Today is a sad day. This blog started in the comments of Slate Star Codex. Its author, a psychiatrist named Scott Alexander, has just shut it down because the NYT was threatening to dox him. Most of you probably already know this, but some of you came from elsewhere on the internet, and I also wanted to show support to Scott in this. I've contacted the NYT and expressed my displeasure, and I'd encourage you to do the same.
I was actually one of the people who the reporter contacted, and I agreed to speak to him. But I asked that he not use my real name, because it makes it easier to speak on certain topics here. He readily agreed, but wasn't willing to extend the same courtesy to Scott, who has far better reason to keep his real and internet lives separate. Shame on them.
There's also a petition/open letter on the subject, for those who want to sign.
Said Achmiz, who handles the technical side of Naval Gazing, has set up a forum for the SSC diaspora, Data Secrets Lox. I'd recommend anyone who misses the community to go and check it out.
Comments
Well damn. I went to SSC this morning to read over breakfast and was not all that surprised when it didn't load. To Scott and everyone from the commentariat, I love you all and miss you. You were the smartest, friendliest and most kind and thoughtful group of people I've met and I will miss you dearly. Shame on the New York Times.
Conrad
This was inevitable, and I've been dreading it for a couple of years now, but I was hoping we'd have at least another few good years. And maybe we can port the best parts of the community over to a new home, but I'm not terribly optimistic on that front. I'm going to miss Scott, and all of my friends, a lot.
Slate Star Codex was our last, best hope for peace on the internet. It failed.
I seldom commented but I followed the OT obsessively, even though some of the political discussions were too US-centric for my tastes. Although most posters cannot be reached now (obviously) what do you think of the possibility of recreating some of the community from the people who (like me) wandered into your blog to try to get in touch with ssc posters? Welldotdotdot also has a (seldom updated) blog, DFriedman and family can be contacted, as well as NancyL and (probably) the reasonable SJW guy who started posting a few weeks ago (he left is email there) Feel free to not let this post through, in case you fear turning the Eye of Sauron onto you
I am tremendously saddened by this. SSC was a haven in a dark and cruel internet.
I am tremendously saddened by this. SSC was a haven in a dark and cruel internet.
I'm going to be unreasonably optimistic and hope that scott committing to a scorched earth response will pursuade the nyt to change their minds.
It's not like journalism is unfamiliar with the idea of protecting someone's anonymity.
Contacting the nyt or Metz and asking them to reconsider may be helpful.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
If we do try to regroup somewhere else, it might be best to be a bit less secretive right from the start. It's hard to mix anonymity and any sort of success, since success begets fame, and the more famous you get, the more people will be motivated to find out who you really are. Requiring at least the mods to be operating under their own names might be for the best.
It's not like you need to be anonymous to run a forum. John Scalzi, Charles Stross, and the Nielsen Haydens have all hosted active discussion sites for years, openly.
Presumably, the SSC subreddit is where the community will go.
Interesting to know that he gave you the courtesy of anonymity. You work in defense, right? Did he know that, and give you anonymity because of it? (I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when I can, and that's the only not-flagrantly-terrible reason I can think of to do so.) What kind of questions did he ask?
I'm kind of pissed off, tbh.
@Johan
I'm not sure that's necessary. Scott was secretive for good reason, and if he wasn't, then there's a lot of stuff we wouldn't have gotten. If my real name was clearly linked to to this blog, there's a couple of posts I'd take down, and a few more that I have long-term plans for that will never get written. Nothing horrible, but it's a bit close to my real life for comfort. So all insisting on real names does in this kind of case is destroy potential content. And a forum is a lot less likely to be a target for this kind of thing in the first place.
"It’s not like you need to be anonymous to run a forum. John Scalzi, Charles Stross, and the Nielsen Haydens have all hosted active discussion sites for years, openly."
Relevant differences between those four and Scott Alexander are left as an exercise for the reader; I think Scott is correct that he cannot openly host anything like SSC without completely upending his meatspace life. Are you volunteering to host the new community, and do you think you're up to it?
@Alsadius
When he emailed me, I said I was potentially interested in talking, so long as my name didn't appear in the article, because I work in defense and have a defense blog. He agreed before we spoke.
As for questions, a lot of it was about diversity and readership. Some about the blog community and meetups, including a few about the times I met Scott. Nothing on AI or coronavirus. He also asked for Scott's real name, which I refused to give. I told him that I'd done some looking and was satisfied that he was who he said he was, but that I wasn't going to help him with that, and that he should contact Scott. The impression I got was that he was trying to check bona fides. No clue on the plan to reveal Scott's real name. I emailed Scott about those questions almost immediately.
@john
I'd be happy to do it. I already run one of the local DC meetups. I wouldn't do it under my real name, of course, but doing it under a real name isn't necessary. What I can't do, though, is get all the people I liked talking to to follow me over, or generate scott essays to attract new people, so what's the point?
Looks like a certain news organisation I'll describe only as 'users of UTC+3' has got wind of this.
I suspect that a lot of the OT regulars would gravitate towards a forum or something of that nature which isn't Reddit. I'd certainly signal-boost any effort as hard as I could, and I suspect we'll get more refugees here as one of the obvious places to look for this kind of thing.
No, I can't run it myself. I'm buying a house in a week.
I'm pissed, but I can't say that I'm entirely surprised. My read on this is that this reporter doesn't understand how much Scott is hated by certain parts of the Internet, and to what extent those factions are willing to go to break someone's career and livelihood if they feel that a person is even associating with certain viewpoints that they find abhorrent.
I figured SSC would get taken down eventually. You can only get so many mentions in influential blogs like Vox or Marginal Revolution before the real world takes an interest and starts sniffing around. Given the amount of flak that Scott took for being associated with the SSC subreddit (and the Culture War threads there, more specifically), I'm not surprised he took the blog rather than go through something potentially an order of magnitude worse.
(Hopefully I'm not stepping over the line re: this blog's culture-war policy here)
PS: Congratulations on the house!
Congratulations on becoming responsible for each and every little thing that goes wrong^W^W^W^W^W a proud owner of your own property!
The point of my CW policy is that I don't want the war being fought here. In this case, I'm pretty sure everyone here is on the same side. Also, I sort of invited it by bringing the topic up.
And thanks on the house. I'm definitely looking forward to having more shelf space, as I'm currently completely out. The rest? A mixture of trepidation and excitement.
I wouldn't be interested in hosting such a forum solo; it's too much work. But I'd be willing to serve as one of a partnership of owner/moderators, and to do so under my own name. But as part of setting up such a forum, I would want to have a serious discussion of what topics or viewpoints we are not willing to host on the forum. And the scope of discussion I would argue for is narrower than what Scott allowed.
In my case, there are some topics I consider inherently disgusting, and would want banned from the forum: snuff films or bukkake, for instance. There are others which I recognize as controversial, but would be willing to allow, such as affirmative action and the male-female gender gap. And there are still others which I'd be willing to put up with in principle, but which will probably be more trouble than they're worth, and I would therefore argue for keeping them out: racial IQ differences or the exact size of the Holocaust.
Congrats on the house! When it's yours, at least you can always yell at the landlord to fix stuff.
I suspect this has the potential to be a turning point, or at least the end of the beginning. Will Scott's big name fans come out in force? Will it matter against the eye of sauron? Can any defensive victory actually reduce their power, or will they just turn their evil gaze to more helpless prey?
One way or another, we're finally going to find out how far this goes.
Sorry, that should have been "male-female wage gap".
@bean
Welcome to home ownership, it's terrible!
I'm actually trying to by a new place myself this month. I hope you held out for a good price, the market's in a very strange place right now.
@echo
You can yell at the landlord, sure, but in my experience he's always lazier and broker than you'd like him to be.
Well, that's just it, isn't it? The reason Slate Star Codex will be missed so much is that Scott Alexander understood that those topics were "more trouble than they were worth" and engaged with them anyway. It was one of the few places on the Internet where you could read a fair minded summary of the "other side", no matter how abhorrent you found it. Moreover, it was a summary that was public, which meant that items on Slate Star Codex could be linked to and discussed more broadly, in a way that private forum posts could not.
It was probably always unsustainable, and as Blackshoe said above, "Sic transit gloria mundi".
I'll miss SSC. I mostly lurked, but did occasionally participate in discussion, and I enjoyed reading the blog posts.
This does make me glad that I turned down an interview with that reporter (in part because I was worried about getting doxxed myself, in part because I don't trust reporters as a general rule).
@everyone saying owning a home is terrible: you worry too much. The upkeep can't be that bad... I say, biased because I won't have to do most of the repairs.
I didn't comment there terribly often, and when I did, it was under a different name, but I read almost every post and open thread for the past five or six years. I'm going to miss everyone on the open threads even more than I'll miss Scott's posts, great as those are.
@cassander If SSC doesn't come back at the end of all of this, please do start a new home! Reddit just doesn't cut it. As for your concerns, first, I think a lot of the regular commenters would make the move if a new home were created. And secondly, the community has already shown itself willing to write long-form posts from time to time (adversarial collaborations, book reviews), so new people might be gained from posts like those. Heck, Scott might even show up after a while under a new name.
In terms of the future, I think we need to make a distinction between Scott and the SSC community, particularly the OT regulars. Scott may have been what brought us together, and we'll certainly suffer from his absence, but I think it's worth trying to preserve the community even if Scott is gone. Hence the forum or whatever.
FYI, this comment thread has been linked by at least one media source: https://freebeacon.com/media/well-known-blogger-shuts-down-site-for-fear-of-nyt-doxxing/
I don't think it'll make a huge difference - people who come here for culture war stuff will be left sorely disappointed - but it might be worth noting.
Hey, Free Beacon readers - battleships are cool! : )
I am fairly optimistic that this is just a temporary shutdown.
Since this is a military blog, it seems appropriate to applaud Scott for bold and correct strategy in dealing with this. He is a victim of his own success as a blogger; being that high profile and remaining anonymous is simply inherently difficult. Drastic actions like this to establish credible deterrence are thus necessary. Of course it might not work, but in that case, probably nothing would.
Well, this way the Times has an even bigger story if they want to run with it.
SECRETIVE PUNDIT SHUTS DOWN BLOG BEFORE IDENTITY IS REVEALED
P(Scott reappears under a new name) < P(Scott reappears under an even older name)
Speaking of which, some of his stuff's still up on LW, if you want to show people why you liked SSC.
I've already seen a bunch of support on twitter. Even that one sub that are not massive fans of us has taken the official stance that doxxing is a bit too far.
Anyone up for one of those noughties-style simple machine forums? I feel like that was the zenith of social media technology.
@lewis
I appreciate the vote of confidence, but it's a nasty coordination problem to solve. It's funny, because many years ago I argued for moving the open threads to reddit, only to come to realize how wrong I was. The community needs its own space to keep its character.
@alesziegler
I'm not convinced this was the correct strategy. At the very least, there should have been some strongly worded letters sent to the reporter, his editor, and his editor's boss about how displeased Scott was about the prospect of getting doxed and reminding them that anonymity was part of the initial understanding.
I noted the Discord server invite is expired. What's the best way for us to coordinate and keep in touch in the meantime?
I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said. Even if the NYT backs down the popular support via larger names like Matt Yglesias and so on via social media is going to have a Streisand Effect on Scott and SSC...
I'm trying not to be very angry right now, mostly because I don't think there's anything I can do about the situation that hasn't already been done beyond reach out to the other regulars and alumni such as here.
Hail, refugees! This is a sad day and I wanted to report in here. I'm now wrestling with Wordpress so I can have a blog under the name "Historyphile". I managed to recover the old fantasy fiction reviews I did in the Open Threads of Scott's dead blog and am in the process of uploading them. Upcoming content will be focused on history and old books, mostly of higher literary merit. : )
Unfortunately the current site name is https://wordpress92515.wordpress.com/
I will update y'all when I fix that.
And here I had just registered an account on SSC a couple weeks ago after lurking for six years but was too shy to go ahead with any comments!
Ah well, at least we still have naval history! This was one of the features that got me reading the open threads in the first place...
I find this behavior fascinating and incomprehensible. There are plenty blogs I read where I feel no need or desire to comment, but I can't imagine being interested enough to read the open threads for years and not speak.
Then again, keeping my mouth shut is one of the skills that I've never managed to master.
In my case it's a deep-seated fear of being banned or reprimanded, so I- guess I just save everyone the trouble and avoid participating from the beginning. That coupled with a presumption that it would be arrogant to presume that anyone would want to hear anything I have to say-
Which seems pretty obviously unhealthy and is what I had meant to bring up on some open thread over there in the first place but alas!
Re coordinating: Scott has left an email subscription form on the gravestone page. So if someone does put up some forum or anything - and that includes Le Maistre Chat's blog - it seems a good idea to ask Scott to share the link with those who subscribed.
Re the general situation: assuming the reporter complied or Scott were OK with doxxing, how likely is it that the article would actually be nice and positive just because the reporter said so? I.e. how expected is it from NYT to make the published article look completely different from how it was presented to the interviewee? I know media with less of a name do it all the time, but no idea about NYT.
To pick the most Navalgazing-relevant example I could find, it's funny how the NYT refers to the author Nevil Shute.
Of course, his True Name was Nevil Shute Norway, but he dropped the last name to distance his nom-de-plume from his professional reputation as an aeronautical engineer and a Royal Navy Volunteer Reservist.
'Nevil Shute' is the name on the books. It is the name people recognise, it is the name that appears in the NYT's reviews of his work. I don't see why 'Scott Alexander' should be any different.
@AlexofUrals I'd not expect someone doing a hatchet job to go to this much effort with interviews.
@cassander:
If you were to host this hypothetical new forum under a pseudonym, what would you do if someone revealed your identity?
We've had one forum yanked out from under us by doxxing. If we go to the trouble of setting up another one, we should take steps to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Well, my blog is up now. I ended up using Blogspot instead of Wordpress, learning that they charge $48/year for a usable URL.
@AlexofUrals: You're more than welcome to ask Scott to share the link with all his shadow subscribers. That's https://historyphile.blogspot.com/
@alesziegler:
He wasn't even particularly careful about maintaining his pseudonymity. He told us almost his full name, he organized public meetings and showed up at them, and told us many things about his personal life. All of this made any investigator's job much easier.
In retrospect that sort of weak pseudonymity doesn't come out of this mess looking like a great idea. Either publish openly and be willing to deal with whatever pushback comes your way, or publish under a carefully maintained pseudonym, but don't try to split the difference.
I've been a reader of /r/askhistorians for almost a decade now, and so far the number of comments I have there is in the single digits. In my case, it's more that I'm intimidated by the thoroughness of the contributions, and I don't really feel like I have anything to add.
@johan
Scott was never very careful about his identity, and attracted a lot of attention with his writing. I'd host it under a pseudonym that has nothing to do with me in any context, not write long think pieces, and not talk a lot about it, especially to reporters. Ideally I'd get a couple other people to run it with me, and in the unlikely event that one of us got found out in a way that was damaging, they would deny everything and the others would back up his story. That should be enough to muddy the waters.
I'd also have bean delete this post in a day or two. : )
@quanticle
yeah, but r/askhistorians is filled with tankies and power mad mods...
@Le Maistre Chat:
Blog added to my list. And, “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks?” Just what are you trying to say here? Not that there’s much need for subtext with such an expressive text...
Schilling reply has email published in name field
His email is pretty public, and has been for some time. I can fix it if he wants me to, though.
Not sure how that happened; possibly an autofill glitch. Any other day I'd let it pass, but if you can easily fix it please do.
It's trivial to fix.
@ John
I'm positive you've done it here before, if that matters. But this is just proof that we need post editing here! No one likes seeing their spelling errors immortalized, and everyone knows they're much easier to spot after hitting send than before!
@John Schilling: "Just what are you trying to say here? Not that there’s much need for subtext with such an expressive text..."
Love history painting. Hate the Sultan. No less simple subtext needed. : )
In case we need it, Said Achmiz (the honorable maintainer of the tech platform that Naval Gazing runs on) has also created a forum, and made me moderator of it. I don't know what our plans are re: migrating open thread discussions and effortposts from Slate Star Codex, but I did wish to inform you that the forum is there and available.
Thanks for setting up the forum, Said.
Hi Bean et al, Nice to see the familiar names. I'm hopeful the cancellation is temporary, lonely in the meantime. (And a certain Fern passes along similar disappointment).
If Data Secrets Lox is to be the gathering place for former SSC commenters / readers (temporarily, I hope! but I am prepared to host it indefinitely), then it will need more moderators. I’ve set the forum up, and will readily take care of all hosting and technical matters, but actually moderating / running the forum is a responsibility I cannot take on.
Several people here have mentioned that they’d be willing to moderate a forum—if you’re still willing, please register and let me know you’ve done so (in a comment here, as will likely be easiest). If at least three (two more, plus quanticle) moderators step up, I’ll leave everything—subforum creation, moderation, etc.—in the community’s hands (the technical / hosting matters excepted, naturally).
I've registered.
There is now an open letter/petition that I encourage people t o sign. https://www.dontdoxscottalexander.com
@bean:
Small correction—it’s “Data Secrets Lox” (the second word is pluralized, of necessity).
I think it's important to avoid making the controversy appear, especially to people at the NYT, as a right vs left issue, hence important to have people identified as left supporting Scott on internet privacy grounds. Any of you who have friends who are prominent on the left and reasonable people may want to try to get them involved.
Here is one example of the sort of thing I think we need more of: https://medium.com/@lessig/hey-nyt-please-just-dont-44f36a87c21.
@David Friedman +1
Anyone here in a place to rally the rat(adj) tumblrs?
Ofc if it does get nasty the battleground will probably be twitter, where most of the support for SSC seems to be coming from SV libertarian types.
@David Friedman
I'm definitely with you on that. One of my concerns was that the story getting traction on the right would kill it in the mainstream.
@bean: Do you think there will ever come a time when "Please don't defend me unless you're on the left" will be a losing strategy?
@LMC
I'm not going to answer that on the grounds that it's (a) outside the direct scope here, and (b) very CW.
@bean: I meant for the direct scope of Scott, but point. Ugh. I just hope anyone will read my effort posts now. I should have started my blog earlier.
LMC, I think you were a little too CW trugger-happy... it all depends on who is attempting to out/doxx whom. If FOXNews or Breitbart were the ones who threatened to out Scott, it is obvious that any appeals coming from the left or center would be discounted as " good, this shows we are doing something right" , and that the best strategy would be to have Trumpers, nationalists, even NRx, etc. to plead with them. Since NYT sees itself as (at least) non-libertarian and non-GOP and has a weltanschaueng closer to the progressive or centre-left, it stands to reason that appeals from their ingroup will carry more weight.
@John Schilling:
I got that reference. And I think that, ultimately, the same actions will need to be taken.
I've been on vacation and this is an incredibly shitty thing to come back to. Unfortunately I can see it's gonna take a while to get up to speed with the situation as it currently stands, but I am assuming that nothing has been resolved for the better. Can anyone verify that for me?
I don't want to run out and start tearing up the cobblestones and setting fires if this has come to some resolution.
@bean
Picking up SSC survivors is a great idea until you find out the NYT editor is Robert C. Richardson the 4th.
So far, we seem to be at an impasse. NYT hasn't done anything, and everyone else seems to be waiting.
"rationalwiki" is now spreading stuff to get Scott's license taken away, including "incriminating" quotes from Unsong.
This is what happens to you when you endorse charity. I won't make that mistake.
Rationalwiki? They've been long-time skeptics, but they haven't doxxed him. I'd be surprised if that changed and they started going after his medical license directly.
FWIW, many of the older pages now have some code up top letting you know (I'm guessing, anyway), that they can't pull up the comments from SSC. Which, duh. But wanted to let bean and Said know.
I actually noticed that days ago, and just didn't care enough to do anything about it.
I'm not sure I understand. What is the significance of Robert C. Richardson the 4th being the NYT editor?
rationalwiki actually doxxed him on twitter, its twitter account seems to be in a very active campaign to discredit Scott
@quanticle I believe it’s not literal, but an allusion to the policies of Robert C Richardson the 3rd.
The reference to Robert C Richardson IV is about the Laconia Incident.
@ThinkingPizza
Ouch. Saw that twitter account. Hope it ends up somewhere near the bottom of Google. Hmm. Maybe we do really bad SEO spam for it to try to bury it.
This article about SSC and S.A. appeared today, 9 July 2020, in the New Yorker. I post it without comment so please don't shoot the messenger--just thought it would be of interest to the readership here.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media
@Neal
"you're being paranoid", they said. "it'll be a fluff piece", they said...