Doxed and reported. Friday night, Forbes reporter Emily Baker-White doxed the anonymous tech positivity account Beff Jezos (revealed the man’s legal name against his wishes), wildly implied his posts were in some manner adjacent to white supremacy, and proudly shared an interview he granted under extreme emotional duress. After reviewing emails of Emily’s obtained in my capacity as a Real Journalist, I can further report she carried out the dox following conversation with her editors in which it was determined this was in the “public interest.” Her editors’ involvement separately confirms the practice of doxing is an actual policy of the Forbes technology team, which notably includes the highly influential tech journalist Alex Konrad, who contributed to the piece, and has since defended it on X. I requested comment from both Emily and Alex. Naturally, our paragons of transparency have yet to respond.

The doxing of a man with so little influence or power as Beff Jezos — early-stage startup, 50k followers on an anonymous Twitter account, randomly from Canada (always a yikes for me) — poses many important questions. For example, why does the Forbes technology team consider the unofficial leader of a plucky, pro-technology meme community dangerous enough to dox? Then, is this a “dox”? There is considerable disagreement over the word, a sort of sub-controversy typically kicked up to insulate journalists and other warring shitposters from the moral question central to the act of revoking someone’s anonymity, which is where I’d rather focus: what role is played by anonymity in our discourse, both historically and today online? Are there pitfalls to anonymous discourse, have these pitfalls proliferated in our present age of social media to the point the institution of anonymity should be abolished, and, finally, with all of this considered, should anyone in tech ever speak with Forbes again?

In her piece, Emily characterizes Beff as a “provocative” account on Twitter “leading the ‘effective accelerationism’ movement sweeping Silicon Valley,” a joke name obviously chosen in mocking reference to Effective Altruism, the philosophical agent of OpenAI’s recent near death experience. Beff’s desire? Nothing less than “unfettered, technology-crazed capitalism,” whatever that means. His ideas are “extreme,” Emily argues. This is a man who believes growth, technology, and capitalism must come “at the expense of nearly anything else,” by which she means the fantasy list of “social problems” argued by a string of previously unknown “experts” throughout her hit job, but never actually defined. This story is important, Emily all but explicitly writes of her own work, as Beff is a powerful man, puppeteering such other powerful men as Garry Tan and Marc Andreessen — the real targets of this piece.

At one point, Emily mentions Beff’s cultish new cabal of power players on the internet (random tech guys posting stuff) created shirts and hats printed with “e/acc,” which is argued an insidious attempt at mass, memetic manipulation. These people threw a party once, we are told, but not just any party. This was a party of adherents to a chilling new philosophy. A dark gathering of fringe zealots — Grimes was there!

Your children are not safe.

“At its core,” Emily writes, “effective accelerationism embraces the idea that social problems can be solved purely with advances in technology, rather than by messy human deliberation.”

Your sense that technological progress has increased human abundance, and the city of San Francisco is poorly run? This is a dangerous idea.

Emily then deploys the standard shitty journalist tactic of digging up a few “experts,” who nobody has ever heard of, to argue her own opinion that technology can’t actually solve ‘important problems’ such as [again, they are never actually listed]. Highlights from her list of “experts” include a Stanford Professor with a background in English and Communications, a “scholar of accelerationism” (not a real thing) from the University of Chichester (not a real school), and an anonymous venture capitalist who genuinely just seems to find Beff kind of annoying.

Eventually, Emily gets to the good stuff.

“That idea of building something from nothing — called ‘hyperstition’ — was popularized by Nick Land,” she writes, “a philosopher, blogger and activist who has been both credited as a father of modern accelerationism and discredited for his embrace of racism and the alt-right.”

Anon, is Brother Jezos… a Nazi? I mean, there’s not a single shred of evidence supporting the fact, but what if? Emily’s just asking questions. Thank you, Emily, you are helping.

Anyway, here are some recent posts from e/acc, confirmed Nazi space lovers:

e/acc is not a paramilitary group. e/acc is not a cult (as Effective Altruism, for example, increasingly appears to be). e/acc is, in my opinion, not even a movement. It is just a funny, technologically progressive meme. But it’s a meme that Garry Tan and Marc Andreessen have publicly liked, which makes it a great target for people who hate Garry Tan and Marc Andreessen.

First, there’s the politics piece. Emily indicates a great suspicion of capitalism, technology, and growth, concepts more or less embodied by men like Garry and Marc, committed technologists and businessmen frequently targeted by the bug-eating far left. More important than the politics, however, might simply be the fact that all of these people — Emily, Alex Konrad, Beff, Garry, Marc — are media personalities in the idea space, and therefore find themselves fighting for influence over culture as media personalities in the idea space have fought for influence over culture from at least the founding of our country.

Doxing Beff was not an act in interest of the public, but I also don’t believe that it was personal. In fact, I don’t believe Emily thought much about whether or not erroneously implying Beff was a white nationalist before doxing him might get the man fired. This is because I don’t think this dox was really about Beff. e/acc is an idea that Emily doesn’t like. The purpose of her piece is to send a message to all of the anonymous posters in Beff’s orbit, who she perceives to be the de facto allies of Bigger Bads like Garry and Marc: if you run with these men, and support the ‘bad ideas’ (technology and capitalism, but unapologetically stated), it doesn’t matter how little money or influence or power you have, you will be doxed — just please don’t use that word!

The question is raised every time a journalist ‘unmasks’ (their preference in verbiage) an anonymous writer they hate (see: Slate Star Codex): what is the “real” definition of “dox”? As any five-second google search will readily confirm, all of the top definitions for the word hold that the practice of sharing an anonymous figure’s real identity against their will constitutes “doxing.” But it is also true that many people (who dox) believe “doxing” must involve the sharing of more personal information than a name — an address, for example, or a phone number. Okay, whatever. My position on this argument is simply that it doesn’t matter. The reason doxers consistently fall back on such semantics is the argument deflects from the moral question central to the act of revoking someone’s anonymity, which is the only question that matters.

Do people have a right to anonymous public discourse?

In the last Republican presidential debate, Nikki Haley sparked a news cycle on the subject of anonymity when she suggested it be banned from the social internet. She has since walked her statement back, framing it all a humble suggestion for the country’s oligopoly speech platforms. But while an error of morality, perhaps, her comments were not so clear a tactical error as they were framed online. Nikki’s opinion is fairly common, and to some degree I empathize with her perspective. If we were able to see a face, and a real name, next to every opinion on Twitter, the bot and foreign agent issues would both be solved. And wouldn’t it just be kind of nice to erase the anonymous assholes in our mentions?

But there are tradeoffs in revoking anonymity from which people like Nikki, a fount of real power in this country, can only benefit. For the rest of us Beff Jezoses, the bag is mixed.

Over the past eight years, the cost of public dissent on every topic from public health to crime and gender has been tremendous. Naturally, as with our Founding Fathers, many of our contemporary intellectuals have therefore turned to anonymity in order to express important but unpopular views, or even very common views just recently determined distasteful or dangerous by a powerful few. There has been tremendous value in such anonymous discourse, most obviously in the orbit of public health, as there has been value in anonymous political writing from the founding of our country, the intellectual history of which was shaped entirely by inordinately eloquent shitposters from the pages of their dueling public papers. Here, to the value of anonymity, some will simply disagree. But to the rest of us, what can be learned from the story of Beff?

Let’s just talk tactics for a minute. We have to stop talking to people who want to destroy us, our friends, and everything we care about.

Had Beff not responded to Emily’s implicit reputational extortion, Emily would have had very little to report. What was the news? The unverified ‘real name’ of a poster most people have never heard of, a few dumb professors who don’t like science fiction, and a baseless implication of racism supported in not a single post that Beff has ever written? Sure, an accusation like that is incredibly damaging to any non-public person, no matter how scurrilous, which is why it was made. But had Beff iced Emily out, he would have seemed like a victim when she published her crazy tirade, rather than a man happily complicit in his own “unmasking,” as the journalist William Tuton argued in a post Emily has since dishonestly reshared.

There are countless ways to communicate in public, now, and no shortage of writers covering the industry who are not actively seeking to ruin your life. There is also that raucous pirate army of anonymous posters the standard-issue anti-tech writer so desperately fears, or at least for these precious moments still permitted their debased, glorious existence. Finally, there are the shitposting tycoons of industry the zombie state, along with its gargoyles, want to destroy. If you’re building something new, you do have allies. They are also easier to reach than ever before in history, and all of you are in alignment on, at the very least, the following cherished values: a freedom to build, progress through technology, and a man’s right to say things — no matter how stupid — “unfettered” on the internet. Bitches.

Anon, you have my sword.

-SOLANA