Revealing people’s names is protected by the first amendment. But then there are also plenty of legal ways to ruin the live of that NYTimes reporter and warning the reporter that his actions might make him enemies that he doesn’t want to have as Scott has done might be the only way forward.
When Peter Thiel’s legal attack on Gawker isn’t enough to deter this kind of unethical journalism maybe going against the individual journalists who engage in that kind of behavior is better to create a deterence effect. It might now be up to the NYTimes journalist whether painting that target on his back is what he wants to do.
While I think it’s wrong for the NYT to publish Scott’s name and I support disincentivizing them from doing that, I don’t support “ruining [the reporter’s life]”, “making [the reporter an enemy]”, or “painting a target on [their] back”. I understand the game theory here, but I also don’t want us to be the kind of community that does stuff like that.
Scott can be wrong though. In fact, if his blog does get shut down, that is a major update against his conciliatory world-views. That post is also years old. It might not even be his current position.
Another complication is that in the current climate of victim-worshiping, he has incentives not to act belligerently himself (or ask others to do so). Other people retaliating for Scott without his request will be much better for his reputation. (What I’m trying to say is, he has incentives to underplay his desire for revenge. Obviously I am not in his head so all this is mere speculation.)
There’s a difference between painting a target on someone’s elses back and making them aware that engaging in a specific action is equivalent to painting a target on their back. Scott made a point not to name the journalist in question. Whether or not they want to publish an article that links their own name to this is their own choice.
I do think that a person who works to shut down an important blog is an enemy and should be fully informed of the responsibility he takes. If the reporter does that there’s a benefit from being clear about what they are doing and that they picked the fight, so it’s easier to explain in the future to bullies that they don’t want to pick the fight.
I do believe in people who go around running people’s lives having skin in the game and that being more effective to encourage ethical behavior then going after institutions. The institution of the NYT won’t force the reporter to put in Scott’s real name, so they should take the responsiblity for their actions.
Why do you believe that bullies should be get away from personal consequences for their actions? Or more specifially shouldn’t be warned that their bullying might have negative consequences for them? Why do you think our community shouldn’t defend itself against someone shutting down key parts of our infrastructure? Do you also think nerds on the schoolyard should let themselves be bullied?
I don’t think we should organize retaliation here on LW, but that likely won’t be necessary for the journalist predictably facing consequences for bringing down a major blog for reasons of vanity.
Not really. It’s so strange that the US journalistic code of ethics has very strict rules about revealing information from anonymous sources, but doesn’t seem to have any rules about revealing information from pseudonymous sources.
Is there any legal basis for Scott?
Revealing people’s names is protected by the first amendment. But then there are also plenty of legal ways to ruin the live of that NYTimes reporter and warning the reporter that his actions might make him enemies that he doesn’t want to have as Scott has done might be the only way forward.
When Peter Thiel’s legal attack on Gawker isn’t enough to deter this kind of unethical journalism maybe going against the individual journalists who engage in that kind of behavior is better to create a deterence effect. It might now be up to the NYTimes journalist whether painting that target on his back is what he wants to do.
While I think it’s wrong for the NYT to publish Scott’s name and I support disincentivizing them from doing that, I don’t support “ruining [the reporter’s life]”, “making [the reporter an enemy]”, or “painting a target on [their] back”. I understand the game theory here, but I also don’t want us to be the kind of community that does stuff like that.
Especially since Scott explicitly asked people to be nice, and has written whole essays about not using those kinds of tactics.
Scott can be wrong though. In fact, if his blog does get shut down, that is a major update against his conciliatory world-views. That post is also years old. It might not even be his current position.
Another complication is that in the current climate of victim-worshiping, he has incentives not to act belligerently himself (or ask others to do so). Other people retaliating for Scott without his request will be much better for his reputation. (What I’m trying to say is, he has incentives to underplay his desire for revenge. Obviously I am not in his head so all this is mere speculation.)
There’s a difference between painting a target on someone’s elses back and making them aware that engaging in a specific action is equivalent to painting a target on their back. Scott made a point not to name the journalist in question. Whether or not they want to publish an article that links their own name to this is their own choice.
I do think that a person who works to shut down an important blog is an enemy and should be fully informed of the responsibility he takes. If the reporter does that there’s a benefit from being clear about what they are doing and that they picked the fight, so it’s easier to explain in the future to bullies that they don’t want to pick the fight.
I do believe in people who go around running people’s lives having skin in the game and that being more effective to encourage ethical behavior then going after institutions. The institution of the NYT won’t force the reporter to put in Scott’s real name, so they should take the responsiblity for their actions.
Why do you believe that bullies should be get away from personal consequences for their actions? Or more specifially shouldn’t be warned that their bullying might have negative consequences for them? Why do you think our community shouldn’t defend itself against someone shutting down key parts of our infrastructure? Do you also think nerds on the schoolyard should let themselves be bullied?
I don’t think we should organize retaliation here on LW, but that likely won’t be necessary for the journalist predictably facing consequences for bringing down a major blog for reasons of vanity.
Not really. It’s so strange that the US journalistic code of ethics has very strict rules about revealing information from anonymous sources, but doesn’t seem to have any rules about revealing information from pseudonymous sources.
I don’t think the code cares about the distinction between anonymous / pseudonymous but about whether there’s a journalist-source relationship.