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Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the 'substantial risk of harm' is established, at least, not by Scott Alexander's own behaviour - he says himself his pseudonymity was quite thin. Journalists tend to see their responsibility as being primarily to their readers, not the subjects of their stories. Subjects generally don't get to edit stories about themselves - that's considered non-journalism.

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> I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an antipsychiatry Reddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired.

I think anyone who is not a sociopath would consider this proof of a “substantial risk of harm”.

Lots of people receive death threats and even more claim they receive threats or perceive types of loud criticism as threats. Being on the wrong end of these is no picnic but it is not, in itself, a substantial risk of harm. And again, his own efforts to protect his identity seem to have been relatively superficial. He just didn't think he was going to end up in the NYT and he was mistaken. As I said elsewhere, it's a bummer this is a disruption for him but it's not obvious we (let alone the journalist who actually figured out his name, as anyone wishing him harm could have) should take the claims of risk of harm at face value.

I don't disagree with your characterization that the obligation of the journalist is to inform, but what is the marginal utility of revealing his whole name? It's hard for me to come up with anything.

I wouldn't be opposed to the story running under a fictional name, even though that would probably not be to Scott's liking either.

He already has a sort-of fictional name. He's also a public figure with a substantial following. I think for the journalist reporting on him, this is a no brainer - identify the thing you're talking about. At the end of the day, I'm not some expert it journalistic ethics - maybe they don't have to publish his name. But the notion that they're committing some grave moral offense or journalistic malpractice by publishing it over his objections seems completely misplaced. It's journalists' job to publish things over subject's objections.

Suppose the National Review were doing a piece on a labor campaign and decided to publish the name of a major employee leader who had maintained his anonymity to protect his job. Would you be so blase about their journalistic ethics? After all, publishing true information about someone even if they don't want it published is just journalism at its finest.

It's not the sort of work the National Review does so I'm not sure I really understand the hypothetical. Do journalists sometimes omit details to protect subjects or sources from harm? Sure. But the bar for harm is usually higher than 'the subject wouldn't like it'.

I think this is the critical point. The marginal utility is quite clear though: Readers can check all sorts of claims for themselves by looking up public details about the person. E.g. are they really a psychiatrist working at X as the reporter claims.

In the specific case though, given a really well established pseudonymous online identity, that is the central subject of the article, the marginal utility of the additional information you can check seems uniquely low. At least if the subject is just the pseudonymous activity of the author.

Maybe there's some case to publish his name if he's misrepresenting himself. It doesn't seem like that's the case. If the journalist finds discrepancies he can report on them too.

You're saying we should just trust the journalists to be truthful, no need for us to be able to check the journalists work.

Surely you'd agree that "trying to be pseudonymous but not taking it very seriously" and "being published in the new york times" are substantially different things, no? One can do the former and reasonably not expect it to lead to the latter.

You mean he didn't expect to get so popular? Sure, I can believe that but he's been popular for a while. My argument isn't really that he should have foreseen this, it's his own damn fault and that he deserves no sympathy. He has my sympathy, I just find his response unpersuasive and (perhaps understandably in his moment of distress) overwrought.

Those expectations are reasonable when you are a blogger with little to no following. But at some point on the fame/popularity spectrum, those expectations become rather foolish.

At the point where the NY Times is reaching out to write an article about you, I think you have likely crossed that threshold. Scott's best move would have been to refuse an interview in the hopes that it would kill the story. But even that might not have mattered. If your goal is to be both famous/influential and pseudonymous, you probably need to work a little harder to protect your anonymity.

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