4 ms·

There's a bit of a thin-skinned-ness to editing your own post to complain about downvoting. (I get downvoted sometimes. Honestly, who the fuck cares?) To answe

by md_ 10y ago

There's a bit of a thin-skinned-ness to editing your own post to complain about downvoting. (I get downvoted sometimes. Honestly, who the fuck cares?) To answer the substantive point you make, I think the hyperbole of "lynch mob" is a bit overused in these circumstances. Historically, lynch mobs hung (often innocent) victims from trees. Writing Medium posts isn't exactly equivalent. So what exactly is your complaint? That Jacob wasn't (also) prosecuted? I share that complaint, but prosecutions for acquaintance rape are fairly rare and fairly difficult, unfortunately. Or is your complaint that Jacob is subject to public criticism in this regard? For that I have less sympathy; the American standards for defamation and libel--which require falsehood and intentional maliciousness--strike me as taking the right balance here. If you cannot (for whatever reason) be successfully prosecuted, you have a tough time making the case that accusers should not be allowed to air their accusations publicly. (What you can do--and what Jacob has done vigorously--is mount your own public counter-argument, and leave it to readers to decide who's telling the truth.) For what it's worth, I agree with you that this essay, lacking much in the way of firsthand testimony, is not especially helpful, but everyone can air their own reaction however they desire, I guess.

guitarbill 10y ago
> There's a bit of a thin-skinned-ness to editing your own post to complain about downvoting. (I get downvoted sometimes. Honestly, who the fuck cares?) Yeah, but it worked! Shit, maybe that's the equivalent to click-bait. I see it as a community service though. Downvoting helps if something is factually wrong. But if you downvote because you disagree, but then don't articulate that, you aren't helping anyone. You're doing it to feel smug. > I think the hyperbole of "lynch mob" is a bit overused It's true, but it is kind of career-destroying. At least for me it would be, I'm not so teflon. My complaint is you have to be really careful publishing stuff like this for public consumption, which it is. What are we supposed to do with this information? By putting it out there, he's expecting some kind of response, right? But will he get the response he wants? Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's out. I mean, worst case, most people ignore it, nothing gets done, and if/when it comes to a trial Mr. Applebaum's lawyers say: "Oh, person <x> has been badmouthing us for years, he's biased, his testimony is unreliable." Shit. Now you're one step further away from "justice".
- md_ 10y ago
  I agree it can be career-destroying. And in the cases where the public makes a decision that is counterfactual--when they believe a smear that is not true--that obviously is a miscarriage of informal justice, as it were. Where we disagree, I think (the specifics of this case aside; I don't think the public reaction in this case is counterfactual) is in precisely what moral "should" applies to such public discussions. Does the risk that the public may be misled mean we should have no open discussions of accusations of criminality? Clearly not, I think--especially when it comes to miscarriages of the formal system of justice, transparency is the only recourse. (Imagine how different our discussions of criminal justice reform would be if we did not have access to statistics showing the racial imbalance in the American justice system!) So what's your exact claim here? That the whole thing is unseemly? I guess it is, a bit. (Would it be less so if the alleged crime were less prurient?) But are you suggesting this should not be on Hackernews? (I don't have a strong opinion on that; this place isn't my playground, but rather someone else's.) I guess it's not clear to me what you're exactly arguing. (And conversely, my only point was that in general there's no clear stricture against public accusations of criminality, as long as they are not defamatory, and that in general society probably benefits from those who are unsuccessful in the legal system being able to make such accusations publicly.)

by md_ 10y ago

guitarbill 10y ago

> There's a bit of a thin-skinned-ness to editing your own post to complain about downvoting. (I get downvoted sometimes. Honestly, who the fuck cares?) Yeah, but it worked! Shit, maybe that's the equivalent to click-bait. I see it as a community service though. Downvoting helps if something is factually wrong. But if you downvote because you disagree, but then don't articulate that, you aren't helping anyone. You're doing it to feel smug. > I think the hyperbole of "lynch mob" is a bit overused It's true, but it is kind of career-destroying. At least for me it would be, I'm not so teflon. My complaint is you have to be really careful publishing stuff like this for public consumption, which it is. What are we supposed to do with this information? By putting it out there, he's expecting some kind of response, right? But will he get the response he wants? Once the genie is out of the bottle, it's out. I mean, worst case, most people ignore it, nothing gets done, and if/when it comes to a trial Mr. Applebaum's lawyers say: "Oh, person <x> has been badmouthing us for years, he's biased, his testimony is unreliable." Shit. Now you're one step further away from "justice".

md_ 10y ago
I agree it can be career-destroying. And in the cases where the public makes a decision that is counterfactual--when they believe a smear that is not true--that obviously is a miscarriage of informal justice, as it were. Where we disagree, I think (the specifics of this case aside; I don't think the public reaction in this case is counterfactual) is in precisely what moral "should" applies to such public discussions. Does the risk that the public may be misled mean we should have no open discussions of accusations of criminality? Clearly not, I think--especially when it comes to miscarriages of the formal system of justice, transparency is the only recourse. (Imagine how different our discussions of criminal justice reform would be if we did not have access to statistics showing the racial imbalance in the American justice system!) So what's your exact claim here? That the whole thing is unseemly? I guess it is, a bit. (Would it be less so if the alleged crime were less prurient?) But are you suggesting this should not be on Hackernews? (I don't have a strong opinion on that; this place isn't my playground, but rather someone else's.) I guess it's not clear to me what you're exactly arguing. (And conversely, my only point was that in general there's no clear stricture against public accusations of criminality, as long as they are not defamatory, and that in general society probably benefits from those who are unsuccessful in the legal system being able to make such accusations publicly.)