Jacob Appelbaum’s response to accusations by the Tor community

If the stories are true, then wouldn't he know who told them anyway? And in that case, only he would know, putting the victims at more risk, not less. On the other hand, if the story is false, he'd know who made it up. And while I understand that there may be a million valid reasons for people not wanting to attach their name to something like this, there's not just the identity of the people who posted the account, there's also the lack of dates and locations.

> As with everything involved in talking about abuse, you are damned if you do, damned if you don't.

And how does this not go both ways, being accused of abuse? You're damned if there is evidence, you're damned if there's none, because it's your fault there is none. That's what you said means.

As that tweet goes:

> Tick Tock. Your time has come rapist. Tick tock.

"shit is complicated, this is too important for any due diligence or details, chaaarge!", that's how I would sum a lot of this up.

Saying the website is not linked with this account is just something to save legal butt - in spirit the site and that message and acount handle are the same, it's ultimately just "he's doubleplusungood and must be destroyed". Literal death threat or not, Appelbaum obviously was supposed to be discarded with any huge interest in proof, even for the plagiarism. Which, by the way, are very unlike abuse in that if someone backs them up, they win (as does the originator who gets the credit they deserve), if they don't, that's weird.

edit: Especially considering the possibility or even likelihood he's a real piece of work and an abusive person, I would be more thorough, not more sloppy. The heavier the accusations, the more precise you have to be, not the other way around, which is what internet justice seems to look like. To write about how he "makes people think you're the problem", and then not even trying to not come across like a virtual lynch mob, is just about the worst way to go about this. Then when some people actually do believe that this might not be entirely fair, one can't just say "see? you side with the abuser, it's always the same!".

And then there is the fact that abuse breeds abuse. If you acknowledge to have been abused, you absolutely do have to watch out for being abusive yourself. Wanting to destroy a person while saying they're someone who destroys people is not healthy. Understandable, but people who aren't directly affected can't be expected to just go "makes sense". From the outside perspective, this is probably two parties being in the wrong in various ways. It's hard to tell who is worse atm.

It was flagged by users and set off some software penalties.

I'm not convinced that this story belongs on Hacker News. The mandate of the site is "stories that gratify intellectual curiosity", and it seems pretty clear that both the curiosity and gratification here are more voyeuristic than intellectual. Arguably the appropriate scope for the story would be the smaller online community of people who are personally and professionally affected by it.

On the other hand, the HN community is clearly interested, Tor is a longstanding topic here, the discussion has been better than it might (edit: though it has now gotten significantly worse), and if we're going to have it at all we shouldn't have only one side of it. So I've turned off flagging on this post and reduced the software penalties.

But this doesn't have anything to do with Tor. A story that says "X is no longer working for Tor" would be fine, but this is clearly just dragging out the Paparazzi nature of famous people in a scandal.

Former Tor Project Executive Director Andrew Lewman's perspective might be interesting on this topic, but the DailyDot story was the only one for which I've seen him quoted (https://www.dailydot.com/politics/jacob-appelbaum-tor-projec...).

Notably, Lewman volunteers at Transition House (http://boston.cbslocal.com/2014/10/01/technology-used-as-wea...), founded IPVTech (Intimate Partner Violence tech), and appears to work/volunteer with other organizations associated with victims of domestic and/or sexual abuse (http://wiki.lewman.is/CV#work-with-trauma-victims-including-...).

Perhaps Lewman was unaware (this seems unlikely given the DailyDot article's reporting of "mishandling" or "botching" the situation), but it would surprise me if someone with that orientation turned a blind eye to the alleged behavior.