
SlateStarCodex Is Back Up - bkohlmann
https://slatestarcodex.com/
======
Wolfenstein98k
I see no public interest value in denying his request to remain pseudonymous.

To publish his name and associate it with his pseudonym - especially in what
would obviously become the top Google result - is egregious when he had
pleaded for it not to happen.

I'm glad they appear to have backed down but I'm still furious they ever
intended to do it, and held the sword of Damocles over his head for so many
weeks.

~~~
adamsea
> I'm still furious they ever intended to do it, and held the sword of
> Damocles over his head for so many weeks.

I think the actual “Sword of Damocles” story does not illustrate what you wish
it to. From Wikipedia:

“ According to the story, Damocles was pandering to his king, Dionysius,
exclaiming that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and
authority, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to
switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that very
fortune firsthand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king's proposal.
Damocles sat on the king's throne, surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius,
who had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang
above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail
to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king: Though having much fortune,
always having to watch in fear and anxiety against dangers that might try to
overtake him.”

The NY Times is equivalent to the King?

~~~
Wolfenstein98k
Thinking too hard about it.

The point was the dangling sword over his head, being the imminent publishing
of the article.

They told him they wouldn't hide his name, but they didn't tell him they
wouldn't publish the article.

~~~
adamsea
My point was the irony. Damocles wanted to sit in the hot seat, until he found
out just how hot it was.

Scott Alexander has been a semi-public figure (popular blog, shares pieces of
personal information and parts of his name, his location, online) for a while.

Now Scott Alexander is in the hot seat (getting an NY Times article written
about you).

So he hung his own sword of Damocles over his head. Certainly, as a
psychiatrist, if anonymity is so important then I do wonder, unless he didn't
understand the importance of it years ago, why he wasn't fully anonymous then?

IMHO there's a difference between Scott Alexander-level anonymity and Satoshi
Nakamoto level anonymity.

Which raises a good question - is it in the public interest enough to, say,
know the name of who created bitcoin, that, if the NY Times found out, it'd be
appropriate for them to publish it?

------
CM30
I still can't figure out any legitimate reason why the Times thought it was a
good idea to try and use his real name in an article about the site.

I mean, if someone goes by a certain identity online when running a blog or
working on something, what's wrong with just using that name in an article or
video about them? Whenever I interview a game developer that uses a pseudonym,
or a YouTuber/Twitch streamer/blogger in the same situation, that's the name I
use in the article. I might ask them for a bit of background info at one point
sure, but I won't push for it, nor will I go around trying to dox them to get
said information.

Is there any real reason that 'Scott Alexander [last name]' would be used
rather than just 'Scott Alexander'?

Still, it's nice to see the blog's back up, and I hope people learn from this
debacle in some way or another.

~~~
BitwiseFool
This is pure speculation on my part, but it may just be due to organizational
inflexibility and poor communication. I remember reading somewhere that
internally The Times said it was having a credibility problem when it came to
"unnamed sources" and there was an effort to confront this.

So, the author of the article, knowing Scott's real and full name, would be
obliged to use it in the article. I can imagine Scott's request to protect his
identity going back and forth between layers of management. And each of those
managers realized they had nothing to gain by granting Scott's request.

~~~
Natsu
There's a huge difference between pure "unnamed sources" that are highly
partisan and publishing the pseudonym someone publishes under rather than
their actual name.

Also, most of the credibility loss has been because a lot of those anonymous
sources flat-out lied to them, but that's another story and I have yet to see
them write about it.

------
snowmaker
After this whole NYT showdown, I'll definitely appreciate SSC more. I always
liked it, but it was just one blog among many. The realization that it could
disappear at any time somehow makes it seem more precious.

~~~
blueboo
I'll appreciate it quite a bit less, as this tantrum suggests that he fears
being liable for just how much of is patients' experience he shared. The fear-
of-doxxing charade never held water, borne out by how comfortable he felt
siccing his community on the NYT reporter.

Tucker Carlson recently perfomed the same kind of cynical rhetorical judo.
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/21/tucker-
carl...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/21/tucker-carlson-new-
york-times/))

Influential platforms do, once in a while, see a drop of accountability. The
reaction to it is telling

~~~
Kinrany
AFAIK sharing anonymized patient stories is pretty standard.

~~~
teachrdan
It may be the case that he did not do his due diligence to sufficiently
anonymize them. This is from the APA:

 __4.07 Use of Confidential Information for Didactic or Other Purposes __

Psychologists do not disclose in their writings, lectures, or other public
media, confidential, personally identifiable information concerning their
clients /patients, students, research participants, organizational clients, or
other recipients of their services that they obtained during the course of
their work, unless (1) they take reasonable steps to disguise the person or
organization, (2) the person or organization has consented in writing, or (3)
there is legal authorization for doing so.

[https://www.apa.org/ethics/code](https://www.apa.org/ethics/code)

~~~
pmiller2
Well, if he did disclose PII, then surely there's enough to identify one of
them, right?

------
intended
Reading the comments here, I’m surprised to realize that his name is already
this well known.

In that case, I’m a bit confused - if someone did an article on SSC, without
reaching out to the chap - what would have happened then? Articles using
publicly available information are beyond routine So his name would be
exposed.

I’m not sure what his options would be or what the consensus opinion is for
that scenario. Would that have been an issue, but not as much since it would
be a fait accompli? How would anyone be able to reverse such an article after
it was published ?

~~~
red_admiral
Ironically, Scott himself has an old (2013) post on "the virtue of silence"
that talks specifically about the NYT:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/14/the-virtue-of-
silence/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/14/the-virtue-of-silence/)

Scott's argument is basically, he is a psychiatrist and his patients will put
his real name into google to find out info about him, check he's correctly
licenced etc. But this shouldn't lead to them finding out too much as him as a
person as that would get in the way of the therapeutic relationship. One thing
he does to help with this is not run his public online identity under his full
name.

The problem is not people searching for "scott alexander real name", even if
they find it. The problem is reverse searches for "scott $surname" by his
patients, leading to an article on the politics of his online community, his
views on polyamory and transhumanism and gender etc.

If some random blogger made a post using his real name, and it didn't end up
ranking highly in the google results for his real name, it probably wouldn't
hurt too much - especially as most people don't look at more than the top 5
search results or so. The information being out there by itself is not the big
problem.

But if a NYT article gets enough of an impact that it's the number 1 search
result for his real name, then we have a problem. And the NYT has a pretty big
platform, as Scott pointed out in the linked article, so it's a real hazard.

~~~
maybelsyrup
"But this shouldn't lead to them finding out too much as him as a person as
that would get in the way of the therapeutic relationship."

Forgive me because I posted something very similar a month ago when Alexander
deleted SSC, but I'm a mental health professional in full-time research and
clinical practice and this bears repeating: the "damage to the therapeutic
relationship with patients" argument for Alexander's anonymity is weak at
best, since

(a) psychiatrists in particular have little to no "therapeutic alliance" with
their patients as traditionally understood, and (b) professional mores in
mental health more generally (including clinical psychology, social work,
counseling, and psychiatric nursing) have changed in favor of a great deal
more "self-disclosure" being permitted in the therapeutic relationship (or
"alliance") than 75 years ago.

In my view, it would damage Mr. Alexander's relationship with his patients
very little to know that he has a popular blog about rationalism etc. As
another commenter points out above, most adults (and most users of psychiatric
/ mental health services, believe it or not) are perfectly capable of
separating whatever they know about their clinicians' personal lives from
their ability to do their jobs.

I'll quote myself from the earlier thread:

"I'd expect a more robust defense of personal privacy from a "rationalist",
because this reason is bunk, and everyone in modern mental health knows it.
I've worked as a clinician in the types of settings Mr. Alexander works in
(locked inpatient psychiatric units), and others in mental health as well, and
while there's certainly a longstanding debate within psychotherapy (talk
therapy) about so-called "self-disclosure", the days when clinicians were
expected to be "impenetrable to the patient" and "reflect nothing but what is
shown to him" are long over.

Researchers and practitioners from nearly every therapeutic modality that rose
up to challenge (and in many cases mostly displace) these leftovers from Freud
have challenged the notion of "psychiatrist-as-cipher" from within their own
perspectives. And there's even a very good case to be made that hiding oneself
as aggressively as Freud wanted clinicians to do (and as aggressively as S.
Alexander seems to want to maintain) only augments an already severely
lopsided "power dynamic" in the therapeutic relationship. In plain English:
it's attitudes like these that allow "the therapeutic class" of which I am a
part to lord it over the populations we are ostensibly treating, people who in
many cases aren't treated as people and who have valuable expertise and
experience in matters relevant to them but who we, historically, have been
eager to ignore.

But it's funny because these debates have occurred within the universe of
"talk therapy", a universe that psychiatry as such abandoned about fifty years
ago. Dr. Alexander is a psychiatrist in 2020 - not a psychologist, not a
social worker, not even a nurse. His profession left all pretense of actually
talking to patients behind when they fully embraced medications as the first-
line treatments for nearly all mental disorders; psychiatrists today do
"medication management".

None of this is to slander the guy, by the way; he's really good at what he
does (the blogging, I mean), and I've enjoyed a lot of his output over the
years. But this specific reason for remaining anonymous got under my skin a
bit, because it's wobbly for the reasons I listed. It's _also_ wobbly, I'll
add, because the rest of us in mental health could have no such luxury of
privacy these days even if we wanted it - and 99.9999% of us do not maintain
ultra-popular and highly public-facing blogs. I value my privacy greatly,
perhaps more than Alexander, but citing ancient and highly contested
professional mores to maintain it is pulling a fast one on the public he very
much needs right now."

I don't speak for all mental health professionals or researchers, of course,
but I feel I owe it to HN (where most are not in the field, I'm guessing) to
offer another point of view on this, especially in light of SSC's popularity
with the HN crowd.

~~~
areeh
Your comment does not make too much sense to me as a layperson. As far as I
know, therapy by talking is still being done and research is still being done
that investigates how it works. Scott and others have implied psychiatrists
(individuals not the field as a whole) still try to avoid self-disclosing.

To me his choice to remain under pseudonym is communicated as his choice, not
policy. If therapy by talking is still considered useful and he thinks self-
disclosure has an impact on that, it is sufficient for his choice to be sane.

I appreciate that you highlight self-disclosing is contested, but calling this
"pulling a fast one" seems excessive to me given your reasons

------
jumelles
Did the Times ever publish the story? Has it been officially scrapped? Do we
even know?

~~~
tomcatfish
The story has not been published yet, though a review of the whole situation
was published in the New Yorker [1] that has been met with mixed reviews, but
largely positive from what I have seen (mostly from followers of the blog,
strangely).

You can check the subreddit for more info on how things have been going down,
I peeked in a few days ago and got caught up on all this.

[1] : [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-
st...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-
and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media)

~~~
User23
I think that their recent experience with Tucker Carlson has gotten the NYT
staff to reconsider the relative merits of doxxing the subjects of their
articles. It's a most double-edged sword, and they will cut themselves if they
keep swinging it around.

~~~
baryphonic
I have to imagine the NYT staff, as biased and (IMO) as poor as they are at
news-writing, must take no pleasure in being asked to doxx subjects of their
stories on the arbitrary and capricious whims of management. Most journalists
I know are good people, even when they perpetuate a bad system. They tend to
be quite left and sometimes (many times) blindly biased, yet pursuit of the
truth is the main goal for the bulk of journalists. Most editors, by contrast,
seem genuinely terrible. They thwart honest journalists at every opportunity
to sell something fake but salacious. (Something similar can be observed about
academia and the faculty _vis-a-vis_ the deans and university administration.)

I imagine many in the NYT are looking at Carlson or Scott Alexander and are
saying, "hmm, would I want my own personal details published?"

------
juliend2
For those who like me didn't know about the blog until today, and why it's a
big deal:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Time...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Times_controversy)

------
ipunchghosts
I canceled my digital subscription to the times over this. I'm not a huge fan
of cancel culture, but aside from writing a letter, what else can I do?
(serious question)

~~~
Verdex
I think canceling your digital subscription makes sense and doesn't really
feel like cancel culture to me.

I'm not a fan of cancel culture, but I am a fan of canceling. I've got similar
feelings about boycotts.

If you want to tell someone about how a company is bad, then do that. If you
don't want to give money to someone who does things you disagree with, then
don't give them money. There are a lot of other options for your time and
money.

Where I think it gets a little ridiculous is when you (uh, not _you_ , but
like the general person) tell other people that you canceled something because
it's bad. You're trying to make yourself look like the good guy/hero when all
you did was decide to spend your time and money elsewhere.

And it gets really ridiculous when you go right back to what was canceled when
they provide some other thing that you like OR when it turns out nobody else
cares about your virtuous canceling and you want to fit back in with the
group.

"Hey, we're all going to go see Avengers 10! It will be a huge party and it's
going to be great. Oh, hey Josh, I forgot that you swore a blood oath to never
see another movie owned by Disney after Walt Disney's zombie ate your dog."

"Uh, I guess it's okay. It was kind of a silly blood oath anyway. And fluffy
had a good life I guess. I suppose I can come."

Of course you might also write a letter explaining why you canceled your
subscription and say that you'll come back on the condition that they don't
continue to pull shenanigans like this and that they take responsibility and
apologize. Who knows it might actually change their policy if they see enough
of this sort of thing.

------
say_it_as_it_is
_this_ is how you increase readership exponentially

------
bpodgursky
For the quality of blogging, psychiatry, and writing, I am willing to forgive
his sysadmin capabilities... my inbox might not be so forgiving though.

------
auganov
I'm pretty ambivalent about what many seem to call "doxxing". I get it when
publishing phone numbers or addresses for no reason.

But I don't get the notion that you have a moral obligation to protect other's
pseudonymity in general. Especially when it's not patently obvious that
they've taken steps to conceal it. I mean sure, I get that it can be done in
harassing ways too. Randomly brining up someone's full name in a comment reply
is probably not nice. But when writing a big piece on some fascinating persona
it seems fine to me.

Also purely strategically speaking when your identity is elaborated on to cry
"doxxing" only makes you look like you've actually done something wrong, have
something to hide. If you don't want to own things you have written, best not
write them in the first place.

It's almost as if people desire the ability to be a public figure without any
of the downsides.

~~~
Inufu
What value does adding the real name of the person to the article bring to
you, the reader? Would you interpret it any differently if the name was
different?

Seems like a pretty clear cut case for not mentioning the name.

~~~
auganov
Well, I don't know much about this person or the article that was coming up,
hence making a general point. [0]

But generally when writing a piece on anybody it's normal to gather all kinds
of details about one's life. Profession/job, educational history, some basic
family background and name is usually one of them too.

Now again if the journalist has a good relationship with the person and they
say they really want to go by XYZ instead of their full name, this is a
perfectly valid request to me. But the notion that one is committing a grave
crime if they don't comply (or ask) is another story.

Say back in the day I wrote a little piece on something that had absolutely
nothing to do with me. Some journalist got interested in it and called me to
discuss it. Spent most of the time discussing my own background. Hardly talked
about my story at all. Wasn't enthused about this but I understand that's
something people generally want to know.

[0] I mean correct me if I'm wrong but this person publishe[s/ed] under their
regular first and second name. Mentions his actual life and experiences in his
publicly available writings. Is generally easy to track down. Has a big cult
following. But wants their last name redacted. Again, not saying that the
journalist shouldn't honor the request. But nonetheless the whole situation is
a bit bizarre. And sooner or later his full name will be out there (probably
already is). So he's essentially asking for his full name not to rank too well
in search results?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Pseudonymous publishing has a long and respected history.

Criticising the wrong people, or arguing with the beliefs of a mob, can be
physically dangerous.

Anonymity gives writers of all kinds a platform to express an opinion without
fear of violent reprisals from those who disagree.

Journalists also need to protect useful sources - hence the cliche
"...according to people familiar with the matter."

As long as writers don't abuse this by promoting personal attacks on others,
I'm completely fine with this.

~~~
auganov
> Pseudonymous publishing has a long and respected history.

Well there's definitely a history of authors publishing pseudonymously. I
don't know of a tradition of keeping the identities secret even after they've
been revealed. Unless legally mandated as it is in come countries[0].

I mean someone afraid of getting killed for their writings would certainly not
make it obvious who they are and then rely on others not mentioning it.
There's certainly no tradition of that.

The whole phenomenon of "doxxing" as I understand it is something new. In the
most radical form the ask seems to be that you should outright not mention any
information about a person unless it has been explicitly volunteered to you
for publishing.

I guess the problem here is many people publish publicly on the Internet not
expecting much of anything. And then after they become notorious they may
regret giving up their privacy. So there's a new push to create a stronger
norm of what's considered private and who's considered a public figure.

[0] say some places will mandate redacting last names of people charged with
crimes

~~~
Viliam1234
> I guess the problem here is many people publish publicly on the Internet not
> expecting much of anything. And then after they become notorious they may
> regret giving up their privacy.

I will definitely tell my kids to never use their real names online. Maybe let
them brainstorm an alias they will use consistently, so that their friends
will know. Just in case they would want one day to have a fresh start, get rid
of whatever haters and stalkers they happened to collect in the past, etc.

Unfortunately, in the Age of Online Advertising, many websites have using the
real name as a condition in their terms of service. They will not verify the
name when you create the account, but they might do it later if someone
reports you. Should I teach them to lie? Should I teach them to use a fake
photo? Sooner or later someone will upload a photo with them, and tag them,
anyway.

Also, if you use a pseudonym, you better make a habit of changing it
regularly, because at some moment someone will dox you.

...and that's with the technology we have today. Maybe in the near future an
artificial intelligence will connect everything you ever wrote online,
regardless of the pseudonyms or whatever, based on the statistical analysis of
your writing, or something like that.

------
viburnum
The guy has so much contempt for his patients, disclosing his name is a public
service.

~~~
jimrandomh
It doesn't sound like you've actually read the blog. It isn't about his
patients, and it's pretty much never written in a contemptuous tone.

------
AndrewStephens
I am not sure what the fuss is about. The NYT hasn't actually published
anything yet, Alexander self-cancelled himself in a fit of _something_ and
managed to drum up quite a bit of publicity for himself and his blog in the
process. Clever.

I must admit I am somewhat on the side of the NYT being able to use his real
name. Alexander's blog is related to his work, by staying anonymous (but not
really) he is trying to have it both ways: "Hear my words, for I am an
experienced psychiatrist with insights and stuff. I'm just not going to tell
you which one. I will bask in the glow of accolades but am anonymous to
critical articles."

I think it is in the public interest for the NYT to state that Alexander is
who he says he is, especially since some of his comments have attracted
controversy.

It would be different if this was some underground blog about model trains or
something, but Alexander is a licensed professional. He likes that his words
carry weight based on that or else he would go by AnonMemberOfThePublic375.

~~~
SilasX
> "Hear my words, for I am an experienced psychiatrist with insights and
> stuff. I'm just not going to tell you which one. I will bask in the glow of
> accolades but am anonymous to critical articles."

Huh? I don’t think he has ever used his status as a psychiatrist to claim
credibility, nor do I think his readers care about that beyond the occasional
anecdote. People (including me) were drawn to his writings long before they
were aware of that aspect about him. When he moved to SSC c. 2013 he even made
a post about just staring his residency, which isn’t “experienced”.

~~~
AndrewStephens
I can see why Alexander might desire anonymity but even his list of reasons
why he is deleting his blog post contains several pieces of potentially
identifying information - far more than the hypothetical NYTs article would
have contained, including details of his housing situation.

I find his response confusing. Full marks on managing to get of lot of
publicity off the back of the NYT not writing are article though. He is really
getting is very-slightly-obfuscated name out there.

~~~
SilasX
Did you mean to respond to someone else? My comment was about your point on
whether his writing unfairly benefits from his author’s claim to be a
psychiatrist, and now you’re talking about something else and repeating some
general claims. Are you not defending the above point anymore?

~~~
AndrewStephens
I am just going by my experiences but Alexander being a psychiatrist is
literally the only thing I know about him from the last time I heard mention
of him.

He mentions his job several times in his "goodbye" article. It is a big part
of his online persona that he has deliberately put out there for his own
reasons.

------
charliea0
Seems to still be down for me.

~~~
adwn
Scroll down, the old content is visible again.

------
IAmEveryone
Last I checked, SSC was the first hit on google when searching for his real
name. That would seem to make it rather pointless to believe in the ability of
keeping that content hidden from his patients.

I’m also not entirely certain it isn’t in the public’s interest to allow
patients to read their therapist’s writing. Yes, they shouldn’t be privy to
the details of their love life and favorite spot to go skinny dipping. But
Scott never disclosed much personal information anyway.

I think rather fondly of his writing. But it should be uncontroversial that
some of it is, well, controversial. Even if I don’t agree with his critics, I
wouldn’t consider it entirely unreasonable to disagree with him on some
points. And because so much of it touches on hot-button issues, some of them
might very well decide not to share their most private thoughts with him, and
could feel betrayed when learning about it only after the fact.

It’s also somewhat strange to see a community (his, and here as well in
previous posts) complain about unnamed sources any time the news media is
discussed, but getting outraged when one publication actually makes it policy
to use real names more often.

There is a case for anonymity on the internet, and even for others to respect
that wish. But at some point, when you start having the sort of cultural
influence that Scott has, and your efforts of hiding your name were rather
half-hearted to begin with, it’s nobody’s job to play pretend on your behalf.

~~~
jmeister
It is definitely in patients’ and Scott’s interest to maintain anonymity.

There is a tradition in therapy going back to Freud that the therapist should
be a blank slate to the patient(there’s a technical term for this which I
can’t recall..)

~~~
skissane
Personally, I like to know professionals' opinions on the major debates of
their profession. e.g., for mental health professionals: What is their opinion
on the debates around the validity and usefulness of the DSM? Do they think
overdiagnosis and/or underdiagnosis are problems? (It is possible to believe
both are a problem simultaneously – I have heard some professionals express
the opinion that ASD is overdiagnosed in males yet simultaneously
underdiagnosed in females.) Are antidepressants overprescribed? Do
antipsychotics cause brain atrophy?

For most professionals, however, it is quite hard to work this out, at least
without asking them in person. (For a minority, who are involved in
research/etc, one can look at their publications.)

So I'd actually encourage more mental health professionals to blog (or
otherwise engage with the public) with their opinions on their field of
professional expertise.

(SSC mostly isn't doing that, since Scott mostly comments on general topics,
and only posts something on his profession every now and again. I often find
what Scott has to say on general topics interesting, but I doubt I'd find what
J. Random Psychiatrist or J. Random Psychologist has to say on general topics
anywhere near as interesting.)

~~~
blaser-waffle
> Personally, I like to know professionals' opinions on the major debates of
> their profession. e.g., for mental health professionals: What is their
> opinion on the debates around the validity and usefulness of the DSM?

That's... risky. There are accreditation boards and professional orgs for a
reason, and if they're pushing questionable science or standards they still
control what the requirements are.

Debating it behind closed doors with your peers is one thing, but it's another
to air dirty laundry to the public. A professional puts out their doubts about
[X] to the general public and then it gets picked up by cranks, "official
doctor says [X] is bullshit, and that alternative [Y] might hold promise." And
then people start buying healing crystals or Jordan Peterson or something.

~~~
skissane
Has that actually happened to anyone? I can think of a number of psychiatrists
and psychologists who have made contributions to the public debates relevant
to their profession, and I've never heard of anyone being formally disciplined
for expressing doubt about the science behind the DSM-5, or expressing concern
about underdiagnosis/overdiagnosis, underprescribing/overprescribing, etc.
(See for example CEP-UK [1] and the Critical Psychiatry Network [2] – many of
the opinions of their members are rather unpopular with their peers, yet their
members are still allowed to practice.)

If some crank misuses a professional's comments to justify their crank views,
that's not the professional's fault, and I've never heard of a professional
being disciplined for that.

[1] [http://cepuk.org](http://cepuk.org)

[2]
[https://www.criticalpsychiatry.co.uk](https://www.criticalpsychiatry.co.uk)

------
meagher
For those that don’t know, when the posts were republished hundreds of email
notifications went out. One for each post.

Quite the splash for coming back online.

~~~
matsemann
Reminds me of when Libgdx migrated their issues to Github[0], and all watchers
got an email. So 300k emails or so were sent. It would have been a couple of
millions if he didn't catch it happening.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387140)

------
gadders
Are we allowed to mention the NYT wanting to do similar to Tucker Carlson? (I
say similar, because obviously his name is known, but they wanted to identify
his home location).

~~~
mijoharas
Is there any evidence to suggest that this is true? The new york times denies
it, and it doesn't really pass the smell test.

If someone can provide a reason for why they might want to do this I might
consider it, but I can't think of one that would remotely make sense? It would
provoke outrage and reflect badly on the paper, and the address would need to
be important to the story. It's not similar to the slate star case, since
publishing someones address is not a normal journalistic practice.

Now I know of no reasons that the NYT would publish his address, and there are
reasons why Tucker Carlsen might want to accuse them of publishing his
address, such as him trying to deflect from the current accusations of sexual
harassment.

~~~
gadders
"Neighbours of sleepy suburb XXX of Washington DC were shocked to find white
supremacist Tucker Carlson living in their midst." etc etc Get a few quotes
from neighbours and job done.

------
john_moscow
I'm not sure if that's intentional, but his name currently appears on the
admin profile of the blog [0]. Maybe someone with technical skills and enough
time can help him sort it out?

[0]
[https://slatestarcodex.com/author/admin/](https://slatestarcodex.com/author/admin/)

~~~
jabiko
Are you sure? It's no secret that "Scott Alexander" are the first and middle
name. The author wants to keep his last name secret.

