[notadonut]

This conflict is complicated and our understanding of it is limited.

* We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter.

* The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means.

* SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out.

* Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press.

* It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.

[tomcatfish]

1. I do not think this counts as a rebuttal or a reason to distrust either side 2. Scott never claimed that his home address would be published, and implying he did just to disprove it likely would be considered strawmanning 3. I think this is the real point that should be used here, and credit should be given to it. That said, the people who did this are not Scott, so I think he should not be blamed anymore than J.D. Salinger should be blamed for an assassin carrying _The Catcher in the Rye_ 4. This seems to be entirely irrelevant to SSC-vs-NYT at all, I cannot see how this weighs on them 5. He has made a clear effort, but he isn't running a darknet market, so there will be holes. As a fan, I have only ever seen his name on a website that is over a decade old and I cannot find this book for sale. That said, I'd be willing to concede that he failed N years ago if you can find that the book and link me to it.

[notadonut]

5. Here is the book and one instance of Scott's full name in the book.

https://books.google.com/books?id=wtQkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR...

Voluntarily publishing something like that makes me believe that Scott did not make a clear effort. It's not about holes or opsec. It's about Scott putting his full name out there and then regretting it. He doxxed himself, and he can't be undoxxed.

2. Scott never claimed that the reporter was going to reveal his home address, but he said the reporter threatened to doxx him for clicks. I have a very hard time believing that, and I define doxxing very differently than "publishing a name that the subject of the article has already voluntarily revealed."

3. Scott is an old hand at Internet flame wars. I consider it highly likely that he knew that, by claiming that the reporter threatened to doxx him, that the reporter would be doxxed. The rest is protesting too much.

1. What it means is simply we do not know the whole story. We definitely do not know that the reporter, in fact, threatened to doxx Scott. In any case, I think Scott has a very different definition of that word than most people do.

4. If we believe that Scott encouraged his fans to turn up the heat on the reporter, then he is participating in a trend, which I highlighted, that bodes ill for American and the free flow of information. Every time an independent press tries to write a story, do its reporters get doxxed? I guarantee you will read fewer interesting stories when that is widespread.

[tomcatfish]

Sorry to reply late, I do not check comments frequently.

5. That isn't what was claimed, that's a book that included him, not a book he published (as far as I am able to tell). It seems to be _very_ different given that he did not make the effort to publish and the book even fails to call him "Scott Alexander", making it hard to link them together.

2. As point above says, the argument has become incongruent now that it becomes clear he did not publish the book. And, again, there is much value to not publishing a piece on how you are tied to fringe groups online even if your full name was once connected to them in a print book.

3. This isn't a very fair assumption. You, and others, are calling what he did bad because he knew what would happen, but aren't showing he knew ahead of time. It is very easy to say you would have realized WWII would have started, but even something that large would be outside the reach of most people's predictors in the moment.

1. I think _you_ are the one with a different definition, and I would also note that the lack of the other side being published should speak to some extent too. He showed his side, but you are taking the lack of evidence against him as proof he did something wrong, which is not very sound.

4. This attempt at universalization doesn't hold very well given that this was not a reporter trying to cover the story with full honesty; his name was a largely irrelevant detail. They could have named him "Big Bird" and the story would have been the same but with no chance of controversy, since his identity in his private life is not important to the story.

Thanks for the well-organized points, it makes replying a lot more sane.

[Sebb767]

> We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter.

True. But Scott only asked to not to have his full name published and I trust him enough to have asked the NYT beforehand. Even if he didn't, the NYT could've simply said "we won't, but ask next time" and it would look pretty bad for him.

> The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means.

Just revealing the name is not "traditional" doxxing, I agree. It's clear, though, what he tries to say.

> SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out.

Well, just after Scott put the blog offline. And he did explicitly ask his readers not to doxx or attack anyone. Now, it is possible say that, given this action, one could know that this would happen with a high likelihood, but, given his situation, he did what he could to prevent it IMO. That's debatable, though, I give you that.

> Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press.

That's not on Scott. He neither "invented" this nor asked anyone to do it; in fact, he said the reporter is probably innocent and asked his readers not to. So you can't blame this on him.

> It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.

I can see the NYT side on this; not publishing the name of someone who's name is already kinda public if you search a bit seems strange at hand. But on the other hand Scott is right, too; a NYT article would've directly brought up SSC when searching his name. Therefore, I think it's fair enough to ask not to have his name published and I don't think it's too much to ask, to be honest. Also, similar to the sibling, I can't locate this book.

Overall, I can see why he did what he did, but I can also see why it came to this.