This is possibly one of the easiest ways to create a police state if you make journalism "regulated" (i.e. government approved) ((or if you're a nutter, corporation approved))
Why is Scott's real name even relevant to the article? He has good reason not to want it published, and his real name is of no interest to most readers given that his entire public online presence is in the name "Scott Alexander". Knowing that Lewis Carroll was really called Charles Dodgson may be a piece of trivia that makes you win a pub quiz one day, and it may be of niche interest to someone who reads one of his mathematical papers and realises that the author is the same as the author of Alice, but Scott's real name won't even win you a pub quiz and has similarly niche publications that are not of remotely general interest.
If your issue is that an online handle may sound strange or silly (e.g., ‘Count Dankula’), how would you handle someone whose legal name sounds strange or silly (e.g., ‘Moon Unit Zappa’ or ‘X AE A-XII’)?
If your issue is that an online handle is not someone's legal name, how would you handle someone who goes by a certain form of their legal name (e.g., using their middle name rather than their first name)? How would you handle someone whose name includes a title (e.g., ‘Cpl Bloggs’ or ‘Ambassador Taylor’)?
Everyone has a number of labels used to identify them, and the appropriateness of each is dependent on the situation being used. In the context of an article about the online community surrounding someone's online blog, which they publish under a certain name, it is entirely appropriate to use the relevant name. The only way that that person's legal name would be relevant to the article would be if it was reporting on their conduct outside of that community as well, which this article does not appear to have been doing.
Scott Alexander is actually his real first and middle name. All he’s asking is for them to not use his real last name. Apparently, that’s beyond them, they simply must do it regardless of the cost to him and of how little relevance it has.
Really? "A popular blogger who writes under the name Scott Alexander…" isn't really any worse than "A popular streamer who uses the handle Day9" or something.
The term "doxxing" is used in communities where it's normalized to harass people and try to ruin their lives because you think they're a jerk. In such a community, exposing someone's real identity against their will is a hostile act.
Unfortunately, all of American society is now such a community, so all investigative journalism about someone's identity is now also doxxing. I'm not any happier about that than you are, and hope we can return to better norms so that investigative journalism is less of a danger for its targets.
I don't think Hacker News should be able to censor lawful content and also claim protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If they want to police lawful content that is fine but then they are no longer an open platform and they should forfeit their Section 230 protections. I dislike the ability for online platforms to have their cake of protection against lawsuits and also eat their cake of policing lawful content they don't like.
I’ve read many books in my time and I liked 1984 both for its entertainment value and as a warning about government power and limiting free speech. What is wrong with 1984? Is there a similar but better book I should read?
What’s wrong with 1984 is people sign up for a private service, post something against the ToS, get their account banned by a volunteer user-moderator, then call it “punishment” and cite 1984 as if “piss off, troll” from JimBob moderator of /r/WhippetFanciers is exactly the same as living in North Korea and being forced to speak NewSpeak on threat of having caged rats eat your face in Room 101.
"Devolve into"? This website is just the "sounds educated" arm of imageboard users.
HN is entirely filled with right-wing to far-right sheltered techbros. Half the accounts here that are constantly complaining about "free speech" and "consequences to their actions" are really one bad day away from calling everyone they disagree with various slurs, and the other half are so insulated from any sort of actual injustice in the world that they sit atop of their smug towers of indifference, cawing at the peasants below who have things such as "opinions" (that disagree with theirs, of course) or "motivations".
You are not wrong, but don't forget Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is CRUD."
What makes something valuable is the 10% of the thing that is not CRUD, and whatever measures put into place to make sure that the 90% CRUD doesn't poison the 10% that's worthwhile.
To me, that's having clear guidelines that are consistently applied through moderation.
You're not wrong about this. There is a very vocal right-wing population of commenters here on HN that show their true colors in more polarizing submissions.
It is more likely the police are doing this as a sign of their own solidarity with other police officers rather than with the protestors. After all, this entire thing started because of kneeling.
> It's a big ask when politicians have been acting like they can ignore protests which is what the past, hell, decade or so has really been like.
Decade? More like century. The labour demonstrations in the 19th and 20th century were ignored until they got militant. Nothing's changed since then in the US.
This is possibly one of the easiest ways to create a police state if you make journalism "regulated" (i.e. government approved) ((or if you're a nutter, corporation approved))