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Life after an internet mob attack

pasquale.cool

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Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#401

Post by imgabe »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #393
imgabe wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation? > People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so. The point is that not every person who makes an accusation is someone who has been hurt by others. If there is no scrutiny allowed, how are we supposed to tell which is which? You're looking…

> So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation? It always matters whether an accusation is true. Penalizing accusers doesn’t produce fewer false accusations. It discourages true accusations. > You're looking at this from the perspective of the person making the accusation, where you can know with certainty that is true. So…

Nobody is saying we should penalize people for making accusations. Being asked to substantiate your claims is not a penalty. It should be understood that people will ask that when you make a public claim, especially if you are asking for something to happen as a result of that claim.

I'm not sure what we gain by encouraging people to make unprovable accusations. From the outside perspective, people will be predisposed to believe one way or another, and in the absence of any evidence they'll just go to their predispositions and a lot of irrelevant argument will take place back and forth with no possible resolution, because there is no real evidence. Why is this helpful or desirable?

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#402

Post by rkk3 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #397
rkk3 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I can say about people I think there is a distinction between "say" and "publish". NAL but libel deals with published falsehoods, these are not private conversations or communications. Communicating a message to millions on twitter or saying it on TV is different from talking to friends and family. > what I can say about people who’ve sexually assaulted me Remember you can still relatively freely say/publish y…

So if I were to name the people who have sexually assaulted me, here in a comment—which I’ve already said I’m terrified to do even though they don’t have an audience here to my knowledge—but if I did so, just said so to an audience, I should be legally liable to prove it? Because I didn’t keep it private? Can you not see how harmful that is?

I think the accused should have the right to legally challenge a public defamatory statement. In this case... it probably wouldn't be a very strong case, just from a quick google search, my guess is they would struggle with 1 & 4 below. For 1) In civil, this is probably preponderance of evidence (>50% true) vs beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal. For 4) Theoretically this has no impact, you are just screaming into the void and they don't even know about it. But it could cause real damage, this is a highly trafficked site, maybe they loose their job or their spouse sees this and divorces them etc.

"To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things:

1) a false statement purporting to be fact;

2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person;

3) fault amounting to at least negligence;

4) damages, or some harm caused to the person or entity who is the subject of the statement." https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#403

Post by bendbro »

didibus wrote: post #399
bendbro wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's only a 5 min read, I recommend it, you might find you have more shared liberal values then you thought, but if you're not going too, let me point out some of the relevant ones here: Article 12 > No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interf…

I don't know why you think I disagree with the idea of liberalism. I simply think if someone is a liberal, they should believe purely disagreeable speech should not have consequences; else, they are an idiot.

There are of course more complexities where speech should result in consequences, but in general, if someone says something than another otherwise unrelated person simply disagrees with, the speaker should not have their relationship with their friends, family, employer, customers, businesses they use, etc harmed. This should be enforced sometimes by law, and sometimes by culture, depending on the rights in play in the particular situation, as you outlined above.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#404

Post by fastball »

SilverRed wrote: post #367
fastball wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure the math makes sense on that. Assuming a two-party interaction, for every person that makes a true accusation of abuse, there is one malicious actor (the abuser). For every person who makes a false accusation, there is one malicious actor (the accuser). Regardless of the ratio of true to false accusations, the number of malicious people in the world remains unchanged.

This was an interesting thought but I think the difference is that the defender has a much greater incentive to defend than an accuser has to accuse. There is no downside to not falsely accusing someone but there is a major downside to not falsely denying an accusation. So it would be expected that almost every accused person would defend themselves when they would not lie if the sides were reversed.

There is an assumption you're making that is missing from your analysis. Yes, it does seem likely that an abuser or what have you will be highly incentivized to defend themselves, more so than you'd expect people to falsely accuse people. What is in question is how likely you think someone being an actual abuser/creep/etc is in the first place. You're not comparing apples to apples.

Because effectively you are saying that this kind of bad behavior is more likely than the bad behavior where one person would lie about another. And it is not clear why you think one type of antisocial behavior is more common. People lie every day, oftentimes to their own detriment. Likewise people are creeps every day, again often to their detriment. I think it is far from clear at this point which behavior is more common.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#405

Post by kodah »

1123581321 wrote: post #377
kodah wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They definitely don't. These things are easily manipulated and abused. Leaving the church was one of the best things I ever did, but now the moralistic tone makes sense. Thanks for your honesty.

Sorry to hear. I really tried to make clear that the whole point is to fight abuse from within as hard as possible, for those in any particular group.

Righteousness generally lends us to believing those things. I think my memories of it were that it was more harmful than good, though there was surely some benefit.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#406

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

#407

Post by LeCow »

didibus wrote: post #399
bendbro wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's only a 5 min read, I recommend it, you might find you have more shared liberal values then you thought, but if you're not going too, let me point out some of the relevant ones here: Article 12 > No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interf…

"wage slavery"

Part of liberalism is accepting your own flaws and failures. Go and get another job.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#408

Post by textgel »

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…

And in another hilarious twist, vast numbers of HN members (likely the majority) encouraged this situation to happen.

Go back through any of the old threads at the height of the metoo campaign. The vast majority were on the side of the mob and anyone who tried to talk sense was down-voted, flagged and accused of -isms for pointing out where this would lead.

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#409

Post by alentist »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #395
alentist wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice? Remember, indeed? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299548

This is absurd. The “mob” that “ruined” his life did no such thing. Multiple accusers had credible accounts, media did scrutinize their accounts and determined that one wasn’t credible while others were. He wasn’t “cancelled”, he has a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the most powerful country in all human history. This “mob” theory is ridiculous. Yet one of his accusers was so afraid for her life she wen…

> Multiple accusers had credible accounts, media did scrutinize their accounts and determined that one wasn’t credible while others were.

Like?

Re: Life after an internet mob attack

#410

Post by mariuolo »

cousin_it wrote: post #54
lloydjones wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My view is more like "a true friend would help you hide a body", or the short story "Friends in San Rosario" by O.Henry. If I abandoned a friend to the mob due to "screenshots of lewd DMs", I'd have a hard time living with myself afterward.

"a true friend would help you hide a body" <- if both of you are criminals, perhaps.
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