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Comment by exstudent2 | Hacker News Reader

I think this post is way off base because it equates being a difficult employee with being a sexual predator and full blown criminal. It then outlines how to "fix" the problem with some decent solutions combined with very specific politically motivated initiatives (many links to feminist sites...). It also has a tone of absolute authority that is mirrored in the flagging and downvoting of comments happening in this very thread.

There can and should be discussion and debate around this issue especially when it casually calls for things like tossing due process and burden of proof out the window.

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> when it casually calls for things like tossing due process and burden of proof out the window

This is so important.

Preface: I am not defending Jacob Appelbaum at all here---the evidence of wrongdoing in his case looks solid.

Encouraging internet pitchfork mobs is wrong. Morally wrong. Due process can be frustratingly slow, but the principle of innocent until proven guilty is vital.

Preemptively labelling people "oppressors" or "abusers" is wrong.

Story time. The scene is my high school sophomore English class, ~9 years ago. There was a huge news story about some men on Duke lacrosse team hiring a stripper and then raping her. It was the perfect storm of outrage: multiple white men from a privileged background, a single black woman, a rape accusation.

In English class, we debated the ethics of the case, rape culture, and so on.

I pointed out that with no witnesses and no rape kit, the only incriminating evidence was the accuser's word. I said that the accusation might well be true, but that we should reserve judgement until the court case ran its course.

I got a lot of flak for saying that. A few classmates said I was being misogynistic and that I was part of the problem. The teacher lectured me somberly about how much courage it takes to report abuse and how important it is to believe such reports.

A few months later, the men were acquitted fully and the accuser admitted she had fabricated the whole story.

To this day, if you Google any of the mens' names, the first page is full of national news stories about how they raped someone.

Here's a picture from a few days ago. Spoiler alert, the arrows point to the wrong apartment.

https://twitter.com/bcrypt/status/741339303356178433

This is ironic, since yours is a name I know principally from an attempt to whip up an Internet pitchfork mob, concerning a situation you had nothing to do with and know very little about:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11724935

(and more on Twitter, of course).

Please tell us more about how important this principle is to you.

Also, much as I hate to spoil a fun new narrative wave for you to surf, but none of the authors of this post condone vandalizing the homes of people accused of abuse. In fact: you quoted one of the more vocal Appelbaum critics as doing exactly the opposite, while sneakily implying otherwise.

Just wanted to give some context.

Here, I'll link directly to the thread you're talking about, so people can judge for themselves.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11726188

Uh huh.

https://twitter.com/dcposch/status/707069168852410368

I'm not saying you succeeded in creating a pitchfork mob, just that your attempts to do so were cartoonish, and so it's pretty funny to learn you've found religion about pitchforks now.

I would wrap this up by saying: things are complicated, they're often complicated in every possible direction, we usually don't have all the facts (you sure didn't), and we are rarely well served by platitudes. For example: the reason you believe the evidence against Appelbaum appears solid is that people spoke up.

Yep. Here's the full conversation again, it starts with this tweet: https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/705825790529662976

That was rude, unkind and you shouldn't have posted it.

Happy to have people read both the Twitter thread and the one on HN, I think I said things that were worth, if you'll pardon the phrase, speaking up about.

I feel bad about it.

Specifically: I feel bad that I didn't come up with it. It was funny!

Instead, I ended up subjecting someone else to the shitstorm you and Nadim briefly generated. Just weeks ago, you were on HN --- unbidden! --- to inform everyone that I'd been "joking about Nadim's penis". You two deserve each other.

I'm going to bow out of this part of the thread before we start litigating a different monster in the security/privacy community.

Are you now implying that Nadim is a monster, not merely someone with whom you have a personal beef?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11950730 and marked it off-topic.

Edit: Since people objected and it seems like a bad idea to argue about this, I've put it back.

Shouldn't you have detached at the parent of that one? The other person accused him of something, and he responded pointing out that that person was being untruthful. Detaching his response leaves the accusations made against him and removes his response which proves the accusations are false. Presumably you as mod did not intend to do so because if it was intentional it is certainly an egregious abuse of mod powers and totally unethical, as I'm sure you agree fully.

Of course I didn't intend that, and the conservative thing seems to be to just put it back where it was.

Your description seems pretty tendentious, though. That comment neither "point[ed] out that [tptacek] was being untruthful" nor "prove[d] that the accusations are false". It just linked to an earlier spat.

@dang that seems reasonable, but can you detatch it starting with the parent post?

This thread is about tptacek's claim that I "attempted to whip up an Internet pitchfork mob".

I think his accusation and my response should be in the same place. Thanks.

Ignoring sexual harassment/etc. which you seem to agree is wrong.... why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes?

I'm not giving them a free pass either. Both behaviors are wrong (one MUCH worse), but neither need to be tolerated.

why should I (or the rest of the tech community) put up with assholes?

You shouldn't. But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes. Not only because the magnitude of the negatives they introduce into the world are so widely disproportionate, but also because "asshole" is a suspiciously flexible term. "Asshole" doesn't even describe behavior, it describes an assessment of behavior. From a mild but harmless annoyance, all the way to fireable and beyond.

> But you also shouldn't let people appropriate the political capital of a topic as serious as sexually predatory behavior to argue points about assholes.

I'm not. But I've seen FAR TOO MANY statements here and elsewhere that provable death threats or sending porn pics is wrong but anything no matter how jackassy up to that is fair perfectly acceptable. I'm VERY tired of that attitude.

And I don't believe in the slippery-slope of assholeness. Everyone knows their definition, I don't think it will slip to anything trivial. Asshole will not equal annoying any time soon.

Well said, it would seem that anything outside the realm of downright compliance/agreement is met with shutting down the conversation.

Perhaps the piece is too weak to stand on its own merit.

Everyone knows sexual assault is bad, jerks are jerks, not all jerks are sexual predators and Twitter is still the worst source possible, next to Tumblr.

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