I didn't perceive the NYT article as negative at all. As for naming him, that's their choice as journalists, and a risk he took with recording his thoughts online just as all of us do.
I wish folks would rid themselves of the notion that the internet is anonymous or deletable. We'd all be much healthier by acknowledging the possibility that whatever you write here may be etched in stone. And if you become well known people may try to identify you. This isn't an OSC book it's the real world.
It’s interesting, though, that the NYT has been willing to respect the pseudonymity of other public figures in circumstances that I would consider comparable. One example is Virgil Texas, a cohost of the perennially controversial leftist podcast Chapo Trap House. Virgil Texas is not his real name—and his real name can be found with a bit of searching, as in the case of Alexander/Siskind—but the Times has stuck with the pseudonym.[0] What principle is being followed here?
News outlets can make their own calls on who to name. If naming brings more readers and one outlet won't do it then that's an opportunity for another outlet, provided everything else in the article is legal.
I don't expect NYT or any outlet to be free from bias and that doesn't mean I want any of them to disappear. I want them all to thrive.
You've moved the goalposts. DDoS is against the law. Connecting an anonymous account to a name after confirming it is them is not. It may be libelous if the connection is not factual, but if it is a fact then that's legal to print.
This is also moving the goalpost, just because something is legal (and rightly so in this case) does not mean it is moral.
My point is that doing risky activities does not mean you cannot complain when things go wrong; you can both take responsability for your decision to partecipate in that risk and criticise the system for exposing partecipants to excessive risk.
In this case the criticism wasn't "the internet police should stop bad actors, but (hyperbole warning) "the most respected newspaper in the US should have higher standards than internet trolls"
> Some of the savvy people giving me advice suggested I fight back against this. [...] Say why it was necessary for my career to publish those papers under my real name.
> Why didn't I do this? Partly because it wasn't true. I don't think I had particularly strong arguments on any of these points. [...]
> But the other reason I didn't do it was...well, suppose Power comes up to you and says hey, I'm gonna kick you in the balls. And when you protest, they say they don't want to make anyone unsafe, so as long as you can prove that kicking you in the balls will cause long-term irrecoverable damage, they'll hold off. And you say, well, it'll hurt quite a lot. And they say that's subjective, they'll need a doctor's note proving you have a chronic pain condition like hyperalgesia or fibromyalgia. And you say fine, I guess I don't have those, but it might be dangerous. And they ask you if you're some sort of expert who can prove there's a high risk of organ rupture, and you have to admit the risk of organ rupture isn't exactly high. But also, they add, didn't you practice taekwondo in college? Isn't that the kind of sport where you can get kicked in the balls pretty easily? Sounds like you're not really that committed to this not-getting-kicked-in-the-balls thing.
> No! There's no dignified way to answer any of these questions except "fuck you". Just don't kick me in the balls! It isn't rocket science! Don't kick me in the fucking balls!
I wish folks would rid themselves of the notion that the internet is anonymous or deletable. We'd all be much healthier by acknowledging the possibility that whatever you write here may be etched in stone. And if you become well known people may try to identify you. This isn't an OSC book it's the real world.