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Okay, if you want this stated more directly: I don't know the facts around this case, and frankly, I don't particularly care: that's his business and the busin
by devishard 10y ago
Okay, if you want this stated more directly:
I don't know the facts around this case, and frankly, I don't particularly care: that's his business and the business of his victims. If Applebaum is a rapist, he should be in jail, if not he shouldn't. Either way, society has decided that rapists shouldn't be allowed to do good things like contribute to Tor. This means that accusing people of rape (truthfully or not) is a viable attack on projects such as Tor. There's no denying that this incentivizes actors who want to weaken Tor to accuse people such as Applebaum of rape.
I think that at this point, keeping Applebaum involved in the Tor project would be bad for Tor, regardless of whether he did it or not, so conversations about whether or not he did it are rather academic.
If we're going to engage in academic speculation, I do think Applebaum did it. The other members of the Tor project seem to have investigated and concluded that (admittedly it's not 100% clear), and have little reason to lie about it.
However, this doesn't in any way mean that there wasn't foul play. Even if most rape accusations were true, that doesn't mean they all were, or that people came forward for altruistic reasons.
We do need to come up with defenses against the attack where people accuse people of rape to damage the projects they contribute to. One such defense is to not have any players in a project feature so prominently that a hit to their reputation is a hit to the reputation of the project.