Not long ago, there was an alleged sexual assault at a tech conference. Rather than going to the police, the alleged victim blogged about it, including the all

Not long ago, there was an alleged sexual assault at a tech conference. Rather than going to the police, the alleged victim blogged about it, including the alleged perpetrator's name in the post, which hit the top of HN before being removed. The same pattern was visible there -- most of the highest-point comments were along the lines of "this is serious if true, so go to the police, not the internet" and "let's wait for an investigation before destroying the guy's reputation". On the other hand, when a magazine was shown to have lifted content and then told the original author she should be grateful for the portfolio assist, HN did pile on. In that case, the evidence of wrongdoing was clear and widespread: an admission by the publisher that she'd lifted content, links to the original which was clearly older, and links to content lifted from other publications. This led to the opposite pattern in comments, with evidence being highly upvoted and "let's not jump to conclusions" sitting at only a few points. I don't think "sympathy for small business" is the driving force. I think it's a focus on evidence rather than narrative (which happens to help us avoid that particular cognitive bias.) We are, after all, Hacker News, and the hacker ethos is one of making stuff that works, A/B testing, and following the evidence.