Notable contrast between the NYT’s blithe plan to doxx Scott Alexander (below) and the media-wide opprobrium visited on Harpers a few years ago for possibly intending to doxx Moira Donegan.

The presumption should be against doxxing anons. https://slatestarcodex.com/ 

Doesn’t mean journalists can’t ever or even often doxx an anon.

But there should be a compelling reason, weighed against expected harm done.

One complexity is that prospective “abuse” and “danger” is often overstated.

Another: motives to avoid doxxing vary....

2/n

Supporters of SA & MD both fear an unfair hit piece. But it’s not legit to complain in advance of a piece unread.

Such impotent rage over prospective unfairness channels into possibly potent rage over a doxx-prospect.

3/ (to be continued later)

Another doxx eg: Elena Ferrante (who inspired & emboldened my own pseudonymity).

A journalist “broke” the story of her real identity expecting to be celebrated for it & was met with a wall of scorn & shaming.

You can see why doxxing a novelist feels especially...

4/

...gratuitous. Yet even that doxx (which I hated) had news value.

Most readers outside Italy found her working-class characters credible. We assumed F had a working-class background. Doxx suggested otherwise.

Italians attuned to Neapolitan stereotypes were unsurprised.

5/

Cancel Culture (which longtime skeptics like @mattyglesias & even—sort of— @HeerJeet now concede is a real problem) makes the doxxing issue still more complicated.

Alexander’s supporters fear an unjust cancellation will follow on a NYT hit piece. I’m skeptical of that but...

6/

...cancel derangement has reached a new pitch so who knows.

FWIW I found SA smart, interesting, decent, fairminded, voraciously curious. His politics are indisputably & obviously liberal. Warrenite, if I had to guess. Super-anti-Trump.

Readers of his blog...

7/

...# in tens of thousands at least & no need to speculate on their politics as he polls them annually. IIRC plenty of socialists mixed in with predominant liberals. The minority ID’ing with the right usually come from a tech-libertarian angle.

Tho yeah: some RW cranks too

8/

IIRC SA wrote with his usual exhaustive intelligence on a problem he’d had keeping his comments sections from being hijacked by such crankish trolls.

No easy answers, as usual w him

Fears NYT will bend such intricacies into a “blog for the far right” are reasonable.

9/

To be clear: I’m describing fears voiced by his readers, which I believe animate their passionate distress as much as the fear SA himself has voiced: that doxxing would be catastrophic for his psychiatric practice.

10/ (to be continued later maybe)

This below actually sounds right. (I’m far from the deepest reader of SSC, btw, and hadn’t checked it in a while.)

11/(tb cont later maybe) https://mobile.twitter.com/peligrietzer/status/1275534046249070593