EtA: I wonder if most of the downvotes are coming from what people associate with “retaliating” as opposed to the concrete actions I’m proposing (ex.: boycott).
If they go ahead with doxing Scott, I will at least do the following.
1. Open a bounty for ways to legally retaliate against the New York Times and the author (which I will keep anonymous for now)
2. Raise money (and finance myself) to buy out people subscribed to the New York Times.
3. Create a website for blocknytimes.com with the following information (maybe also buy Google Ads):
EtA: Someone told me we could build up a list of NYT advertisers and start calling them as well. “Costing them ad revenue is going to be way more effective than just losing subscribers.” Ze said ze had already started doing that.
EtA: Stop offering quotes to the NYT (prominent people have already started doing that as a response)
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.
Patience and discretion. And no point in targeting an individual.
For me personally this is the last straw in flipping an internal switch towards considering this kind of thing The Enemy. I’ll take some time and introspection before I can define its identity in words, but so far it’s pretty clear it’ll NOT be “the left”, and it will definitely include “cancel culture”. Intuitively I already have a feel for it.
The difference is, I think, that we’re just asking them to not publish Scott’s name. I would not support this kind of pushback against criticism, even if it were silly.
Edit: This is not an endorsement of Mati_Roy’s list. I do endorse politely writing to NYT.
I still don’t get it. agc asked how is the retaliation NOT at attempt to stifle criticism. TurnTrout answered that it is not: it’s retaliation for a doxing attack, not for criticism. Then wolflow said something that’s “literally” wrong, and metaphorically I didn’t get it; probably TurnTrout didn’t get it too so he answered the literal interpretation. Etc etc.
But the upvotes-downvotes show I’m not seeing something here.
Your post seemed (and still seems) to be claiming that retaliating for name publication is so significantly different from retaliating for criticism that observers will probably understand.
I can’t tell if you think that, or if you think retaliating is counterproductive, and polite requests are the way to go.
I think it’s more understandable that reasonable people would be upset about doxxing than about criticism. I don’t think it’s understandable to the point that outside observers would actually go “oh, OK, fair reply to the NYT’s bad taste”. Realistically speaking, I think they would think very poorly of us for “retaliating”.
It seems improbable that the responses suggested by Mati_Roy would lead to positive changes at NYT.
They couldn’t. Retaliating, or threatening to retaliate, is simply an incorrect avenue to address this behavior. The NYT, and most observers, will immediately discount all opinions from a direction that contains members who behave this way.
Retaliation or threats is applying a wrong theory of mind/decisions to the organization. It’s not an individual, and doesn’t feel fear. It’s not irrationally averse to your anger or actions, and it VERY rationally will decide whether to ignore or crush you, with no thought at all to giving in or reconciling.
Organizations, and entire nations for that matter, can absolutely be made to “feel fear”. The retaliation just needs to be sufficiently expensive for the organization. Afterwards, it’ll factor in the costs of that retaliation when deciding how to act. If the cost is large enough, it won’t do things that will trigger retaliation.
Oops, meant to cancel, rather than post. I don’t agree, and it’s probably not useful to debate.
s/for the organization/for many influential members of the organization/
Yes, they _can_ be manipulated and threatened in this way. But not easily, and not without pretty significant commitment on the part of a coordinated and resource-heavy attacker. Below the threshold of ”
As a side note, I strongly recommend the uBlacklist extension Mati mentions for preventing toxic websites from appearing on your search results (e.g. a certain “rational” wiki that writes cruel stuff about people they dislike).
I do not expect RationalWiki to write favorably of LW/EY in worlds where LW/EY is net-good, and unfavorably in worlds where LW/EY is net-bad. I expect RW to write unfavorably of LW/EY either way, so I don’t care much for their analysis (although I have read some of it, to make sure I’m not missing something).
I think LW cares much more about truth-seeking, while RW gives me more of a “360-degree-spin-and-then-dunk on the Outgroup” vibe.
Disclaimer: I’ve only read a few articles on there.
I doubt many of the ‘facts’ they provide are provably wrong but a number of RationalWiki articles struck me as very tendentious and one-sided and as such portraying a subject matter in a way that leads to wrong conclusions unless one gathers additional information.
E.g. from the RW article on SA: “He is highly critical of communism, [...] Much as with neoreaction, this hasn’t stopped him from writing long book reports and getting very interested, for example, in the details of central planning in the USSR.”. Rhetorics like ‘Much as with neoreaction [...]’ don’t belong in a wiki, much less one that names itself RationalWiki.
On retaliating
EtA: I wonder if most of the downvotes are coming from what people associate with “retaliating” as opposed to the concrete actions I’m proposing (ex.: boycott).
If they go ahead with doxing Scott, I will at least do the following.
1. Open a bounty for ways to legally retaliate against the New York Times and the author (which I will keep anonymous for now)
2. Raise money (and finance myself) to buy out people subscribed to the New York Times.
3. Create a website for blocknytimes.com with the following information (maybe also buy Google Ads):
General reasons the New York Times sucks
How to block them
To block the New York Time from your Google Searches, install this Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublacklist/pncfbmialoiaghdehhbnbhkkgmjanfhe
To block yourself from accessing their website, install: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/block-site-website-blocke/eiimnmioipafcokbfikbljfdeojpcgbh?hl=en
If someone sends you a link from them, feel free to refer them to blocknytimes.com
EtA: https://cancelnyt.net/
EtA: Someone told me we could build up a list of NYT advertisers and start calling them as well. “Costing them ad revenue is going to be way more effective than just losing subscribers.” Ze said ze had already started doing that.
EtA: Stop offering quotes to the NYT (prominent people have already started doing that as a response)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Peter-Gawker-Anatomy-Intrigue-ebook/dp/B07637TDJJ
Patience and discretion. And no point in targeting an individual.
For me personally this is the last straw in flipping an internal switch towards considering this kind of thing The Enemy. I’ll take some time and introspection before I can define its identity in words, but so far it’s pretty clear it’ll NOT be “the left”, and it will definitely include “cancel culture”. Intuitively I already have a feel for it.
How could an outside observer tell the difference between this, and a cult trying to stifle criticism?
The difference is, I think, that we’re just asking them to not publish Scott’s name. I would not support this kind of pushback against criticism, even if it were silly.
Edit: This is not an endorsement of Mati_Roy’s list. I do endorse politely writing to NYT.
You’re literally replying this to a top level comment with the headline “On retaliating” that gives examples for how to retaliate.
I literally did not reply to the top-level comment, but rather to its child. Did you reply to the wrong person?
Here’s what happened:
1. There’s a top level comment called “on retaliating
2. agc repleid to that comment and asked how this was different from trying to silence criticism.
3. You replied saying “we’re just asking them to not publish scotts name”—even though agc was asking about the “retaliating” comment
I still don’t get it. agc asked how is the retaliation NOT at attempt to stifle criticism. TurnTrout answered that it is not: it’s retaliation for a doxing attack, not for criticism. Then wolflow said something that’s “literally” wrong, and metaphorically I didn’t get it; probably TurnTrout didn’t get it too so he answered the literal interpretation. Etc etc.
But the upvotes-downvotes show I’m not seeing something here.
Makes sense. I hadn’t realized my comment might be seen as an endorsement of Mati_Roy’s list.
To clarify: I think it’s more reasonable to respond like this to the name issue than to criticism. I don’t personally endorse that list.
Your post seemed (and still seems) to be claiming that retaliating for name publication is so significantly different from retaliating for criticism that observers will probably understand.
I can’t tell if you think that, or if you think retaliating is counterproductive, and polite requests are the way to go.
I think it’s more understandable that reasonable people would be upset about doxxing than about criticism. I don’t think it’s understandable to the point that outside observers would actually go “oh, OK, fair reply to the NYT’s bad taste”. Realistically speaking, I think they would think very poorly of us for “retaliating”.
It seems improbable that the responses suggested by Mati_Roy would lead to positive changes at NYT.
If you want to clarify, edit your original post.
Done!
They couldn’t. Retaliating, or threatening to retaliate, is simply an incorrect avenue to address this behavior. The NYT, and most observers, will immediately discount all opinions from a direction that contains members who behave this way.
Retaliation or threats is applying a wrong theory of mind/decisions to the organization. It’s not an individual, and doesn’t feel fear. It’s not irrationally averse to your anger or actions, and it VERY rationally will decide whether to ignore or crush you, with no thought at all to giving in or reconciling.
Organizations, and entire nations for that matter, can absolutely be made to “feel fear”. The retaliation just needs to be sufficiently expensive for the organization. Afterwards, it’ll factor in the costs of that retaliation when deciding how to act. If the cost is large enough, it won’t do things that will trigger retaliation.
Oops, meant to cancel, rather than post. I don’t agree, and it’s probably not useful to debate.
s/for the organization/for many influential members of the organization/
Yes, they _can_ be manipulated and threatened in this way. But not easily, and not without pretty significant commitment on the part of a coordinated and resource-heavy attacker. Below the threshold of ”
doxing =/= criticism
As a side note, I strongly recommend the uBlacklist extension Mati mentions for preventing toxic websites from appearing on your search results (e.g. a certain “rational” wiki that writes cruel stuff about people they dislike).
Can you give me a headsup on RationalWiki? It did not shout “unfair bullshit” to me. Are their facts wrong or are they just mean?
I do not expect RationalWiki to write favorably of LW/EY in worlds where LW/EY is net-good, and unfavorably in worlds where LW/EY is net-bad. I expect RW to write unfavorably of LW/EY either way, so I don’t care much for their analysis (although I have read some of it, to make sure I’m not missing something).
I think LW cares much more about truth-seeking, while RW gives me more of a “360-degree-spin-and-then-dunk on the Outgroup” vibe.
Disclaimer: I’ve only read a few articles on there.
I doubt many of the ‘facts’ they provide are provably wrong but a number of RationalWiki articles struck me as very tendentious and one-sided and as such portraying a subject matter in a way that leads to wrong conclusions unless one gathers additional information.
E.g. from the RW article on SA: “He is highly critical of communism, [...] Much as with neoreaction, this hasn’t stopped him from writing long book reports and getting very interested, for example, in the details of central planning in the USSR.”. Rhetorics like ‘Much as with neoreaction [...]’ don’t belong in a wiki, much less one that names itself RationalWiki.
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