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Mob justice is not OK just because women do it. If these women have anything substantial they should make formal reports/complaints, not anonymous vogue stateme

Mob justice is not OK just because women do it. If these women have anything substantial they should make formal reports/complaints, not anonymous vogue statements like, "he make me feel uncomfortable". Cannot believe that one even has to say this. Why are women always presumed to be innocent and men always presumed to be guilty? Also, frankly, there is a point at which, certain behaviour might make you feel uncomfortable, but that does not mean it is grounds for firing that person. At some point you have to just fend for yourself and tell the person to fuck off. We cannot just fire anyone who has some harmless quirk that you don't appreciate. I myself have to work with loads of people with nasty behaviours, but I don't presume to demand they all get fired just because of that. I mean, this has gotten ridiculous. We went from "he grabbed me by the pussy" and "he jerked off in front of me" to .... "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". The latter is perfectly normal behavior unless you propose we criminalize being a man.

disgruntled101 6y ago
What you are saying here would get you cancelled 100 times over if you were a public person, sadly.
- cryptica 6y ago
  It goes to show that it's not regular people who create 'cancel culture'. It's the financial elite. They do it as means to push forward a financial agenda. If those who orchestrate the cancellations were who they portray themselves to be, the hypocrisy would be brain-splitting. The only reason their brain lobes are still attached together is because they know that they're being deceptive and it's part of an agenda. It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    I think some cancellations are driven by powerful people but I'd say most are definitely organic.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it. Multiple strawman arguments in the same sentence. 1. Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality. While I realize the internet is no place for nuance, please understand the question is about whether somebody who's said these things is fit to lead or represent an institution. You can disagree or disagree with that. But please understand that is the question, not "is Richard Stallman a bad person." I certainly don't think he is. 2. "once said something without thinking through it" -- unfortunately this displays a spectacular misunderstanding. These are multiple things said over multiple years on mailing lists, his site, and so forth. Additionally, RMS's communiques are... well, they are not off-the-cuff. I've read reams of his statements over the years. They are the writings of somebody speaking very very deliberately about things he has reasoned through in very deliberate ways according to his beliefs.
    - cryptica 6y ago
      >> Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality I used the word 'believe' for a reason, it's people's beliefs who drove him out in the first place. Besides, the term 'stawman argument' makes no sense when discussing ethics or human behavior. This is not math or engineering. These kinds of statements are necessarily axiomatic; either you understand it or you don't. Either it neatly fits into your logical understanding of the world or it doesn't. I wouldn't write off someone who has done such great things for so many decades when I know for a fact that most people in positions of power today are hypocritical monsters (only difference is that they have good PR teams to manage their public images); you need to put it in perspective.
  - medium_burrito 6y ago
    Enter the cartoon with a banker with the mob outside all "occupy wall street" on the phone with his PR firm, instructing them to the tell the mob "what identity politics is".
- Bost 6y ago
  Once upon a time there was a dude with such an attitude and he became a president. Edit: And his story is not over yet. Apparently.
  - Ygg2 6y ago
    Yeah, being rich is a great insulator. But RMS isn't rich.
  - christophilus 6y ago
    Trump? Clinton? Kennedy? Johnson? I suspect that the shorter list would be the list of non-womanizing presidents.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    I think that's true and it definitely shows how cancel culture only hurts some people but doesn't hurt others that much depending on their wealth and their influence. That said, really add to the discussion for others who aren't that powerful relatively.
  - Chris2048 6y ago
    They tried to impeach him twice!
    - mpweiher 6y ago
      They did impeach him twice.
  - dbattaglia 6y ago
    The difference is, in American politics there are two very distinct polarized sides, and the one he was running for doesn't really care about this kind of thing very much. It's much worse when your own side is the one "cancelling" you.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
yread 6y ago
Are you saying that jerking off in front of people is OK or borderline? Stallman wasn't removed for "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". He wasn't criminalized at all, he resigned himself after saying stupid stuff.
- s_dev 6y ago
  I think we can see that in hindsight that Epstein was the common denominator in all these controversies and had he not existed Stallman and Minsky will still just be normal nerds with strong opinions on software unrelated to any sex controversy. They're guilty of association not of doing anything wrong. It doesn't concern me that Stallman said stupid/insensitive things. He has a history of that.
- thiht 6y ago
  > Are you saying that jerking off in front of people is OK or borderline? I have no idea how you went from OP's message to this. Can you explain?
  - vngall 6y ago
    This is a good example of how pro-cancelers operate. Directly misquote the OP (as you pointed out) and put some distasteful stuff in the vicinity of mentioning the target, so people will unconsciously associate him with that.
- noobermin 6y ago
  I agree in part but I'm pretty sure he was pressured to resign.
- CRConrad 6y ago
  Neither; GP is clearly saying that such "reason for cancellation" was NOT what Stallman did. And no, > he resigned himself after saying stupid stuff only goes to show that you were bamboozled by the BS spread about him. He was pressured to resign after gross distortions of some in and of themselves quite reasonable(1) things he said were spread like gospel of what he actually said, and almost nobody listened to the corrections from people who were not as easily lead. You can still defect from the former to the latter camp. ___ 1: But admittedly somewhat irrelevant at the time -- and too-obviously prone to easy distortion.
noobermin 6y ago
Were there any allegations of him doing unwanted flirting? This post seems to be conflating rms' cancellation with other people's unwanted behavior.
- CRConrad 6y ago
  No, some chick's memory of exactly that -- from 1987 or -92 or something -- was a fairly prominent part of what everyone was howling about. (And yes, I'm using the rather dismissive noun quite deliberately: Ordinarily this person would have been just another young [at the time; not so much nowadays] woman, and I'd have used some more appropriate term. But this bird-brained behaviour is worthy of a chicken. If anyone has a problem with that, I'm perfectly amenable to switching. How about "harpy"?)
- compiler-guy 6y ago
  His inappropriate behavior toward women is well documented. One example where women traded advice on how to keep him away. https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265 https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/99426727746...
  - noobermin 6y ago
    This is hearsay...if it is well documented may be it would help to provide an example of bad behavior from someone who dealt with it directly.
    - compiler-guy 6y ago
      https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... Among other examples: “When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him. I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an “important” man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact. He was not a man of his word or he’d be long dead.” —Betsy S., Bachelor’s in Management Science, ’85 His social cluelessness is legendary--no one really disputes it. Why it wouldn't be true toward women as well, I have no idea. I'm sure you will find a way to dismiss this, but there are plenty of stories out there if you look.
christophilus 6y ago
I wonder why some people draw such ire and others don't? For example, I'm surprised Charlie Munger hasn't been canceled yet. That old dude says whatever the hell he likes and DGAF. Anyway, I'm glad we have strong, independent voices in the world, and that not everyone has been brainwashed by sensitivity training.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I agree. On the racism side of the cancellation coin, you have ordinary people canceled for citing the preeminent scholar on the efficacy of nonviolent protest (who also happens to be black) and Tweeting an interview in which a black man expresses concern over black-on-black crime; however, you have the Canadian PM going around in blackface so often he can’t even keep count by his own admission and he’s regarded as basically a lovable goofball darling by the cancel culture folks while the others are “literal Nazis” or something. Mob justice isn’t great at assessing guilt or determining proportional sentences, but some people will defend it to the death.
cmeacham98 6y ago
I don't see how this is relevant _at all_ to the linked article. You seem to be taking existing arguments that aren't even related to RMS's case and arguing against a strawman of an extreme version of them. No "mob justice" happened here. No women came forward and said RMS "hit on them" or whatever. RMS faced criticism for comments which justified rape and were close to victim blaming, and willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it. A position I personally believe he could have kept had he decided not to resign (and the fact that he is able to return to it so soon after leaving suggests I am correct). Edit: I think that several people are placing too much importance on the "willingly resigned" part of my comment downthread. If you believe that RMS was forced out and he had no choice in the matter (i.e. it was "resign or get fired"), then feel free to replace the words "willingly resigned" with "was fired" in my comment (and ignore the last sentence in that paragraph), the point being made still stands.
- lanevorockz 6y ago
  Don't rewrite history, main reason Richard was pushed out was a MeToo/racism witch hunt against him. He was not the only one attacked on it, most heads of open source projects were also a target at the same time.
  - cmeacham98 6y ago
    Every[1] reputable[2] source[3] I[4] can[5] find[6] (literally just the top search results for "stallman resigns" that have any info about the reason) says that Stallman resigned over his comments defending a fellow computer scientist over his participation in the Epstein scandal. Do you have a reason to believe otherwise? 1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman-resigns-mit-free-software-foundation-epstein https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman... 2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richard-stallman-has-resigned-as-president-of-the-free-software-foundation/?sh=2f6a0a855272 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richa... 3: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard... 4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-ri... 5: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-mit-after-comments-about-epstein-scandal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer... 6: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-after-jeffrey-epstein-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...
sneak 6y ago
People are absolutely entitled to talk about and share experiences in which other people's behavior made them unconfortable. They don't even need anything "substantial". You're conflating someone inflicting reputational damage ON THEMSELVES, as a result of their own behavior, with mob justice, which is something else entirely. Don't do that. > We cannot just fire anyone who has some harmless quirk that you don't appreciate. That's the beauty of free association: yes we absolutely can.
Kaze404 6y ago
It's always fascinating to me that the free speech crowd can't stand seeing people facing consequences for exercising that right.
dralley 6y ago
This was not mob justice. There was decades of poor behavior here, he wasn't pushed out because of this singular event. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...
- thefz 6y ago
  Yet some other women defend him, including Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU. https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
- tuplot 6y ago
  So 0.0001% of his messages, most of which were said at a time when the Internet/Usenet was an innocent substitute for the local pub, are offensive to some. And we say that's "decades of poor behavior"! 80% of the population says random stuff that is a 100x worse at parties. It this article is not an impersonation, it is pretty sad that such self-righteous and intransigent statements come from a Gregorian friar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell
  - davexunit 6y ago
    Anyone that has worked for/closely with the FSF or with GNU leadership knows that RMS has a long history of bad behavior across a number of facets. Leaving aside controversial public statements, he was not a good President and I'm glad he's not anymore.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Oh hey, a new account comes in to white knight.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
blacktriangle 6y ago
Hear hear! We as a civilization have an organization for dealing with these kinds of issues, its called the police. If assault happens, immediately go to the police and report your issue. Watching non-law enforcement agencies get involved in criminal matters has been an utter clusterfuck.
- SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
  I would entirely agree but police also have a horrible track record when it comes to these things. The mob justice happens because the cops can’t be trusted to do justice, and haven’t been shown themselves worthy of that trust for generations when it comes to sexual assault. (Sometimes the cops themselves are the ones doing the assaulting!)
  - eliasdaler 6y ago
    Does mob justice have a wonderful track record? Just because police and justice system are not perfect doesn't mean that the "alternative" is the one that should be considered right.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
      I think mob justice has a horrible track record! I think it happens because the public has lost all faith in police, which is equally horrible.
  - temp8964 6y ago
    Yeah. Unless cops are all saints we should rely on mob justice.
    - eliasdaler 6y ago
      We should not - it's a dangerous idea which gets people's lives destroyed. "Innocent until guilty" is an important concept which mob justice often forgets which causes a lot of damage. Just because one system is broken, doesn't mean that we have to replace it with another broken one.
koonsolo 6y ago
> "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". The latter is perfectly normal behavior unless you propose we criminalize being a man. If you are a superior to the person in question, I don't agree that it's normal behavior. In that case you put that person in a very tough position. Same for teacher/student. That's also why a lot of companies have a policy against that. Notice how I didn't specify the genders, since it doesn't really matter.
- lixtra 6y ago
  What about befriending superiors? What if I refuse to befriend them? Wouldn’t they retaliate? Can I mention my favorite sports team at work? I consider prisoners and children/mentally unfit taboo. The rest is human and not per se bad or to be forbidden. Obviously some setups carry more risk.
  - koonsolo 6y ago
    I see no problem with any of those things. But I still see a problem with making a move onto a subordinate, which can put that person in a very awkward position. Same way as you don't hit on your friend's partner. Some people are just off limits. If they want something, it's up to them to make the first move.
cmiles74 6y ago
I find it embarrassing that this is the top comment on this post. Not only is this comment mostly incoherent, it's pretty far from the facts at hand. These aren't hard to find, you can search Google or read the paragraph on Stallman's Wikipedia page.[0] Richard Stallman attempt to defend Marvin Minsky's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein was offensive. CNet[1] has a recap of the email thread (I believe Motherboard first reported it[2]) if you are interested in the details. The part highlighted by CNet was this: >Stallman's resignation comes just days after Motherboard published an email thread in which Stallman suggests that "most plausible scenario" is that one of Epstein's underage victims "presented herself to [former colleague Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing." >When someone else on the thread points out that Virginia Giuffre was 17 when she was forced to have sex with Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of the Media Lab, Stallman argued that "it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17." In my opinion, this is very different from someone claiming that Stallman "made them feel uncomfortable". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-after-jeffrey-epstein-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma... [2]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...
- honkdaddy 6y ago
  Just to be clear, are you saying that you disagree with Stallman, that we _should_ morally define rape depending on the country it was committed in? That is to say, if a 16yo had sex with an adult in Niagara Falls, ON where the age of consent is 16, then no moral crime had been committed, but if the two crossed over to New York where the law states 17, then the elder of the two is a rapist in your eyes? I believe that's the point Stallman was trying to make, and I'm curious to hear if you dsiagree.
  - Angostura 6y ago
    The commenter is saying that the poster perhaps deliberately mischaracterised the actual complaints against Stallman to belittle the complaint and that's embarrassing.
arnaudsm 6y ago
Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment. Victims have no other choice than do "justice" publicly. Fixing the justice system is the best solution. Only then we can cancel cancel-culture.
- umvi 6y ago
  > Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment. I challenge this assertion. I think mob justice would still exist even if we had omniscient judges who could administer perfect justice in every scenario. Mob justice is intoxicating. Mob justice is exhilarating. Mob justice can make you feel "a part of something" or "making history". Cancel culture extends far beyond sexual harassment. Mob justice is not about justice for most of the people in the mob. It's about wielding power over your peers. It's about squashing your ideological opponents from a position of faux righteousness.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
> We went from "he grabbed me by the pussy" I hate having to write this. But this is one of the biggest examples of fakenews out there that “our side” is ok with because we want to be lied to. As awful as he was, not a single woman ever actually accused Trump of this. His statements were off record to in discussion about how women react when you are famous. We didn’t even go from “he grabbed me by the pussy”. We went from the actual quote ”and when you a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”. [0] If we’re going to call out fake things and being intellectually honest about accusations and “canceling”, let’s start close to home first. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321
Angostura 6y ago
Why are you mischaracterising this? Complaints that "he make me feel uncomfortable". Isn't the reason he ran into problems. In a deposition, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims said Epstein he instructed her to have sex with with the late Marvin Minsky of MIT. RMS jumped to Minsky's defence, nitpicking about whether whether this could really be “sexual assault,” since the young woman, he reasoned, would have seemed to be presenting herself to Minsky willingly. Whether or not, you think Stallman deserved the level of aprobium that hit him, it's nothing to do with accusations against RMS himself that he made anyone feel uncomfortable. Or "he once hit on me and I had to reject him" And then you have the temerity to include, in this masterpiece of misdirection, the question: "Why are women always presumed to be innocent and men always presumed to be guilty?".

disgruntled101 6y ago

What you are saying here would get you cancelled 100 times over if you were a public person, sadly.

cryptica 6y ago
It goes to show that it's not regular people who create 'cancel culture'. It's the financial elite. They do it as means to push forward a financial agenda. If those who orchestrate the cancellations were who they portray themselves to be, the hypocrisy would be brain-splitting. The only reason their brain lobes are still attached together is because they know that they're being deceptive and it's part of an agenda. It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it.
- noobermin 6y ago
  I think some cancellations are driven by powerful people but I'd say most are definitely organic.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  It's not possible for a rational, cohesive mind to believe that a person who dedicated his whole life to free software is a bad person just because he once said something without thinking through it. Multiple strawman arguments in the same sentence. 1. Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality. While I realize the internet is no place for nuance, please understand the question is about whether somebody who's said these things is fit to lead or represent an institution. You can disagree or disagree with that. But please understand that is the question, not "is Richard Stallman a bad person." I certainly don't think he is. 2. "once said something without thinking through it" -- unfortunately this displays a spectacular misunderstanding. These are multiple things said over multiple years on mailing lists, his site, and so forth. Additionally, RMS's communiques are... well, they are not off-the-cuff. I've read reams of his statements over the years. They are the writings of somebody speaking very very deliberately about things he has reasoned through in very deliberate ways according to his beliefs.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    >> Few if any are claiming RMS is "a bad person" in totality I used the word 'believe' for a reason, it's people's beliefs who drove him out in the first place. Besides, the term 'stawman argument' makes no sense when discussing ethics or human behavior. This is not math or engineering. These kinds of statements are necessarily axiomatic; either you understand it or you don't. Either it neatly fits into your logical understanding of the world or it doesn't. I wouldn't write off someone who has done such great things for so many decades when I know for a fact that most people in positions of power today are hypocritical monsters (only difference is that they have good PR teams to manage their public images); you need to put it in perspective.
- medium_burrito 6y ago
  Enter the cartoon with a banker with the mob outside all "occupy wall street" on the phone with his PR firm, instructing them to the tell the mob "what identity politics is".
Bost 6y ago
Once upon a time there was a dude with such an attitude and he became a president. Edit: And his story is not over yet. Apparently.
- Ygg2 6y ago
  Yeah, being rich is a great insulator. But RMS isn't rich.
- christophilus 6y ago
  Trump? Clinton? Kennedy? Johnson? I suspect that the shorter list would be the list of non-womanizing presidents.
- noobermin 6y ago
  I think that's true and it definitely shows how cancel culture only hurts some people but doesn't hurt others that much depending on their wealth and their influence. That said, really add to the discussion for others who aren't that powerful relatively.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  They tried to impeach him twice!
  - mpweiher 6y ago
    They did impeach him twice.
- dbattaglia 6y ago
  The difference is, in American politics there are two very distinct polarized sides, and the one he was running for doesn't really care about this kind of thing very much. It's much worse when your own side is the one "cancelling" you.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

yread 6y ago

Are you saying that jerking off in front of people is OK or borderline? Stallman wasn't removed for "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". He wasn't criminalized at all, he resigned himself after saying stupid stuff.

s_dev 6y ago
I think we can see that in hindsight that Epstein was the common denominator in all these controversies and had he not existed Stallman and Minsky will still just be normal nerds with strong opinions on software unrelated to any sex controversy. They're guilty of association not of doing anything wrong. It doesn't concern me that Stallman said stupid/insensitive things. He has a history of that.
thiht 6y ago
> Are you saying that jerking off in front of people is OK or borderline? I have no idea how you went from OP's message to this. Can you explain?
- vngall 6y ago
  This is a good example of how pro-cancelers operate. Directly misquote the OP (as you pointed out) and put some distasteful stuff in the vicinity of mentioning the target, so people will unconsciously associate him with that.
noobermin 6y ago
I agree in part but I'm pretty sure he was pressured to resign.
CRConrad 6y ago
Neither; GP is clearly saying that such "reason for cancellation" was NOT what Stallman did. And no, > he resigned himself after saying stupid stuff only goes to show that you were bamboozled by the BS spread about him. He was pressured to resign after gross distortions of some in and of themselves quite reasonable(1) things he said were spread like gospel of what he actually said, and almost nobody listened to the corrections from people who were not as easily lead. You can still defect from the former to the latter camp. ___ 1: But admittedly somewhat irrelevant at the time -- and too-obviously prone to easy distortion.

noobermin 6y ago

Were there any allegations of him doing unwanted flirting? This post seems to be conflating rms' cancellation with other people's unwanted behavior.

CRConrad 6y ago
No, some chick's memory of exactly that -- from 1987 or -92 or something -- was a fairly prominent part of what everyone was howling about. (And yes, I'm using the rather dismissive noun quite deliberately: Ordinarily this person would have been just another young [at the time; not so much nowadays] woman, and I'd have used some more appropriate term. But this bird-brained behaviour is worthy of a chicken. If anyone has a problem with that, I'm perfectly amenable to switching. How about "harpy"?)
compiler-guy 6y ago
His inappropriate behavior toward women is well documented. One example where women traded advice on how to keep him away. https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265 https://mobile.twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/99426727746...
- noobermin 6y ago
  This is hearsay...if it is well documented may be it would help to provide an example of bad behavior from someone who dealt with it directly.
  - compiler-guy 6y ago
    https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix-a-a7e41e784f88 https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... Among other examples: “When I was a teen freshman, I went to a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant in Central Square with a graduate student friend and others from the AI lab. I don’t know if he and I were the last two left, but at a table with only the two of us, Richard Stallman told me of his misery and that he’d kill himself if I didn’t go out with him. I felt bad for him and also uncomfortable and manipulated. I did not like being put in that position — suddenly responsible for an “important” man. What had I done to get into this situation? I decided I could not be responsible for his living or dying, and would have to accept him killing himself. I declined further contact. He was not a man of his word or he’d be long dead.” —Betsy S., Bachelor’s in Management Science, ’85 His social cluelessness is legendary--no one really disputes it. Why it wouldn't be true toward women as well, I have no idea. I'm sure you will find a way to dismiss this, but there are plenty of stories out there if you look.

christophilus 6y ago

I wonder why some people draw such ire and others don't? For example, I'm surprised Charlie Munger hasn't been canceled yet. That old dude says whatever the hell he likes and DGAF. Anyway, I'm glad we have strong, independent voices in the world, and that not everyone has been brainwashed by sensitivity training.

throwaway894345 6y ago
I agree. On the racism side of the cancellation coin, you have ordinary people canceled for citing the preeminent scholar on the efficacy of nonviolent protest (who also happens to be black) and Tweeting an interview in which a black man expresses concern over black-on-black crime; however, you have the Canadian PM going around in blackface so often he can’t even keep count by his own admission and he’s regarded as basically a lovable goofball darling by the cancel culture folks while the others are “literal Nazis” or something. Mob justice isn’t great at assessing guilt or determining proportional sentences, but some people will defend it to the death.

cmeacham98 6y ago

I don't see how this is relevant _at all_ to the linked article. You seem to be taking existing arguments that aren't even related to RMS's case and arguing against a strawman of an extreme version of them. No "mob justice" happened here. No women came forward and said RMS "hit on them" or whatever. RMS faced criticism for comments which justified rape and were close to victim blaming, and willingly resigned from his position at the FSF because of it. A position I personally believe he could have kept had he decided not to resign (and the fact that he is able to return to it so soon after leaving suggests I am correct). Edit: I think that several people are placing too much importance on the "willingly resigned" part of my comment downthread. If you believe that RMS was forced out and he had no choice in the matter (i.e. it was "resign or get fired"), then feel free to replace the words "willingly resigned" with "was fired" in my comment (and ignore the last sentence in that paragraph), the point being made still stands.

lanevorockz 6y ago
Don't rewrite history, main reason Richard was pushed out was a MeToo/racism witch hunt against him. He was not the only one attacked on it, most heads of open source projects were also a target at the same time.
- cmeacham98 6y ago
  Every[1] reputable[2] source[3] I[4] can[5] find[6] (literally just the top search results for "stallman resigns" that have any info about the reason) says that Stallman resigned over his comments defending a fellow computer scientist over his participation in the Epstein scandal. Do you have a reason to believe otherwise? 1: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman-resigns-mit-free-software-foundation-epstein https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/17/20870050/richard-stallman... 2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richard-stallman-has-resigned-as-president-of-the-free-software-foundation/?sh=2f6a0a855272 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/09/17/richa... 3: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-who-defended-jeffrey-epstein-resigns-from-mit-csail-and-the-free-software-foundation/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/16/computer-scientist-richard... 4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-over-epstein-comments https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbm74x/computer-scientist-ri... 5: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-mit-after-comments-about-epstein-scandal/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/09/17/computer... 6: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-after-jeffrey-epstein-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma...

sneak 6y ago

People are absolutely entitled to talk about and share experiences in which other people's behavior made them unconfortable. They don't even need anything "substantial". You're conflating someone inflicting reputational damage ON THEMSELVES, as a result of their own behavior, with mob justice, which is something else entirely. Don't do that. > We cannot just fire anyone who has some harmless quirk that you don't appreciate. That's the beauty of free association: yes we absolutely can.

Kaze404 6y ago

It's always fascinating to me that the free speech crowd can't stand seeing people facing consequences for exercising that right.

dralley 6y ago

This was not mob justice. There was decades of poor behavior here, he wasn't pushed out because of this singular event. https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

thefz 6y ago
Yet some other women defend him, including Nadine Strossen, former president of the ACLU. https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web https://www.wetheweb.org/post/cancel-we-the-web
tuplot 6y ago
So 0.0001% of his messages, most of which were said at a time when the Internet/Usenet was an innocent substitute for the local pub, are offensive to some. And we say that's "decades of poor behavior"! 80% of the population says random stuff that is a 100x worse at parties. It this article is not an impersonation, it is pretty sad that such self-righteous and intransigent statements come from a Gregorian friar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bushnell
- davexunit 6y ago
  Anyone that has worked for/closely with the FSF or with GNU leadership knows that RMS has a long history of bad behavior across a number of facets. Leaving aside controversial public statements, he was not a good President and I'm glad he's not anymore.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Oh hey, a new account comes in to white knight.
deleted 6y ago
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blacktriangle 6y ago

Hear hear! We as a civilization have an organization for dealing with these kinds of issues, its called the police. If assault happens, immediately go to the police and report your issue. Watching non-law enforcement agencies get involved in criminal matters has been an utter clusterfuck.

SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
I would entirely agree but police also have a horrible track record when it comes to these things. The mob justice happens because the cops can’t be trusted to do justice, and haven’t been shown themselves worthy of that trust for generations when it comes to sexual assault. (Sometimes the cops themselves are the ones doing the assaulting!)
- eliasdaler 6y ago
  Does mob justice have a wonderful track record? Just because police and justice system are not perfect doesn't mean that the "alternative" is the one that should be considered right.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
    I think mob justice has a horrible track record! I think it happens because the public has lost all faith in police, which is equally horrible.
- temp8964 6y ago
  Yeah. Unless cops are all saints we should rely on mob justice.
  - eliasdaler 6y ago
    We should not - it's a dangerous idea which gets people's lives destroyed. "Innocent until guilty" is an important concept which mob justice often forgets which causes a lot of damage. Just because one system is broken, doesn't mean that we have to replace it with another broken one.

koonsolo 6y ago

> "he once hit on me and I had to reject him". The latter is perfectly normal behavior unless you propose we criminalize being a man. If you are a superior to the person in question, I don't agree that it's normal behavior. In that case you put that person in a very tough position. Same for teacher/student. That's also why a lot of companies have a policy against that. Notice how I didn't specify the genders, since it doesn't really matter.

lixtra 6y ago
What about befriending superiors? What if I refuse to befriend them? Wouldn’t they retaliate? Can I mention my favorite sports team at work? I consider prisoners and children/mentally unfit taboo. The rest is human and not per se bad or to be forbidden. Obviously some setups carry more risk.
- koonsolo 6y ago
  I see no problem with any of those things. But I still see a problem with making a move onto a subordinate, which can put that person in a very awkward position. Same way as you don't hit on your friend's partner. Some people are just off limits. If they want something, it's up to them to make the first move.

cmiles74 6y ago

I find it embarrassing that this is the top comment on this post. Not only is this comment mostly incoherent, it's pretty far from the facts at hand. These aren't hard to find, you can search Google or read the paragraph on Stallman's Wikipedia page.[0] Richard Stallman attempt to defend Marvin Minsky's involvement with Jeffrey Epstein was offensive. CNet[1] has a recap of the email thread (I believe Motherboard first reported it[2]) if you are interested in the details. The part highlighted by CNet was this: >Stallman's resignation comes just days after Motherboard published an email thread in which Stallman suggests that "most plausible scenario" is that one of Epstein's underage victims "presented herself to [former colleague Marvin Minsky] as entirely willing." >When someone else on the thread points out that Virginia Giuffre was 17 when she was forced to have sex with Minsky, a pioneer in artificial intelligence and founder of the Media Lab, Stallman argued that "it is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17." In my opinion, this is very different from someone claiming that Stallman "made them feel uncomfortable". [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman [1]: https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallman-resigns-from-mit-after-jeffrey-epstein-comments/ https://www.cnet.com/news/computer-scientist-richard-stallma... [2]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-described-epstein-victims-as-entirely-willing https://www.vice.com/en/article/9ke3ke/famed-computer-scient...

honkdaddy 6y ago
Just to be clear, are you saying that you disagree with Stallman, that we _should_ morally define rape depending on the country it was committed in? That is to say, if a 16yo had sex with an adult in Niagara Falls, ON where the age of consent is 16, then no moral crime had been committed, but if the two crossed over to New York where the law states 17, then the elder of the two is a rapist in your eyes? I believe that's the point Stallman was trying to make, and I'm curious to hear if you dsiagree.
- Angostura 6y ago
  The commenter is saying that the poster perhaps deliberately mischaracterised the actual complaints against Stallman to belittle the complaint and that's embarrassing.

arnaudsm 6y ago

Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment. Victims have no other choice than do "justice" publicly. Fixing the justice system is the best solution. Only then we can cancel cancel-culture.

umvi 6y ago
> Mob justice only exists because regular justice is not effective against sexual harassment. I challenge this assertion. I think mob justice would still exist even if we had omniscient judges who could administer perfect justice in every scenario. Mob justice is intoxicating. Mob justice is exhilarating. Mob justice can make you feel "a part of something" or "making history". Cancel culture extends far beyond sexual harassment. Mob justice is not about justice for most of the people in the mob. It's about wielding power over your peers. It's about squashing your ideological opponents from a position of faux righteousness.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago

> We went from "he grabbed me by the pussy" I hate having to write this. But this is one of the biggest examples of fakenews out there that “our side” is ok with because we want to be lied to. As awful as he was, not a single woman ever actually accused Trump of this. His statements were off record to in discussion about how women react when you are famous. We didn’t even go from “he grabbed me by the pussy”. We went from the actual quote ”and when you a star, they let you do it, you can do anything... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything”. [0] If we’re going to call out fake things and being intellectually honest about accusations and “canceling”, let’s start close to home first. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321 https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321

Angostura 6y ago

Why are you mischaracterising this? Complaints that "he make me feel uncomfortable". Isn't the reason he ran into problems. In a deposition, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims said Epstein he instructed her to have sex with with the late Marvin Minsky of MIT. RMS jumped to Minsky's defence, nitpicking about whether whether this could really be “sexual assault,” since the young woman, he reasoned, would have seemed to be presenting herself to Minsky willingly. Whether or not, you think Stallman deserved the level of aprobium that hit him, it's nothing to do with accusations against RMS himself that he made anyone feel uncomfortable. Or "he once hit on me and I had to reject him" And then you have the temerity to include, in this masterpiece of misdirection, the question: "Why are women always presumed to be innocent and men always presumed to be guilty?".