> Based on that last observation I think most of us can agree, can't we?
HN is in a weird place today, very similar to where the Slate Star Codex guy was a few years ago. That is, racist Whites seem to feel safe commenting here (with appropriate dog whistles and what not), but you wonder how long that can last…
In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog [0] when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. I expect the same to happen with HN.
dang does a good job keeping people on-message politically (and I'm sure tptacek did as well), but being "racist-adjacent"—which HN absolutely is [1]—isn't a long-term viable position.
Someday soon I expect the racist-adjacent user-banning to kick into high gear on HN (like SSC did) but it will be too little, too late. Eventually, HN will inevitably shut down—and it might be sooner than any of us think.
Linking to one flagged comment from a green account doesn't really support your position that the entire community is "racist-adjacent". Neither does linking to a blog post that claims Scott shut SSC down to protect his patients support your position that he did it to evade justice.
It is never the entire community. In situations where this kind of drifts occur, most of the group are usually people with little knowledge about activist dynamics and unwilling to consider that people they know/trust may adhere to or have done things they consider abhorrent. Therefore, they tend do be blindsided about stuff that, in hindsight, was obvious.
This is likely why above poster says "racist-adjacent" and not racist-friendly.
I have no particular opinion on HN, but I have noticed that the tech community in general is usually not the most politics-aware group. This makes us pretty vulnerable to this kind of behaviour.
> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed.
That isn't why he deleted it. He deleted it because the NYT was threatening to publish his real name in a way that would make it untenable for him to continue to practice psychiatry.
> To reduce criticism of SPLC to "racism" isn't helping the health of discourse here.
"The SPLC is a hate group" is considered healthy, valid criticism to you, coming from an account which then said that "hate speech against white people has been normalized in our society for some time now" and linked to The Bell Curve as proof for the superiority of the white race, but referring to them as "racist-adjacent" is unacceptably reductionist?
The comment "The SPLC is a hate group" is not racist. Even if the person who said it is otherwise racist, it's entirely possible for racists to say things that aren't racist.
Whatever "racist-adjacent" means, clearly it must mean "not actually racist" because if it was racist, I'm sure you would call that.
An outspoken racist falsely attacks one of the great legal defenders of Blacks in America and your argument is, "it's entirely possible for racists to say things that aren't racist."
I'm doubtful you will convince anyone with that argument: perhaps not even yourself.
My argument is that I don't think the user's other comments are relevant to the question of whether the statement is racist.
Now, if you think the statement "the SPLC is a hate group" is false that's fine. I think there is a debate that is worth having here on HN - especially when tech companies are using the SPLC's hate list to justify their deplatforming decisions. In my opinion, the SPLC's use of defamation and fear-mongering for profit make the statement perfectly justified.
Calling it "racist" or "racist-adjacent" is a rhetorical attack that does not serve the purpose of mutual enlightenment. "Racist-adjacent" strikes me as particularly insidious since implicit in that label is the admission that the thing being labeled is not actually racist.
You clearly aren't familiar with the actual history of the splc. Even the name is a bit of a scam, chosen for it's adjacency to Martin Luther Kings civil rights organisation, the SCLC. The founder is a direct marketing hall of famer.
> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog [0] when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. I expect the same to happen with HN.
That's... not what happened? He's explicitly stated that he deleted his blog due to the fact that the NYT are planning on doxxing him in a story about SSC. He's fine with the story itself, and the attention garnered, but does not want his name attached to it and announced to the world via one of America's most popular newspapers due to his work as a psychiatrist. As far as I'm aware, this is not because SSC contains comments about right wing views or anything, but more due to an intent to maintain his privacy to his patients, which he believes will improve their quality of care.
If you think I'm incorrect in the above interpretation, feel free to disagree.
I do disagree, there was a lot of discussion about this on SSC prior to Scott shutting it down. If you just read what's on the site now, you're missing most of the important background information. In particular, the "reporter" at the NYT was clearly looking to get SSC cancelled, so Scott self-cancelled before that could happen, on his own terms.
I'm ambivalent about his decision, but it was definitely his to make and probably is in the best interest of his patients (and himself)—at least in the short-term. The world, however, has lost a really good blog and community.
I've read SSC for a while now, and check in with the community every so often. Before the takedown, there was talk about the reporter writing an article, with the general consensus being "nervous but optimistic".
I'd love to see clear evidence about the reporter clearly looking to get Scott cancelled. The scare quotes on "reporter" are unnecessary.
I'm sad that the blog is down. "Categories are for man" is an essay/lens that I find very valuable. I hope the situation resolves with the blog being up and the NYT not doxxing Scott.
Here's the NYT protecting the anonymity of female gamers to protect them from harassment (on the same day that Scott took down his blog): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23619347
There are other examples, but those strike me as the most related to Scott's circumstances. It's not proof per se, but it severely undermines the credibility of the statement that it would be against NYT policy to grant the same protections to Scott.
Good find. There were also tweets from the reporter, who said in effect "what do you [Scott] have to hide?" about the SSC story.
Scott's attempt to spin it as a positive story in his farewell letter is, I think, an attempt to both influence the NYT in that direction, but also to keep the focus on the doxxing, and not on why SSC might be controversial. He's trying to keep that part out of the public debate entirely, which seems smart.
Also: I'm sorry you're being downvoted so badly, I don't think it's deserved.
> There were also tweets from the reporter, who said in effect "what do you [Scott] have to hide?" about the SSC story.
Woah, really? That's bad.
> Scott's attempt to spin it as a positive story in his farewell letter is, I think, an attempt to both influence the NYT in that direction, but also to keep the focus on the doxxing, and not on why SSC might be controversial. He's trying to keep that part out of the public debate entirely, which seems smart.
That's actually a pretty reasonable interpretation, and probably flips the script in a way that they weren't prepared for. A couple days ago the NYT ran a piece begging people not to cancel their subscriptions. I didn't read the piece to see if it reference SSC, so it could just be a coincidence, but I know there was the #ghostnyt campaign on Twitter in response Scott closing his blog.
The Daily Beast also reported that some of the staff internally at the NYT (mostly the tech folks) were rather irate at learning (from Hacker News, no less) about the planned doxxing of Scott.
> Also: I'm sorry you're being downvoted so badly, I don't think it's deserved.
Thank you. It's really not that bad and my net karma is actually up quite a bit overall from this thread, but kind words and interesting arguments matter more to me than votes. I won't speculate as to the motivation behind the downvotes, and they won't change my opinions, but I do treat them as an opportunity to look at how I could improve the usefulness of my comments here.
I am well aware that the NYT has been inconsistent at best with their anonymity standards. Definitely undermines that policy.
Still don't think that construes sufficient evidence to claim that this current situation is intended to cancel Scott, or that the NYT's policy is to cancel people who post politically. I don't think Scott was against an article being written about SSC, only that it will contain his name. I'm happy if you think that it can be pieced together from his previous statements, but I don't think there's sufficient evidence presented here.
I agree the reporter was trying to get him cancelled (or at least that seems very likely) but I don't think Scott's decision had anything to do with "the world turning its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed". Frankly, regardless of the kind of political discussions on his blog, that kind of exposure would likely ruin his ability to practice medicine. Having the "right" politics matters very little when many of your patients don't.
Scott has spoken many times on SSC that his concern is with his employer—i.e. he's afraid of getting fired for the contents of his blog, and perhaps what he himself has written in the past. That's why he uses a pseudonym online—he's not afraid of his patients, at least, not primarily.
Obviously, if Scott is fired from where he works, he can't continue to treat his current patients—so that's where the harm to "his ability to practice and treat his patients" come in.
He didn't lay all of that out explicitly in his farewell post on SSC, but it's fully consistent with what he wrote—if you're aware of the history of his employment concerns and the likely result of the NYT article sending a bunch of low-info culture warriors after him personally as a result.
People can disagree about his motives, of course. For me, the above is most consistent with everything Scott's written previously, as well as the final farewell post.
HN is in a weird place today, very similar to where the Slate Star Codex guy was a few years ago. That is, racist Whites seem to feel safe commenting here (with appropriate dog whistles and what not), but you wonder how long that can last…
In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog [0] when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. I expect the same to happen with HN.
dang does a good job keeping people on-message politically (and I'm sure tptacek did as well), but being "racist-adjacent"—which HN absolutely is [1]—isn't a long-term viable position.
Someday soon I expect the racist-adjacent user-banning to kick into high gear on HN (like SSC did) but it will be too little, too late. Eventually, HN will inevitably shut down—and it might be sooner than any of us think.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/
[1] This is from an hour ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23683033