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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#381

Post by chmod600 »

It's hard for me to not think of politicians here and the incentives we are creating.

Think back on Kavanaugh: what real evidence was there? No place. No day. No time. No witness to the crime aside from the accuser, some decades later. Cited witnesses did not corroberate.

I understand the witness's account was believable to many people. (EDIT: if I knew her, I'd believe her and have empathy for her suffering). But if you step back and look objectively, there wasn't a lot there. And the media pile on was incredible. It was a clear signal to other politicians that the media is willing to not just unleash a mob, but to be a mob. That surely has a chilling effect.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#382

Post by chmod775 »

lloydjones wrote: post #32
cousin_it wrote: post #11

If/when any of my friends get attacked by the mob, I hope I'll have the courage to stand by them publicly. A good recent test was the doxing of Scott Alexander. I signed the open letter against it with my real name and was happily surprised to see the names of many people I know. We should have more of these small but visible acts of resistance that let like-minded people find you.

The post, and your comment, IMO wrongly frames this as courage .vs. cowardice in standing up for friends. However, that fails to take into account any context of the particular “cancellation”. eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’, and the barometer of “good friends would publicly support me” feels like an insane expectation when (in this hypothetical instance) the person did a…

> eg, A situation with damning screenshots of lewd DMs are pretty ‘smoking gun’

Not really. Fake screenshots of such things are trivial to create.

For example: https://streamable.com/zcgqie

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#383

Post by bendbro »

didibus wrote: post #373
bendbro wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" response that some liberals give has always puzzled me. It is internally inconsistent for a liberal ideology. 1. They believe that "wage slavery" exists. That is, an employee may freely agree to employment conditions under a capitalist view, but under the liberal view, they have not freely agreed since various coercive forces exist that force them a…

If you're interested in learning about the values held by liberals, as one myself, I recommend you read the UN declaration of human rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... as I think it does the best job at summarizing the general values held by liberals. Now don't get fooled by what you've been told. Internet Mobs and liberals are unrelated groups, but there are politically inclined gr…

Great, so then you must agree, only a complete idiot would call themselves a liberal and also believe free speech should have negative consequences.

One of the liberals I respect most, Noam Chomsky, agrees: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zwojLDxOWGA

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#384

Post by somedangedname »

nice2meetu wrote: post #127

There is always another side to the story. I was friends once with someone who I later found out had schizophrenia. She used to say horrible stuff about what other people had done to her. Then came the couple of times some raging hot-headed guy would be banging on the front door of our house yelling at us and wanting to have a go because of the all the horrible things we had done to this poor girl.. It is amusing loo…

This happened to someone I know - his then girlfriend had an abusive ex who threatened her, stalked her etc.

All make-believe! The messages she'd used as evidence were sent from her own number saved under the ex's name.

When caught cheating she disappeared and stuck the guy I know with the bill for a shared vacation.

He then becomes the 'demon ex' and the cycle of grift continued.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#385

Post by [deleted] »

didibus wrote: post #373
bendbro wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" response that some liberals give has always puzzled me. It is internally inconsistent for a liberal ideology. 1. They believe that "wage slavery" exists. That is, an employee may freely agree to employment conditions under a capitalist view, but under the liberal view, they have not freely agreed since various coercive forces exist that force them a…

If you're interested in learning about the values held by liberals, as one myself, I recommend you read the UN declaration of human rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma... as I think it does the best job at summarizing the general values held by liberals. Now don't get fooled by what you've been told. Internet Mobs and liberals are unrelated groups, but there are politically inclined gr…

[deleted]

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#386

Post by alentist »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #349
imgabe wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that you are telling the truth. Do you understand that sometimes people do not tell the truth? The question is what level of consequence are you saying we should inflict on people before some kind of evidence beyond an accusation is required? If it's "I tell my friends about what happened, and then they turn down opportunities to work with that person". I don't think anyone would or could sue for libel a…

No, I don’t think that’s reasonable. In the spirit of “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, I don’t think adding more legal liability serves anyone. Moreover, it serves even less people who already have few resources to redress wrongs. It’s not like this concept of “mob ruined my life” is some new concept, it’s something victims of abuse experience or withhold their stories to a…

> Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice?

Remember, indeed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299548

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#387

Post by dang »

valtism wrote: post #312
dang wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling. Please follow the site guidelines. You broke the second-last one: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . (Btw, it's not "telling" of anything but that the topic is divisive, which we all know already.)

Hey dang. I think this post need to be taken down. I've followed this drama before and after reading a lot from both sides, it's pretty clear in my eyes that there is an ongoing harassment campaign from Pasquale. I was really shocked to see this getting so highly voted on HN. I think this post covers a lot of what is happening - https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...

Well you've certainly convinced me that this is a drama that I will never rightly apprehend—it's like looking into a kaleidoscope while on acid. But does that mean the post should be taken down? I'm not sure. A post being on HN's front page does doesn't imply either that it's true or that we're in any way officially condoning it. At most it implies that there's an interesting discussion to be had. If you want an official position, here's my take after a minute of skimming: there are at least two sides to every story, and I have no idea what really happened.

It's to be predicted that nearly everyone commenting will take a side based on their pre-existing view on the pre-existing issue. I say "nearly" for form's sake, but actually I'm not sure there is a single exception.

From an HN moderation point of view the question is whether the general phenomenon is interesting (there the answer is clearly yes, even if no one knows what to make of it) and whether the specific post can support a substantive discussion. On the latter point I'd say it's borderline.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#388

Post by Dylan16807 »

Zababa wrote: post #217
renewiltord wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, man. The donglegate dudes were IRL cancelled. EDIT: What? You don't need to be online. Other people can put you online. Whether or not Donglegate was legitimate, clearly the mechanism exists.

They were at a public event though. Facing the consequences of being unprofessional at a public event is something that I think is relatively normal.

"big dongle hehe" is not something that should have any sort of meaningful consequences. That's not normal and it bothers me that you consider it normal to lose a job over it.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#389

Post by [deleted] »

newacct583 wrote: post #270
Manuel_D wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

[deleted]

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#390

Post by mapgrep »

valtism wrote: post #312
dang wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EDIT: Watching the points on this comment swing from negative to positive in the span of minutes is telling. Please follow the site guidelines. You broke the second-last one: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . (Btw, it's not "telling" of anything but that the topic is divisive, which we all know already.)

Hey dang. I think this post need to be taken down. I've followed this drama before and after reading a lot from both sides, it's pretty clear in my eyes that there is an ongoing harassment campaign from Pasquale. I was really shocked to see this getting so highly voted on HN. I think this post covers a lot of what is happening - https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/vcbrags-pasquale-mit...

I don’t know about any of this drama but that post is unreadable. What is it actually saying? It spends like half the time talking about prior versions of itself with long detailed explanations of why it changed.
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