11 ms·

Now, would the journalists who wrote articles with titles that are a variation of "RMS defended Epstein" [1,2] apologize or at least correct their articles? Al

Now, would the journalists who wrote articles with titles that are a variation of "RMS defended Epstein" [1,2] apologize or at least correct their articles? Also, now that RMS has explicitly clarified his position on these issues, can the people who leveraged his "silence" and "bad behavior" to oust him from the FSF at least admit that their motive was less about making the free-software movement welcoming and was more about getting rid of RMS? [1]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-richard-stallman-defends-epstein-victims-were-entirely-willing https://www.thedailybeast.com/famed-mit-computer-scientist-r... [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...

mathgorges 6y ago
Thanks for posting these. I was out of the loop on this and tracking down the reporting to which RMS is replying was proving more difficult than expected.
- teddyh 6y ago
  > I was out of the loop on this Summary: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/
whatshisface 6y ago
I'd be surprised if we saw retractions, especially retractions reaching everyone who saw the original claims, but maybe Vice could write a piece attacking the daily beast article while the daily beast writes an article attacking the Vice one.
- b215826 6y ago
  Yes, "Famed <rival publication> writes ableist insensitive articles with fabricated lies about an aspie."
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DelightOne 6y ago
  What would good update mechanisms be? Is there any today, except "Follow this newspaper forever" and "Hope they do honest retractions"? One idea.. A system attaches to every article an ID, users read the article and the reader saves the ID for the user and the system later informs him of retractions and critiques, if desired?
DanBC 6y ago
This is an entirely dishonest framing of the articles which do not claim RMS defended Epstein, but do claim (correctly) that he defended Minsky.
- b215826 6y ago
  What part of "Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein" (the title of the Daily Beast article) do you have trouble understanding?
  - meowface 6y ago
    I'd also say the Vice headline is almost as dishonest, even if it's not saying he defended Epstein: "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'". Stallman did use those two scare-quoted words, but the headline is trying to paint it in a completely, fundamentally different light from the point he was attempting to make. He may have been insensitive (as he says in this statement), but he wasn't arguing anything close to what that headline is trying to imply. It's not just a typical case of a misleading headline taking a quote out of context. There isn't any conceivable context where it's justified to call rape and sex trafficking victims entirely willing; of course the victims are by definition unwilling. So it's an especially wrong and deceptive portrayal of what he was saying. They wrote it that way knowing the audience's immediate gut reaction will be the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
    - Udik 6y ago
      > almost as dishonest, even if it's not saying he defended Epstein: "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'". Why "almost"? It's false, and clearly so for anyone who has the literacy needed to write that piece. It's entirely dishonest.
      - jraph 6y ago
        Did you read "almost as dishonest" as "almost dishonest"?
Kiro 6y ago
Apologize for what? This post doesn't make him less accountable for what he wrote in that email.
- b215826 6y ago
  It may have come across as being insensitive, but what he wrote in that email wasn't technically wrong.
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    > wasn't technically wrong That is your opinion. Others may disagree. > It may have come across as being insensitive Sensitivity is a huge part of communication despite RMS acting otherwise. Arguably he'd find more success knowing which battles to fight against whom, when and how.
  - chc 6y ago
    Didn't he write that Epstein's child sex trafficking victim being pimped to septuagenarian professor Marvin Minsky should be considered consensual sex and not rape, despite her attestations otherwise?
    - overboard2 6y ago
      He said that Epstein may have coerced her to present herself as "entirely willing".
      - ralfd 6y ago
        Which is reasonableto assume if she was a trap so that Epstein could get blackmail material. RMS argued she would present herself as older than 17 and seduce her targets. What is most unclear to me in that whole kermuffle is that this strongly seems to be a hypothetical. She only said that she was instructed to target Minsky, but not that she did have sex with Minsky (or he with her.) I somewhere else read the claim that Minsky was accompanied with his wife, so he couldn't have slept with her even if he wanted to.
underseacables 6y ago
No, no that’s not how journalism works. They report the FACTS as they see them. /s There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I would have more faith in the media if they admitted when they were wrong, or at least presented, thoughtfully considered, opposing viewpoints. My faith in the media perhaps really took its first hit with Nick Sandman. I just felt weird that all these people were coming down on a kid. The level of vitriol was disturbing, and many it seems were wrong. I expect CNN to say so, but I don’t think they will, and thus the conflict remains unresolved.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I think journalism always mostly did "corrections." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper)
  - underseacables 6y ago
    Ah thank you, quite interesting. Allow me to clarify: when I was riding those words I had an article on a webpage in my mind. Because articles are so online now, it’s easy to change things and call them clarifications, and people miss the slight of hand that it might have been actually a retraction of statements. I do recall clarifications and amplifications in physical newspapers, always intriguing.
    - tablespoon 6y ago
      > Ah thank you, quite interesting. Allow me to clarify: when I was riding those words I had an article on a webpage in my mind. Because articles are so online now, it’s easy to change things and call them clarifications, and people miss the slight of hand that it might have been actually a retraction of statements. For better or worse, online news articles are living documents now. Especially in breaking stories, I've seen them get updated over the day/week with all kinds of things (e.g. corrections, new developments, rewrites, etc.). Ideally they'd expose a revision history like Wikipedia, but that's probably more of a nice-to-have since their editorial processes aren't crowdsourced. I suppose they've embraced some of the "move fast and break things" ethos of tech sector (because you can also fix things fast).
geofft 6y ago
RMS disaffiliated from MIT in the '80s (see "Commencing the project" in https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html), so I'm not sure that any headline saying "Famed MIT Computer Scientist..." to refer to him was interested in accuracy in the first place.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  He held a position at MIT until 2019.[1] [1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September_2019_(Resignation) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September...
  - geofft 6y ago
    I was at MIT from 2006-11, including as a student researcher at CSAIL from 2007 onwards, and I was on the CSAIL mailing list until I unsubscribed (coincidentally) a week or so before that post. In at least the time that I was at MIT/CSAIL, and to my knowledge thereafter, RMS was not employed by MIT nor was he a student at MIT. He had an email/UNIX account at CSAIL, and he had an office, sponsored by some very senior faculty members, and he was of course around the campus frequently - but the campus is fairly open about these things, as you'd expect from an academic institution, and it's pretty straightforward for faculty to sponsor anyone they like as an "affiliate" (though of course office space is much harder). He continues to have his CSAIL account, though I believe he no longer has his office. I believe that's all that he means by the term "my position." He did not have a staff role or anything that he resigned.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      He held a visiting scientist title and an office. The affiliation was less substantial than a professorship but not nothing.
    - bigbillheck 6y ago
      > RMS disaffiliated from MIT in the '80s ... > sponsored by some very senior faculty members, .... It's pretty straightforward for faculty to sponsor anyone they like as an "affiliate" (though of course office space is much harder). I think that if someone is sponsored by senior MIT faculty to the point of having an office on campus that's a pretty good claim to being MIT-affiliated.
kgraves 6y ago
Too late, there is no redemption for Stallman. /s
unityByFreedom 6y ago
RMS does not call for that and it isn't necessary. He acknowledges his own tone-deafness. Plus, people understand editorials like those are interpretations of words. If you want the facts you look at the original source material and decide for yourself.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Fox news viewers don't realize that 3/4 of fox news channel is opinion shows which don't have to be correct or even tell the truth because it's opinion.
  - lax4ever 5y ago
    Fox News? Finding consistent application of a journalistic standard in any of the major news channels (MSNBC, ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS, CNN) is practically impossible. It's become more and more a game of "Gotcha" between them than what I think is anything resembling journalism.
koheripbal 6y ago
Neither of those things will happen. We would be better off if we could remove those dishonest people from our communities here and elsewhere. Dishonest reporting, and amplifying of dishonest posts on social media is not something you will ever get an apology for, because those efforts were never meant to survive scrutiny. They were meant to create "pressure" to cause reputational damage. You cannot convince or engage bad-faith actors. All you can do is identify and eliminate them from your social media circles and sites as best you can. This is one of the reasons I believe social media sites should enact age-based voting. Such that older accounts that have withstood the reputational scrutiny, have greater influence.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- simion314 6y ago
  >This is one of the reasons I believe social media sites should enact age-based voting. I am not sure this works, on HN for example is easy enough for a small mob to disappear articles by flagging them, on top of that we get no reason why things were flagged or any way to undo it. Account age or karma is not enough, we need much more, make it harder to share/downvote or flag , like by making someone type at least 60 words and ban the accounts for abuse.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Accounts that act poorly, usually do so in multiple ways. Banning accounts for bad behavior will likely curb other undetectable bad behavior. HN is a bit unique. I suspect it is less influenced by bad behavior because it is small enough to fly under the radar.
    - simion314 6y ago
      You would think so because is hard to notice, I would not have believed it until I seen it with my own eyes, it was an article about RMS and there was a good discussion in the comments , in 5-10 minutes the entry was gone from the first pages, it was flagged, I think there were around 2-- comments in the end but most readers missed the article and instead they could see more then one day old stuff. My proposal is to have people do a bit of work not just click a button, write an intelligent argument, it would at least filter the lazy ones out. It is similar when you know someone will review your code you double check your commit first and clean things up, someone might decide that the reason might not be as defendable so maybe a discussion should happen on this topic .
loopz 6y ago
That's not how mobs operate effectively, unfortunately.
ekianjo 6y ago
> Now, would the journalists who wrote articles with titles that are a variation of "RMS defended Epstein" [1,2] apologize or at least correct their articles? If it does not create outrage or get any clicks, they have no incentive to do it. It's not like journalists have a conscience.
xupybd 6y ago
Modern reporting is about views. Click bait titles that state the worst get clicks. Nuanced truth bored people. As long as we haven't found a way to entertain the masses without these embellishments I have no hope for an honest media. Just remember this when they are stirring political division. This president caused this crisis, or this politician said this horrible thing. It's probably not as bad as they say it is.
- kazinator 6y ago
  One problem with click-bait titles is that people don't click; they just stop at the title and discuss and promote that message.
selfishgene 6y ago
Both MIT and Harvard have admitted to helping Jeffrey Epstein avoid prosecution on federal racketeering charges for the sex-trafficking of minors after they were exposed by whistle-blowers at both of these institutions. I'm still not sure why people consider it appropriate to exclude someone like Stallman from serving on the Board of the FSF while continuing to allow Mr. Rafael Reif, for example, to remain president of MIT after sending a personally signed "thank-you note" to one of the most notorious alleged sex-traffickers and convicted child-rapists in US history: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei... Nor would it be any more appropriate to allow Mr. Seth Lloyd back onto the MIT campus with just a slap on the wrist: https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op... Or Mr. Martin Nowak for that matter either: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/26/metro/harvard-sanctio https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/26/metro/harvard-sanctio... On the subject of Nowak's role in aiding and abetting a child rapist, this hacker news thread is worth reading again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25442060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25442060 So why has nobody drafted petitions to cancel Rafael "Thank You So Much Mr. Epstein -- And Don't Forget to Show My Letter to Federal Prosecutors" Reif, Benedict "Epstein is an Ideal Donor for Harvard" Gross, Alan "Dershbag" Dershowitz, Martin "Punishment Serves No Noble Purpose" Nowak, Steven "Using the Internet to Entice a Minor into Prostitution is A-Okay" Pinker, Seth "So What If I Make Female Undergraduates at MIT Feel Uncomfortable" Lloyd, Neri "Epstein was Always a Reliable Supporter of Israel" Oxman, Frank "I Never Saw any Girls that were Underage" Wilczek, and all of the other pedophilia-tolerating two-faced phonies that attended EDGE Foundation dinners hosted by the convicted child rapist and/or visited him on "Pedophile Isle," where FBI reportedly found instruction manuals that Mr. Epstein had ordered on Amazon that describe how to create a so-called "sex slave," in addition to video tapes containing child pornography that he allegedly recorded using secret cameras that were installed throughout his various residences? Mr. Stallman blaming his "being on the spectrum" for all of the troubling statements cataloged on the website cited below may not entirely excuse him for making them since there is no evidence that someone on the spectrum is more likely than the general population to hold similar views on child rape: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman But the most important question today that Mr. Stallman still needs to address directly, because many of his critics on this issue continue to hold him in the highest regard for his role in advancing the free software movement, is a very frank one: Were his remarks in support of pedophilia designed to persuade Mr. Epstein to donate part of his $500 million estate to the Free Software Foundation, much like he observed role-models such as MIT president Rafael Reif do for Mr. Epstein when Dr. Reif sent Mr. Epstein a personally signed thank-you note for his donation to the Media Lab, or colleagues like Martin Nowak do for Mr. Epstein when Dr. Nowak created a web page on a university website and an office in his department for a convicted child-rapist in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in donations that were promised to his academic program at Harvard and hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, often laundered through Epstein's fellow billionaire pedophile friends like Les Wexner, Glenn Dubin, and Leon Black, to Harvard University, where Mr. Nowak is a professor? I'm not entirely convinced by the naysayers on this one yet, but Stallman is most deserving of the benefit of doubt thus far, and not because of his autism, but rather because of all of his contributions to free software in spite of it. On the other hand, many of the other Epstein co-conspirators cited above who directly accepted money from the convicted child-rapist as a form of reputation laundering for an individual who they knew, or should have known, was about to face racketeering charges in federal court for the sex-trafficking of hundreds of underage girls over the past 30 years deserve to spend some serious time in the same jail cell where Mr. Epstein (allegedly) killed himself because he was too much of a coward to stand trial for all of the crimes that he knew he had committed.
generalizations 6y ago
I wonder if it's feasible to create some kind of database of reporters and their reliability - 'John doe has written n articles that turned out to be fundamentally wrong', Jane doe has written m articles that were fundamentally wrong'.
- a9h74j 6y ago
  I haven't followed this in much detail yet, but https://thefactual.com/how-it-works https://thefactual.com/how-it-works mentions ranking reporters for their expertise in particular subjects. Saw site mentioned in an HN comment a few weeks ago. So far appears to be an "objective" aggregator.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
They've declared their verdict and moved on :) . It's the 24/7 newscycle they don't have time for corrections unless it is recent and they can put it on the "backpage"
crocodiletears 5y ago
That would require those journalists be worthy of the applause they tell society it both owes and gives to them. The activists won their war. No reason for them to declare it unjust.

mathgorges 6y ago

Thanks for posting these. I was out of the loop on this and tracking down the reporting to which RMS is replying was proving more difficult than expected.

teddyh 6y ago
> I was out of the loop on this Summary: https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/ https://sterling-archermedes.github.io/

whatshisface 6y ago

I'd be surprised if we saw retractions, especially retractions reaching everyone who saw the original claims, but maybe Vice could write a piece attacking the daily beast article while the daily beast writes an article attacking the Vice one.

b215826 6y ago
Yes, "Famed <rival publication> writes ableist insensitive articles with fabricated lies about an aspie."
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DelightOne 6y ago
What would good update mechanisms be? Is there any today, except "Follow this newspaper forever" and "Hope they do honest retractions"? One idea.. A system attaches to every article an ID, users read the article and the reader saves the ID for the user and the system later informs him of retractions and critiques, if desired?

DanBC 6y ago

This is an entirely dishonest framing of the articles which do not claim RMS defended Epstein, but do claim (correctly) that he defended Minsky.

b215826 6y ago
What part of "Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein" (the title of the Daily Beast article) do you have trouble understanding?
- meowface 6y ago
  I'd also say the Vice headline is almost as dishonest, even if it's not saying he defended Epstein: "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'". Stallman did use those two scare-quoted words, but the headline is trying to paint it in a completely, fundamentally different light from the point he was attempting to make. He may have been insensitive (as he says in this statement), but he wasn't arguing anything close to what that headline is trying to imply. It's not just a typical case of a misleading headline taking a quote out of context. There isn't any conceivable context where it's justified to call rape and sex trafficking victims entirely willing; of course the victims are by definition unwilling. So it's an especially wrong and deceptive portrayal of what he was saying. They wrote it that way knowing the audience's immediate gut reaction will be the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
  - Udik 6y ago
    > almost as dishonest, even if it's not saying he defended Epstein: "Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing'". Why "almost"? It's false, and clearly so for anyone who has the literacy needed to write that piece. It's entirely dishonest.
    - jraph 6y ago
      Did you read "almost as dishonest" as "almost dishonest"?

Kiro 6y ago

Apologize for what? This post doesn't make him less accountable for what he wrote in that email.

b215826 6y ago
It may have come across as being insensitive, but what he wrote in that email wasn't technically wrong.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  > wasn't technically wrong That is your opinion. Others may disagree. > It may have come across as being insensitive Sensitivity is a huge part of communication despite RMS acting otherwise. Arguably he'd find more success knowing which battles to fight against whom, when and how.
- chc 6y ago
  Didn't he write that Epstein's child sex trafficking victim being pimped to septuagenarian professor Marvin Minsky should be considered consensual sex and not rape, despite her attestations otherwise?
  - overboard2 6y ago
    He said that Epstein may have coerced her to present herself as "entirely willing".
    - ralfd 6y ago
      Which is reasonableto assume if she was a trap so that Epstein could get blackmail material. RMS argued she would present herself as older than 17 and seduce her targets. What is most unclear to me in that whole kermuffle is that this strongly seems to be a hypothetical. She only said that she was instructed to target Minsky, but not that she did have sex with Minsky (or he with her.) I somewhere else read the claim that Minsky was accompanied with his wife, so he couldn't have slept with her even if he wanted to.

underseacables 6y ago

No, no that’s not how journalism works. They report the FACTS as they see them. /s There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I would have more faith in the media if they admitted when they were wrong, or at least presented, thoughtfully considered, opposing viewpoints. My faith in the media perhaps really took its first hit with Nick Sandman. I just felt weird that all these people were coming down on a kid. The level of vitriol was disturbing, and many it seems were wrong. I expect CNN to say so, but I don’t think they will, and thus the conflict remains unresolved.

tablespoon 6y ago
> There’s no such thing as a retraction anymore, it’s just clarifications. I think journalism always mostly did "corrections." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correction_(newspaper)
- underseacables 6y ago
  Ah thank you, quite interesting. Allow me to clarify: when I was riding those words I had an article on a webpage in my mind. Because articles are so online now, it’s easy to change things and call them clarifications, and people miss the slight of hand that it might have been actually a retraction of statements. I do recall clarifications and amplifications in physical newspapers, always intriguing.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > Ah thank you, quite interesting. Allow me to clarify: when I was riding those words I had an article on a webpage in my mind. Because articles are so online now, it’s easy to change things and call them clarifications, and people miss the slight of hand that it might have been actually a retraction of statements. For better or worse, online news articles are living documents now. Especially in breaking stories, I've seen them get updated over the day/week with all kinds of things (e.g. corrections, new developments, rewrites, etc.). Ideally they'd expose a revision history like Wikipedia, but that's probably more of a nice-to-have since their editorial processes aren't crowdsourced. I suppose they've embraced some of the "move fast and break things" ethos of tech sector (because you can also fix things fast).

geofft 6y ago

RMS disaffiliated from MIT in the '80s (see "Commencing the project" in https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html), so I'm not sure that any headline saying "Famed MIT Computer Scientist..." to refer to him was interested in accuracy in the first place.

pseudalopex 6y ago
He held a position at MIT until 2019.[1] [1] https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September_2019_(Resignation) https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#16_September...
- geofft 6y ago
  I was at MIT from 2006-11, including as a student researcher at CSAIL from 2007 onwards, and I was on the CSAIL mailing list until I unsubscribed (coincidentally) a week or so before that post. In at least the time that I was at MIT/CSAIL, and to my knowledge thereafter, RMS was not employed by MIT nor was he a student at MIT. He had an email/UNIX account at CSAIL, and he had an office, sponsored by some very senior faculty members, and he was of course around the campus frequently - but the campus is fairly open about these things, as you'd expect from an academic institution, and it's pretty straightforward for faculty to sponsor anyone they like as an "affiliate" (though of course office space is much harder). He continues to have his CSAIL account, though I believe he no longer has his office. I believe that's all that he means by the term "my position." He did not have a staff role or anything that he resigned.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    He held a visiting scientist title and an office. The affiliation was less substantial than a professorship but not nothing.
  - bigbillheck 6y ago
    > RMS disaffiliated from MIT in the '80s ... > sponsored by some very senior faculty members, .... It's pretty straightforward for faculty to sponsor anyone they like as an "affiliate" (though of course office space is much harder). I think that if someone is sponsored by senior MIT faculty to the point of having an office on campus that's a pretty good claim to being MIT-affiliated.

kgraves 6y ago

Too late, there is no redemption for Stallman. /s

unityByFreedom 6y ago

RMS does not call for that and it isn't necessary. He acknowledges his own tone-deafness. Plus, people understand editorials like those are interpretations of words. If you want the facts you look at the original source material and decide for yourself.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
Fox news viewers don't realize that 3/4 of fox news channel is opinion shows which don't have to be correct or even tell the truth because it's opinion.
- lax4ever 5y ago
  Fox News? Finding consistent application of a journalistic standard in any of the major news channels (MSNBC, ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS, CNN) is practically impossible. It's become more and more a game of "Gotcha" between them than what I think is anything resembling journalism.

koheripbal 6y ago

Neither of those things will happen. We would be better off if we could remove those dishonest people from our communities here and elsewhere. Dishonest reporting, and amplifying of dishonest posts on social media is not something you will ever get an apology for, because those efforts were never meant to survive scrutiny. They were meant to create "pressure" to cause reputational damage. You cannot convince or engage bad-faith actors. All you can do is identify and eliminate them from your social media circles and sites as best you can. This is one of the reasons I believe social media sites should enact age-based voting. Such that older accounts that have withstood the reputational scrutiny, have greater influence.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
simion314 6y ago
>This is one of the reasons I believe social media sites should enact age-based voting. I am not sure this works, on HN for example is easy enough for a small mob to disappear articles by flagging them, on top of that we get no reason why things were flagged or any way to undo it. Account age or karma is not enough, we need much more, make it harder to share/downvote or flag , like by making someone type at least 60 words and ban the accounts for abuse.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Accounts that act poorly, usually do so in multiple ways. Banning accounts for bad behavior will likely curb other undetectable bad behavior. HN is a bit unique. I suspect it is less influenced by bad behavior because it is small enough to fly under the radar.
  - simion314 6y ago
    You would think so because is hard to notice, I would not have believed it until I seen it with my own eyes, it was an article about RMS and there was a good discussion in the comments , in 5-10 minutes the entry was gone from the first pages, it was flagged, I think there were around 2-- comments in the end but most readers missed the article and instead they could see more then one day old stuff. My proposal is to have people do a bit of work not just click a button, write an intelligent argument, it would at least filter the lazy ones out. It is similar when you know someone will review your code you double check your commit first and clean things up, someone might decide that the reason might not be as defendable so maybe a discussion should happen on this topic .

loopz 6y ago

That's not how mobs operate effectively, unfortunately.

ekianjo 6y ago

> Now, would the journalists who wrote articles with titles that are a variation of "RMS defended Epstein" [1,2] apologize or at least correct their articles? If it does not create outrage or get any clicks, they have no incentive to do it. It's not like journalists have a conscience.

xupybd 6y ago

Modern reporting is about views. Click bait titles that state the worst get clicks. Nuanced truth bored people. As long as we haven't found a way to entertain the masses without these embellishments I have no hope for an honest media. Just remember this when they are stirring political division. This president caused this crisis, or this politician said this horrible thing. It's probably not as bad as they say it is.

kazinator 6y ago
One problem with click-bait titles is that people don't click; they just stop at the title and discuss and promote that message.

selfishgene 6y ago

Both MIT and Harvard have admitted to helping Jeffrey Epstein avoid prosecution on federal racketeering charges for the sex-trafficking of minors after they were exposed by whistle-blowers at both of these institutions. I'm still not sure why people consider it appropriate to exclude someone like Stallman from serving on the Board of the FSF while continuing to allow Mr. Rafael Reif, for example, to remain president of MIT after sending a personally signed "thank-you note" to one of the most notorious alleged sex-traffickers and convicted child-rapists in US history: https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2020/01/12/after-epstei... Nor would it be any more appropriate to allow Mr. Seth Lloyd back onto the MIT campus with just a slap on the wrist: https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op https://thetech.com/2021/02/25/mit-administration-epstein-op... Or Mr. Martin Nowak for that matter either: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/26/metro/harvard-sanctio https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/03/26/metro/harvard-sanctio... On the subject of Nowak's role in aiding and abetting a child rapist, this hacker news thread is worth reading again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25442060 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25442060 So why has nobody drafted petitions to cancel Rafael "Thank You So Much Mr. Epstein -- And Don't Forget to Show My Letter to Federal Prosecutors" Reif, Benedict "Epstein is an Ideal Donor for Harvard" Gross, Alan "Dershbag" Dershowitz, Martin "Punishment Serves No Noble Purpose" Nowak, Steven "Using the Internet to Entice a Minor into Prostitution is A-Okay" Pinker, Seth "So What If I Make Female Undergraduates at MIT Feel Uncomfortable" Lloyd, Neri "Epstein was Always a Reliable Supporter of Israel" Oxman, Frank "I Never Saw any Girls that were Underage" Wilczek, and all of the other pedophilia-tolerating two-faced phonies that attended EDGE Foundation dinners hosted by the convicted child rapist and/or visited him on "Pedophile Isle," where FBI reportedly found instruction manuals that Mr. Epstein had ordered on Amazon that describe how to create a so-called "sex slave," in addition to video tapes containing child pornography that he allegedly recorded using secret cameras that were installed throughout his various residences? Mr. Stallman blaming his "being on the spectrum" for all of the troubling statements cataloged on the website cited below may not entirely excuse him for making them since there is no evidence that someone on the spectrum is more likely than the general population to hold similar views on child rape: https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman But the most important question today that Mr. Stallman still needs to address directly, because many of his critics on this issue continue to hold him in the highest regard for his role in advancing the free software movement, is a very frank one: Were his remarks in support of pedophilia designed to persuade Mr. Epstein to donate part of his $500 million estate to the Free Software Foundation, much like he observed role-models such as MIT president Rafael Reif do for Mr. Epstein when Dr. Reif sent Mr. Epstein a personally signed thank-you note for his donation to the Media Lab, or colleagues like Martin Nowak do for Mr. Epstein when Dr. Nowak created a web page on a university website and an office in his department for a convicted child-rapist in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in donations that were promised to his academic program at Harvard and hundreds of millions of dollars in donations, often laundered through Epstein's fellow billionaire pedophile friends like Les Wexner, Glenn Dubin, and Leon Black, to Harvard University, where Mr. Nowak is a professor? I'm not entirely convinced by the naysayers on this one yet, but Stallman is most deserving of the benefit of doubt thus far, and not because of his autism, but rather because of all of his contributions to free software in spite of it. On the other hand, many of the other Epstein co-conspirators cited above who directly accepted money from the convicted child-rapist as a form of reputation laundering for an individual who they knew, or should have known, was about to face racketeering charges in federal court for the sex-trafficking of hundreds of underage girls over the past 30 years deserve to spend some serious time in the same jail cell where Mr. Epstein (allegedly) killed himself because he was too much of a coward to stand trial for all of the crimes that he knew he had committed.

generalizations 6y ago

I wonder if it's feasible to create some kind of database of reporters and their reliability - 'John doe has written n articles that turned out to be fundamentally wrong', Jane doe has written m articles that were fundamentally wrong'.

a9h74j 6y ago
I haven't followed this in much detail yet, but https://thefactual.com/how-it-works https://thefactual.com/how-it-works mentions ranking reporters for their expertise in particular subjects. Saw site mentioned in an HN comment a few weeks ago. So far appears to be an "objective" aggregator.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

They've declared their verdict and moved on :) . It's the 24/7 newscycle they don't have time for corrections unless it is recent and they can put it on the "backpage"

crocodiletears 5y ago

That would require those journalists be worthy of the applause they tell society it both owes and gives to them. The activists won their war. No reason for them to declare it unjust.