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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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