible.
> A Warning is a 2019 book-length exposé of the Trump administration, anonymously authored by someone described as a "senior Trump administration official". It is a follow-up to an anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times in September 2018.
The author's persona on the blog, yes. That doesn't mean the author's real name needs to be revealed.
It's just an email address. It could be Scott or it could be someone else. Yes, common sense would say it's Scott, but the reporter would have to still prove it's him. If you claim to be Scott, too, that will also need to be checked out.
Many people will take that information and run, but if you're writing for a national outlet, where accurate reporting is everything, your editor will say, "Yes, that might be Scott, but how do you know? What proof can you provide? If we get called out for a fact error, can you refute that claim?
The Scott who posts at slatestarcodex.com is the Scott who is [email protected].
Therefore, the material Scott when attempting to pin down Scott in the context of slatestarcodex is [email protected].
Human X out in meat space could or could not be Scott, but that much is immaterial, as [email protected] has been shown to be directly linked to Scott Alexander the blogger as a means of contacting him.
Thus I ask: what better proof could one have that [email protected] is Scott Alexander, author of slatestarcodex?
From an editor's point of view, that's not enough, assuming the reporter has not done any form of reporting through interviews, public records and other methods.
The story is about the blog, yes, but a portion deals with the _person_ or _people_ behind it. And that's important.
I'm not sure why though, the NYT, would need to know the name that is purposely never used.
If you really need the name sooo bad, then just don't dox him and drop the article. That's perfectly fine.
As long as they don't dox him everyone is cool.
If they can't write the article without doxxing him then they should just drop the article.
Whatever they do they shouldn't dox him. And if they can't write the article without doing so, then they shouldn't write it.
Maybe one could make an argument for a stage name or pen name being different (and there are many of those), but could Scott Alexander not also be considered a pen name?
IMO that doesn't apply to a situation like this. By definition, whoever answers email sent to the address on the SSC blog is the author of the blog. It doesn't matter if that person's "name" is Scott Alexander or Santa Claus or SillyBob5319. The piece the NYT is writing is about the blog, not about the specific, identifiable person who writes it. Knowing who that person is does not add credibility to the story; the credibility is already asserted by the fact that the person who controls the email address behind the blog is talking about it.
To your point about "verifiable information": the only verification needed by a hypothetical reader of this perhaps-never-to-be-published NYT article would be 1) visit the blog; 2) find a contact email; 3) send email asking "were those actually your words quote in this NYT article?" The person's name is irrelevant.
The readers don’t care that there is a controversial (or radical or not) blog on the internet, they want to know if anyone important is related to the blog and whether they should try to gain influence with said people or not (by aligning or distancing themselves from said people, depending on their own connections). For example, only if the author is named can they know whether he/she is a reputable practitioner at a prestigious institution (who can thereby give influence or be vulnerable to controversy), or maybe just a random doctor in a rural town (can be safely ignored).
So for people who rely on networks of other people, such as many political, corporate, and governmental sub-cultures, the NYT gains credibility by naming names and placing people in context. In other words, the NYT is a mainstream product and service, it’s interests are perhaps not most aligned with the pseudo-anonymous world of tech and ideas that the SSC blog and HN itself appeal to and cater to.
And the NYT doesn't even need to mention whether or not it's his "real" name. It's just a name. I use scare quotes because a "name" is explicitly whatever someone wants to be referred to as. The guy who writes Slate Star Codex is Scott Alexander, full stop.
I don't think tech culture is at issue here; I doubt newspapers had any issue referring to Samuel Clemens as Mark Twain back when he was alive and active.
Yes, like the fact that a website called "Slate Star Codex" exists and particular posts in it say what the article says they say.
There is no reason why a story about the blog needs to include the real name of the author, when that real name isn't even revealed anywhere on the blog. The story is about the blog.
If he or she agrees to go on record, they should understand the potential risks.
It would behoove the reporter to lay out the options. Tricking someone to say something without knowing whether he or she is on the record is a big no-no.
1. When a journalist identifies themself as a journalist, all conversations thereafter are assumed to be on the record unless specified otherwise.
2. Statements can't be made off the record after the fact--you have to say something is off the record before you say it for it to be considered off the record.
3. This is only journalist tradition, not law. Even if you say something is off the record, there's no real incentive for a journalist not to just publish it anyway, except their integrity. Journalists can and do break this rule, especially when they disagree with the person whose words they are reporting.
I am not tying SSC's situation with the general theme of on- and off-the-record.
I will say your explanation of the difference is spot on.
Publishing the article with his full name if he's OK with that is an acceptable outcome.
Binning the article entirely if he's not OK with publishing his full name is also an acceptable outcome (though honestly it's a waste of time on all parties and it would have been better to make this constraint clear up front).
But publishing the article anyway and releasing his full name against his will, when he's the primary source for the story? That seems like a no-no. Interestingly, this hasn't happened yet, and seems like it may never at this rate.
I don’t see any reporting on the dangers of talking to reporters. Where is the NYT piece on what happens to people after they have been linked to something in the news?
I think that given Scott Alexander’s experience, ‘don’t talk to reporters, ever’, is as sound advice as ‘don’t talk to the police without an attorney’.
There are plenty of resources on how to handle talking with a reporter.
One thing I would suggest learning the difference between going on- and off-the-record and speaking on background.
> Where is the NYT piece on what happens to people after they have been linked to something in the news?
Here's a free one: Harvey Weinstein's victims. Despite them coming out about his abusive behaviors, his attorneys and henchman are going after them.
The Weinstein case seems to tell us nothing about the general risk of talking to reporters even though it is a data point.
It sounds like you are in full agreement with me otherwise though.
“Talking to reporters is very dangerous. Never do so without extensive study of the available resources.”
This is just a hit on someone the reporter viewed as not sufficiently an ally in the culture war.
What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.
Doxxing public figures is their job.
We get value, in exchange for value.
Slate Star Codex is one of the biggest dangers to people (esp marginalized groups) who want to use the internet without being abused.
TLDR is that Slate Star Codex is a blog that promotes platforming white supremacists and the like, whips up frenzies about the dangers of feminism, and serves as a vector for promoting the work of white supremacists
Ever wonder why Twitter is a "nazi haven"? Reddit a cesspool of hate? Well one of the reasons is that people working at this companies read and follow the precepts of Slate Star Codex.
Slate Star Codex is the blog of a guy named Scott who got his start blogging in the "rationalist" community.
Slate Star Codex is basically Tucker Carlson for "smart" dudes in tech. The only difference is Scott buries his ideology in mountains of text and disclaimers.
His typical rhetorical technique is "I love the gays/hate racists/am not a conservative BUT" The BUT is usually "this racist/sexist/etc. Has some points and we should hear them out."
Unsurprisingly, he's cultivated a community where racists/sexists/etc. Are VERY comfortable. In the comments and on a slatestarcodex reddit.
Now I know he didn't create the subreddit, but he approved of it and he was a moderator there. And when things went wrong with a popular thread called "the culture wars thread" he wrote a long blog post about what a tragedy it was.
Now I am a minority in tech so I've had his blog posts thrown at me by dudes for years. I saw his blog post go "viral" on both private work slacks and communities that techies frequent. https://archive.is/v62cM
The thing people took away from his post is that internet toxicity is drowning out "open debate." Now let's talk about the "open debate" he so wants to protect.
By his own stats it was mostly white men. Sure a lot of them were professed "liberals" but in tech "liberal" means "I have a gay friend but don't make me uncomfortable by talking about things like privilege."
The thread debated things like "maybe eugenics is good." It had "only" about 20 percent far righters which Scot delusionally thinks is normal. I'm sorry but while your everyday Republican might be racism he's also probably not a racial IQ stats aficionado like these dudes.
While Scott claims to hate racism, his top priority is preserving a seat at the table for a ragtag group of far righters. Unfortunately this philosophy is shared with a lot of people in tech and they use his posts to spread it.
I know because I work with a team that does abuse/moderation design and they post his stuff all the time saying how "insightful" it is.
Their argument is you have to "hear out" the white supremacists and the like and that in the end "rationality" will win. If only that were true. And it's especially not true in an environment where the comfort of white "liberal" dudes is the top priority.
I wonder how many people started reading white supremacists because of Scott's blog?
How unfair you say, he can't control the subreddit. Well besides being a moderator there so he can control it to some degree, you don't even need to go there to find links to white supremacists.
Right on his very blog roll are links to "Gene Expression" whose author was fired by the NYT for his links to white supremacists. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0cRBkMUUAI42ci?format=png&name=...
Next to it? West Hunter, written by Gregory Cochrane. His pet theory is that gayness is literally a disease and he was a regular collaborator with "race scientist" Henry Harpending https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/depths-of-madness/
Slate Star Codex is essentially a blog about how the "real" danger in the world is SJWs, feminists, and other "leftists." They, not white supremacists, are the real threat.
The worst part about all of it is that he buries it in such obtuse language that only the interested will wade into it. And his followers are rabid at defending the precept that Scott is a moderate centrist liberal.
This claim alone ought to suggest to you - given its obvious implausibility - that this person has a political axe to grind. (Same as the bunch of Twitter users who are now apparently gloating over the fact that Scott might soon get doxxed by the NYT - and who seemingly think "Orange site bad!" is a cogent argument. No, I won't be linking to them due to the obvious doxxing infohazard involved.)
He did criticize sometimes SJW, some feminist bloggers, as he also criticizes libertarians, reactionaries, communists. But, hell, since he does not subscribe to The One True And Moral Opiniom, he is a monster, definitely. And, God forbid him for not paying attention 24/7 in a subreddit that is not even his, just because he has a day job amd such.
Yes, I created this account just to answer this complete bullshit.
By RTing #ghostnyt you commit to not talking to NYT reporters or giving them quotes. Go direct if you have something to say.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/new-york-times-ad...
After reading this, I looked up NYT's policy of using real names, and it turns out this isn't the worst time that the NY Times has done this[1].
I've long said that if you want to know who an organization serves, see where its money comes from. The NY Times gets 60% of its money from subscriptions, but it also gets 30% of its money from advertisers[2]. Keep in mind that subscribers can be hard to court, and losing one advertiser is a bigger chunk of money, so the NY Times is likely to be disproportionately influenced by the 30% of their income that comes from advertisers.
We're better off with organizations who receive their money from donations. I have been constantly impressed with the reporting of Mother Jones[3] and ProPublica[4] and would encourage you to both read and donate.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/26/new-york-times...
[2] https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/5gNimvTR/New...
[3] https://www.motherjones.com/
[4] https://www.propublica.org/