We are in a situation where the decision whether or not to publish Scott’s name isn’t yet made. As such it’s important to build up pressure to affect that decision and it’s not useful to be charitable. Even if canceling the whole NYT would not be proportional canceling the reporter in question might be.
You could argue that influential writers on political topics should have skin in the game and Scott being pseudonymous prevents him from having enough skin in the game. If that’s the argument then I don’t see the reporter who writes such an article shouldn’t have the same likelihood of losing his job over the article then Scott.
I think journalists bullying people they perceive to be easy targets is a general problem and not specific to Scott. The NYT times also frequently runs attack pieces which are hard to defend on utilitarian grounds. From a mistake perspective living in a world where Moloch rewards journalists for causing harm to people is bad.
We are in a situation where the decision whether or not to publish Scott’s name isn’t yet made. As such it’s important to build up pressure to affect that decision and it’s not useful to be charitable.
I don’t think it’s so cut and dried as that. I think Scott’s move to delete the blog was a reasonable one. But after that it’s not clear to me whether all of us effectively saying “Fuck you!” to the NYT is more likely to result in them not publishing the name, or something more like, “Hey, I know you’ve got norms in favor of publishing real names, but I think you’re making a mistake here, and hopefully the fact that Scott actually deleted his blog makes you realize he was more serious about this than you might have thought. I hope you make the right decision.”
Like, maybe the latter won’t work. But it’s not obvious to me one way or the other. It seems like it depends on facts about the state of mind of various folks who work at the NYT that are hard for us to know.
EDIT: Or maybe a better way to put it is that being charitable might be part of how you “build up pressure to affect that decision”. See Richard and Patrick’s threads here. A charitable reading of what’s happening from Metz’s perspective might factor into your calculus of how to act to get the result you want.
I think it kinda matters how people perceive it as being said, and, well, note that someone who is friendly on-your-side initially perceived it that way.
(This is not really a strong claim about strategy, it just seemed like something one should be weighing while formulating their overall strategy)
We are in a situation where the decision whether or not to publish Scott’s name isn’t yet made. As such it’s important to build up pressure to affect that decision and it’s not useful to be charitable. Even if canceling the whole NYT would not be proportional canceling the reporter in question might be.
You could argue that influential writers on political topics should have skin in the game and Scott being pseudonymous prevents him from having enough skin in the game. If that’s the argument then I don’t see the reporter who writes such an article shouldn’t have the same likelihood of losing his job over the article then Scott.
I think journalists bullying people they perceive to be easy targets is a general problem and not specific to Scott. The NYT times also frequently runs attack pieces which are hard to defend on utilitarian grounds. From a mistake perspective living in a world where Moloch rewards journalists for causing harm to people is bad.
I don’t think it’s so cut and dried as that. I think Scott’s move to delete the blog was a reasonable one. But after that it’s not clear to me whether all of us effectively saying “Fuck you!” to the NYT is more likely to result in them not publishing the name, or something more like, “Hey, I know you’ve got norms in favor of publishing real names, but I think you’re making a mistake here, and hopefully the fact that Scott actually deleted his blog makes you realize he was more serious about this than you might have thought. I hope you make the right decision.”
Like, maybe the latter won’t work. But it’s not obvious to me one way or the other. It seems like it depends on facts about the state of mind of various folks who work at the NYT that are hard for us to know.
EDIT: Or maybe a better way to put it is that being charitable might be part of how you “build up pressure to affect that decision”. See Richard and Patrick’s threads here. A charitable reading of what’s happening from Metz’s perspective might factor into your calculus of how to act to get the result you want.
I don’t think say effectively saying “Fuck you!” is a good description of what most people are writing.
I think that’s very different then saying the incentives should be changed in a way so that Moloch doesn’t let reporters destroy the good.
I think it kinda matters how people perceive it as being said, and, well, note that someone who is friendly on-your-side initially perceived it that way.
(This is not really a strong claim about strategy, it just seemed like something one should be weighing while formulating their overall strategy)
In general there’s no cost to ignoring it when people curse. Different comments imply a variety of costs such as canceled subscriptions.
Fair points.