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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#261

Post by mkishi »

tootie wrote: post #243
mkishi wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your point? As long as they're right sometimes, it makes the unfortunate casualties worth it? A needed sacrifice for the greater good?

That's not what I said. The parent comment (and others in this thread) seem to think that these kind of accusations are always bad. I tend to think that accusations are usually well-intentioned and well-founded.

> The parent comment (and others in this thread) seem to think that these kind of accusations are always bad.

That's not what I gathered from the parent comment and it's not what "mobs do cause harm" mean, which is why I was confused by your rebuttal.

> I tend to think that accusations are usually well-intentioned and well-founded.

That might be the case, but we still have to deal with the times they aren't.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#262

Post by cortesoft »

almostgone wrote: post #67

When these attacks take on a racial or gender-focused hue, I think they end up having a terribly ironic effect: further isolating the group they sought to protect (e.g., POC, women, etc). That is, they win the battle, but lose the war. Each of these stories reinforces in my mind to not associate with those that are higher on the oppression totem pole. I know it is not their fault, and I feel bad for doing so, but the…

I think this sort of thinking vastly overestimates the frequency with which these sorts of things happen. The risk seems high because you hear stories all the time, but that is because those stories are interesting and are shared widely. You don’t read about the 99.999% of the time that nothing bad happens.

This is like watching the evening news and deciding not to go outside ever because you are just sure you will murdered.. after all, every night they show a new murder!

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#263

Post by newacct583 »

cortesoft wrote: post #252
SavantIdiot wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court. The truth is life is a fuckmess right now and there is no instantaneous black/white gratification. And if your success is predicated on a large social-media following, I'm afraid there's nothing you can do when it turns on you. At this point at least. Not to digress, but holy hell: I mean look at the fuckmess social media has created, of disinformation and conspi…

> Just like any false accusation: it has to go to court What? This makes no sense. There is no crime being alleged here. No one is trying to send this guy to jail, so what would there be to try in court? Someone said this guy was creepy. Guy says he isn’t creepy and provides some evidence. Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement. The idea that we are only allowed to believe things prove…

> Everyone is free to look at the situation and make their own judgement.

Except people who believed the accusers. Those people are an "internet mob" who must be condemned. You forgot that part. Only the guy who wrote the blog post is supposed to be believed.

It sounds like a joke, but there's a real "it's only bad to believe people without evidence when YOU do it" vibe to the posters here.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#264

Post by Manuel_D »

newacct583 wrote: post #247
zozbot234 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What has been stated so far is not 'judgment'. SavantIdiot has merely stated a prior that applies to any and all accusations of some sort, regardless of the evidence. The fact that OP can provide evidence of unambiguously positive exchanges, while not dispositive as has been pointed out, is at least enough on its own to overcome the prior.

Alternatively: three similar accusations of different events by different people without any other relationship seems like that should be enough to outweigh a nice text message that got sent once, no? I mean, maybe not. You disagree. But you disagree because you JUDGE the evidence differently , not because of any fundamental truth. To wit: get off your high horse. You're doing the same thing you called another poster…

Person A accuses Person B of sending creepy text messages. Person B shows a message history of what they claim to be the entire conversation between them, with no creepy messages in it. Person A refuses to share any text messages.

How is it sexist to believe that Person B is innocent? I think someone is being sexist or racist in this situation if their judgement changes depending on the race or gender of persons A and B. That's what the root comment wrote, or at least how plenty of people are interpreting it: it makes more sense to them that Person B is guilty and Person A is truthful by virtue of the fact that Person B is a man and Person A is a woman.

You are getting at it when you write this:

> But you disagree because you JUDGE the evidence differently,

Correct, but the deeper fundamental aspect is that they making their judgement based on the evidence. As opposed to making judgements based on the gender/race of the people involved.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#265

Post by exporectomy »

zxzax wrote: post #213
exporectomy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about more employee friendly labor law so people can't get fired because of public pressure? Without teeth, this mob justice will be less of a real world problem and more contained to social media.

So what would that look like? Would employers no longer field public complaints about potential problem employees, under any circumstances? In effect, they would be required to always side with the employee in case of a dispute?

Perhaps it would exclude complaints about what they do in their job but firing someone for things they do that are unrelated to their job could be protected, like what happened in their personal relationships or what they posted on the internet if it's not part of their work.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#266

Post by cortesoft »

MispelledToyota wrote: post #259
cortesoft wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burden of proof for what? To charge him with a crime? Sure. But random people are free to make whatever conclusions about him that they want, with as little or as much evidence as they personally require to render their judgement. You don’t get to tell other people how they should form their opinions. It isn’t fair, but there is no other way for the world to work. Everyone has their own criteria for judging people...…

You can tell someone what good criteria are for wines, why not forming opinions? They're not obligated to listen to you, but I don't get saying that you can't advise. Beyond that though, when our opinions have consequences, we have an obligation to form them carefully when they affect others. Not being able to force someone to behave well doesn't mean there aren't reasonable criteria available for them.

What consequence does my choosing to believe either side in this story have?

Now, if I (or someone else) harass the guy over the accusation, then that is a problem (and there should be consequences), but belief is personal.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#267

Post by cortesoft »

Manuel_D wrote: post #249
cortesoft wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burden of proof for what? To charge him with a crime? Sure. But random people are free to make whatever conclusions about him that they want, with as little or as much evidence as they personally require to render their judgement. You don’t get to tell other people how they should form their opinions. It isn’t fair, but there is no other way for the world to work. Everyone has their own criteria for judging people...…

> Burden of proof for what? For me to believe their accusations. It's not just something that exists in the courts, it's a principle that many (most?) people adhere to in their lives. If you have one co-worker who accuses the other of stealing their phone, would you punish the accused without first asking how they know they stole it or looking at camera footage of the time of the alleged theft? It's not illegal for y…

Punishment or firing is different than believing or not believing. I agree you should have a higher burden of proof before doing those things.

But you are free to believe whatever you want.

Personally, I don’t hold a belief either way about this person. I neither believe or disbelieve them.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#268

Post by kortilla »

zxzax wrote: post #248
TrispusAttucks wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innocent until proven guilty by a fair trial. Not the other way around. The entire point of justice was to be less tribal. Social justice now is the opposite. It's who has the biggest tribal cannon they can point at someone they disagree with. Not whether the facts support the claim.

So what is the solution there? Should twitter and facebook have their own internal legal system, decided upon by democratic vote as I was just describing? What would make it inherently less tribal if they did that? Would that stop large groups of people from all deciding to vote as a block and criticize one person all at once? Or is the goal something else? Surely, if this problem were theoretically solvable by a soc…

The legal system goes to great lengths to prevent it being everyone just voting who is guilty.

Democracy is not for individual cases. Jury selection throws out 95% of people because there are so many biases that make democracy terrible for this kind of analysis.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#269

Post by zzzeek »

exporectomy wrote: post #226
SavantIdiot wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at all how racism and sexism work. Racism and sexism depend on power imbalance, and calling out centuries of existence of either when exploring if there is a power imbalance at play is not related. Saying "This race is inferior" is vastly different than saying, "This race was and is still exploited by power structures." Do you understand difference?

For social media outrage, women seem to have more power than men (eg. this article), so your claims about men are sexist due to the power imbalance. I'll also demonstrate the equivalence of your statement to racism by changing some words: "What makes more sense? Some black person has been violent and only showed the positive side in his defense, or three random unrelated white people -- who he claims only ever had lo…

all major social media companies are literally owned and run by men

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#270

Post by newacct583 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #264
newacct583 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively: three similar accusations of different events by different people without any other relationship seems like that should be enough to outweigh a nice text message that got sent once, no? I mean, maybe not. You disagree. But you disagree because you JUDGE the evidence differently , not because of any fundamental truth. To wit: get off your high horse. You're doing the same thing you called another poster…

Person A accuses Person B of sending creepy text messages. Person B shows a message history of what they claim to be the entire conversation between them, with no creepy messages in it. Person A refuses to share any text messages. How is it sexist to believe that Person B is innocent? I think someone is being sexist or racist in this situation if their judgement changes depending on the race or gender of persons A an…

> How is it sexist to believe that Person B is innocent?

Good grief. It's not! For exactly the same reason that it's not sexist to believe Person B is guilty, as exporectomy did above and as zozbot234 and you defended. Judgement calls aren't sexism.

But FWIW: by typical preponderance of evidence rules, multiple corroborating testimonies by unrelated witnesses sit way higher than "here's a screenshot of an unrelated event". I submit that the reason you're clinging so hard to that is that you really just don't WANT to believe this guy is a creep.

Which, fine. It's a judgement call, and you judged. Just don't tell the rest of us that you aren't.

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