Hacker News Reader

No. Read Scott's own reasoning on the situation here:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

In short, he's not worried about dedicated antagonists finding him. He's worried about his psychiatric patients finding his blog, and that interfering with his relationships with them. Deleting the blog makes it moderately more difficult for them to do that.

View on HN

I don't understand. Publishing his name in the NYT will surely already cause any of his patients who read that to realize it's an article about their doctor. Surely that's where the interference would come from ("whoa, my doctor has been writing about his practice on a public blog for years"), not from the patient visiting the blog. If the patient wants to find the blog, I'm sure they will be able to.

Right, that's why he's trying to stop the NYT from publishing his name. The game isn't that he thinks that by deleting the blog he'll prevent people from finding him even if he's mentioned in the NYT, it's that by deleting the blog it'll make it untenable for the NYT to publish his name. He's gamblng that the NYT will blink.

He might at some later date decide that he needs to erase his iInternet presence entirely, but I don't think that's his current game.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com