Hacker News Reader

Comment by adrianratnapala | Hacker News Reader

The most startling thing here is the form headline takes: "X is compiling a blackist of Y accused of Z".

Notice the word is "accused" and not "guilty". Now I am not going to accuse YC of running a star chamber: I assume (without knowing) that they are fairly responsible with their blacklist. But the principle is still worrying.

Like most institutions, private companies are not able to hold trials and rigorously tell guilt from innocence, so whenever they set out to police others they must do so on some lesser evidence.

It is our right to shun others because we suspect them without proof of something bad. Perhaps it is even our right to gang together and ostracise such, but society suffers when that is the norm.

View on HN

I'm sorry about that, I was not trying to editorialize the headline at all, I changed the first part to "YC" because the original headline was too long:

"This influential Silicon Valley firm is compiling a blacklist of venture capitalists accused of harassing women"

It appears the WaPo changed the headline: "This influential Silicon Valley firm is spearheading a blacklist of venture capitalists accused of harassing women"

NewsDiff still has the original: http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/https%3A/www.washington...

It would definitely be good for the mods to change the title to reflect the new WaPo headline.

I don't mind the summary since it, and both versions of the WP headline you mention match the pattern "X is compiling a blackist of Y accused of Z".

My concern with the headline is not about how they are written, it is about what real aspects of society they reflect. If those reflections are accurate, then the headlines are not a problem at all.

And if the headlines don't relfect realtiy, that's WP's problem, not yours.

Yeah I noticed they changed the headline and read your comment too quickly.

I used to feel similarly, but see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14621466 which completely changed my mind.

Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty." This allows people to prey on others unchecked.

It can swing back too far in the other direction, but a healthy balance is probably best.

Typical standards for these sorts of things are a presumption of innocence until shown otherwise, which can be to varying degrees of certainty: preponderance of evidence (i.e. "more likely true than not"), clear and convincing evidence ("quite likely true"), or beyond a reasonable doubt.

I would hope that at least a preponderance of evidence standard is used, beyond just the leveling of an accusation. Considering the consequences for the accused, clear and convincing is probably a better standard.

>Empirically, we seem to be too far in the direction of "innocent until proven guilty."

You can't know this without knowing how many of the allegations are false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

People hold grudges against those who hurt them or their friends. Is there more to it?

I don't think we'd want a court hearing to decide if a particular grudge can be held.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com