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Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club

95 points by giords 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tick_tock_tick 3y ago
One thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate. From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?
- duxup 3y ago
  Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path. Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough. US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.
  - lettergram 3y ago
    > Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path And for good reason, the current legal system assumes innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt (for criminal cases). Civil cases have a lower burden of proof. These protections are there for a reason. Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. sexual “misconduct” is even more insidious, because most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims AND likely have too low of a burden for a civil or criminal case… In other words, feel free to make claims, but without proof it’s hard to justify ruining someone’s life.
    - jasonlotito 3y ago
      > Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. To this degree? No. This is not likely. > We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case. > most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims Citation needed. I need evidence that most people making accusations are doing so "long after the fact" AND have motives outside the offending incident to do so. On a side note: Codes of Conduct and Guidelines have existed long before the modern era. Private entities are free to handle these however they want, and suggesting they leave everything to the courts is a new and unique perspective that needs more backing to suggest it would be a better system.
      - lettergram 3y ago
        > Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case. Claims are not evidence, can anyone see the claims? Can I see the rebuttal from the accused? The point I’m making is this is not “justice” it’s “injustice” because it’s not actually adjudicating a dispute. What’s happening here isn’t a “trial”. Here’s what I understand from the article — a group of people (who likely know each other), accused a high profile competitor of sexual misconduct, 4 years after the incident. There appears to be no police report nor any other legal action. That’s it… so to me it’s hard to say “yeah let’s ban someone and ruin his name!” Because quite frankly, I don’t see any evidence. Note: there could be evidence! I just don’t see it presented here.
        wuiheerfoj 3y ago
        Testimony is evidence, just not _conclusive_ evidence. The reality is for such cases there’s basically never going to be conclusive evidence; I think that’s why they cause such a divide amongst people
      - RangerScience 3y ago
        (to be clear, I'm pretty sure I agree with you @jasonlotito) > long after... motives after AFAIK/IME this actually does end up being true, but why it's true matters - 1) It can take a long time for someone to realize what they've been through, and it can take even longer for them to get to the point where they can talk about it. 2) A lot of folks seem to take the stance that they don't want to deal with everything involved in bringing up what happened to them until they start seeing it happen to others.
  - dvt 3y ago
    > Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path. Yeah, it's a difficult path because of pesky things like evidentiary rules, burden of proof, and presumption of innocence. False accusations happen, especially in mega-competitive spaces like sports/chess competitions. I'm not sure why so many folks believe that destroying someone's livelihood, career, and reputation is ethically permissible based simply on a paragraph with zero transparency. Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial?
    - runako 3y ago
      > Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial? You can't force an accuser to file a criminal complaint. The mechanism available in this case is a defamation civil suit.
- altairprime 3y ago
  “No” certainly isn’t a viable answer, as it resulted in the evidence of inaction and blame-shifting presented by Lichess. However, your opinion as indicates hostility to “Yes”. In light of that contradiction, what action do you recommend organizations take other than refusing to govern their members with regards to sexual assault?
- hgsgm 3y ago
  USA is a free country. It also has a Federation enshrined in law, with powers reserved for the non-Federal government. That idea of self-government permeates society. We don't wait for the government to tell us what to think. Other countries have different culture.
- squokko 3y ago
  I don't see any evidence of Lichess being "pushed into" this. It's owned entirely by a single person. I don't recall any PR campaign to pressure Lichess into doing this. This feels much more like one person making a decision about who he would and would not associate with. I don't disagree that moral panics and mass hysteria are real but this does not seem to be a case of that.
- glenda 3y ago
  I don't believe anyone wants to create a new legal system, but the reality is the vast majority of sexual assault cases aren't resolved in court due to existing social issues. These "judges, jurries and prosecutors" are just people who don't want to associate with potentially dangerous people regardless of the legal outcome. Beyond legal consequences to crime there have always been social consequences too - I think the major difference compared to the past is that these companies put out press releases instead of just blacklisting someone and moving on.
  - duxup 3y ago
    I agree that often that's not the goal, but if you have multiple parties making different claims ... all of a sudden you have to determine facts to make a decision based on and suddenly you've got a sort of mini justice system and you're learning all the ins and outs of such a system, making the same historical mistakes and so on.
  - lettergram 3y ago
    > I don't believe anyone wants to create a new legal system, but the reality is the vast majority of sexual assault cases aren't resolved in court due to existing social issues If by existing social issues, you mean lack of evidence, statute of limitations, then sure. For instance, I see zero evidence that anything occurred here. There may be evidence, but the point of the justice system is to publicly disclose it and debate it such that the public can make a determination. Once determined (by a jury) a punishment, agreed upon by the society is handed down. The alternative is issuing unsubstantiated claims to the public. Then blacklisting and deplatforming the person do they cannot defend themselves. To be honest, that’s effectively what led to the US revolution — lack of due process, ability to redress grievances and representation. It’s very unamerican, that said, many of these organizations that do this aren’t American so it is what it is.
    - jasonlotito 3y ago
      > It’s very unamerican This is 100% wrong. American' are very much in favor of instilling their own ethics and morality and guidelines on things they own. Which is exactly what is happening here. Your belief that you can dictate to others how they can manage their own property is the unamerican thing here.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  If that's the way you want to approach it, which does have some value, the starting question is "why isn't the legal system sufficient or able to address this?" Which is a many-layered question but let's go. The needs of a small organization are different from an entire state. Transgressions can be disruptive or destructive to organization-scale relationships without rising to criminality. And the the traditional feminist answer of "why can't the legal system address sexual assault" is "it wasn't meant to." A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. The definitions of it and the standards to be met for deciding it has taken place were decided by men, to enforce against other men. The way women feel about their interactions with men has not traditionally been a prioritized factor in the legal system.
  - the_lego 3y ago
    > A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. "Regulated" in the sense that the average prison term for [edit: federal cases of, see reply for closest approximation I could find for non-federal average sentence] sexual abuse is 17 years? their average sentence was 211 months - https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Sexual_Abuse_FY21.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      The US Sentencing Commission: (1) only gets referrals related to federal sentencing (which are a small and not-representative minority of “sexual abuse” cases (if you look at your own document, the majority of the cases are charges specific to one form or another of child sex trafficking—almost half for production of child pornography alone, while only 10% are rape, the specific thibg being referred to in the post you responded to.) (2) Doesn't include statistics covering situations where law enforcement, prosecutors, etc., decided not to pursue charges.
      - the_lego 3y ago
        Then robbery and assault and battery are also only "regulated", because they have similar conviction rates: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system And I couldn't find data on the average non-federal sexual abuse prison sentence in the US, but for the UK it's 8 years: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/26/rape-sentence-average-eight-years-justice-figures https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/26/rape-sentenc... So on what basis, other than "men bad", does the claim that rape is merely "regulated", and that the legal system wasn't (Shouldn't that be "isn't"? Or will we argue about what the legal system was like a century ago, and imply but not state that it hasn't changed?) meant to address it, rest? In the UK, the police have even withheld evidence from defense lawyers to ensure convictions for rape. Does that affect the claim how the law is basically pro-rape, or is it completely immune to evidence, so long as a single rape can still occur? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/06/05/basic-tenet-justice-system-innocent-proven-guilty-eroded/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/06/05/basic-tenet-j... A simple matter of faith, no matter how badly society treats accused rapists: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46235634 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46235634
- paulddraper 3y ago
  100% I expect a "chess federation" to be good at.....federating chess. Why do we expect a chess federation to be good at policing, investigating claims, collecting evidence, following precedent, passing judgments, and balancing collective and individual interests? We have actual, legitimate justice systems that do this. Are they perfect? No. But why do you expect a bunch of chess nerds/experts to be any better at it? --- You're complaining that a plumber did a crap job fixing your car. I 100% believe you that they did a crappy job, but also maybe you should have hired someone else?
  - lbotos 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080054 said it well, because there are things an organization may choose not to accept that aren't crimes.
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > Their goal is to protect their members. That is the goal of the legal system as well. > There are things an organization may choose not to accept that aren't crimes Sure. Dress code, etc. But sexual assault is a crime.
      - RangerScience 3y ago
        > That is the goal of the legal system as well. Gonna strongly contest that. The legal system only gets involved once protections have failed. (well, the judicial part of it, at any rate)
        the_lego 3y ago
        That still provides deterrence, and safeguards against future harm from the same perpetrator. Regardless, the chess federation is not being asked to act on pre-crime either, so in that aspect they are no different than the legal and police systems.
- runako 3y ago
  > If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system At base, because the legal system: - takes too long to be a useful preventative measure - frequently involves re-traumatizing the victims, including via requiring public testimony of incredibly personal information - often results in acquittal, frequently because victims choose not to submit themselves to trial The goals of the legal system are essentially at odds with those of civic organizations. The legal system is designed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a solid standard to use before e.g. incarcerating a person. However, this standard is not necessarily stringent enough to vet people who supervise minors. More to the point, no private group of people is compelled to allow any individual to associate with them.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    [flagged]
- ianburrell 3y ago
  The legal system has a much higher bar to put people in prison for crimes. Organizations have a much lower bar for deciding not to associate with people. Their goal is to protect their members. Also, there are lots of things that are problematic but not crimes. "Sexual misconduct" could mean sexual harassment, which isn't a crime but shouldn't be allowed in organization.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    But Lichess has neither the means nor interest in uncovering the truth. So why active as a judge?
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Because they've decided that doing so furthers their aims.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Notice that courts don’t really “uncover the truth” either, not even on paper. They just establish likelihood of guilt — just like any other org could.
    - compiler-guy 3y ago
      Because it is a question of probability. Not of certainty. And protecting their members is more important than the competing interest of the accused.
    - rtkwe 3y ago
      How so? They can gather evidence and hear testimonies as well as anyone else can. They don't have the power of the state to compel testimony but tempered by the lower consequences of an incorrect decision.
    - arrakeen 3y ago
      who, then, should decide what organizations and people Lichess associates and works with?
    - 3y ago
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  It makes sense that the legal system and individuals' freedom of association would have different thresholds for deciding to act. Suppose we say that the legal system needs to have 95% probability of guilt to render a guilty verdict, and its associated consequences such as imprisonment and/or restitution. A high threshold makes sense for such systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio). Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have a person for whom you have 80% probability of their guilt. That, then, is not enough to render a guilty verdict; 20% is clearly "reasonable doubt". 80% probability of guilt, however, is absolutely enough for reasonable people to say "I don't want this person associated with my organization", or "I don't want this person presenting at my conference". This, among many other reasons, is a very good reason for organizations to have their own standards which are independent of those of the legal system.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    no it's not. it subverts the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty. with so many associations becoming mandatory (eg: i can't do my job without a google account) we can no longer allow any organization to reject people based on their own judgement. at least for the larger ones that don't have trivial alternatives.
    - constantly 3y ago
      Innocent until proven guilty is primarily a legal principle in the United States and doesn’t really apply to the court of public opinion. And in fact for many of the good reasons presented by the person to whom you’re responding, really shouldn’t apply to the court of public opinion or the principle of freedom of association.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        doesn’t really apply to the court of public opinion i strongly disagree with that. allowing public opinion to judge people without proof leads to mob rule. any rumor can destroy someones life. as a society we must not allow that to happen. innocent until proven guilty should apply to every interaction we have with any human being. if there are suspicions it is ok to take precautions, and obviously those who are victims should be able to seek and get support even if they can't prove what happened. but any actions against the accused must not be irreversible until a verdict has been reached. part of the reason this is necessary is because as a society we are not doing well with forgiveness especially in cases where someone has been wrongfully accused. to many times their life has been destroyed anyways.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  This is literally the definition of social justice. I just wanted to emphasize because this the term has lost a lot of meaning since it’s used as a catchall (by both opponents and proponents).
  - lolinder 3y ago
    No, it's not. It's one possible parsing of the words "social" and "justice" when combined together, but "social justice" has been used in its current form since at least John Stuart Mill in 1861: > Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.
- spanktheuser 3y ago
  I’m curious why you feel the actions of a private group amount to a legal system. To me they seem quite different. In one the punishment amounts to expulsion from the group and damage to reputation. The actual legal system has more consequential punishment (confinement, monetary loss, permanent record as a felon & sexual predator) but also higher standards of evidence, procedure, defendants rights etc. To me, the “amateur legal system” you identity is closer to a more formalized version of what a friend group might do when they decide to ostracize someone due to boorish, misogynist or similar behavior. Since the chess association size exceeds the Dunbar number a lightweight process is needed to ensure proper function.
- bravoetch 3y ago
  Yes, if you sexually assault a colleague at work there are consequences like losing your job and that's a feature not a bug.
- ipython 3y ago
  The legal system is exorbitantly expensive. I had a neighbor sue me over a land dispute (yes, they’re that petty). My lawyers informed me that I was looking at $80-200k in legal bills to take even this little thing to trial. It doesn’t surprise me that organizations actively try to avoid it.
  - sshine 3y ago
    Sorry to hear that. I lived with someone for several years who was in a legal dispute with their tenants. Once one lawsuit was over, the other part retributed. I never knew them when they were not either suing or getting sued. It taught me this: don’t ever go to court if you can avoid it.
- tptacek 3y ago
  This is a little like suggesting an HN ban should require formal due process. These are private organizations, and everybody involved here is exercising their rights of free association. Lichess can ice out other organizations for all sorts of reasons, moral, legal, commercial, and aesthetic. You in turn can respond to their actions by choosing how you'll associate with Lichess.
- moate 3y ago
  Such is the problem with free speech: it enables free association. Alternative language for what you're saying: Should we force people to allow everyone access to them/their company/their spaces? If not, how do we determine what groups are and aren't protected? Tangential: Why would banning criminals be fine for you, and what crimes warrant exclusion? Should tax cheats be excluded from chess orgs? What about someone with a DUI?
  - altairprime 3y ago
    There are several arguments on this post to that effect: that, yes, organizations should have no right to exclude anyone for their behavior, and should be forced to accept anyone who demands membership. Banning criminals is a popular rhetorical construction used by those who do not have felony records, in order to scaremonger others into supporting an argument that promotes existing biases and status quos; in this case, in favor of the “sexual misconduct is disregarded” bias.
    - moate 3y ago
      Oh I know, I once got into a massive Twitter blowout with Brendan Eich because he believes that all computing conferences should invite "the best" speakers (how do you determine that? well I assume "invented JS" would be a qualifier...) regardless of their personal or legal issues. It's a tough philosophical space balancing between free speech/association and criminal discrimination and I think it shouldn't be surprising that an ecosystem that produced a "free speech absolutist" like Musk who bans dissenting opinions would also create a group of people who think that everyone has to tolerate them no matter how abhorrent their behavior or ideas as long as it doesn't cross a line into "criminal".
      - altairprime 3y ago
        I would change one word only here, to represent the flexibility of beliefs that typically ensues from any unfavorable interpretation thereof: > as long as it doesn’t cross a line into “excluding them”.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  Large organizations are in a middle ground between "You are forced to participate" nation-state groups and "Leave at any time with little impact" groups like a small club or friend group. Different levels of proof are appropriate at these various levels. For a nation-state, you need to be damn sure before levying a punishment, because the impact of punishment is much greater. The trade off is a much more rigorous investigation of potential wrong-doing, and a certain level of acceptable false negatives. It's better for a nation-state to let a couple people get away with crimes versus falsely convicting someone. In a small, informal group, the greatest punishment they can issue is a relatively low-impact exile, so levels of proof can be extremely low: a vaguely plausible rumor will probably get someone kicked out. Big organizations like universities, chess leagues, and workplaces are in a middle ground. Exile from such a group is a much bigger deal, as it can threaten someone's livelihood, future, or incur other fairly large opportunity costs. However, they can't throw someone in prison, so compared to the nation state they need less confidence to levy their punishments, and thus are expected to be less accepting of members getting away with inappropriate behavior. All of this comes to head with the issue of sexual harassment and assault. It's a very hard category of crime to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt", because often the only witnesses are the victim/accuser and the perpetrator/accused. If an organization takes a stance of only kicking someone out when they are convicted in a court of law, they are stating that they are willing to accept some level of misconduct, which is greater than most would like.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems? That's not a legal system, and the reason for it is (or, at least, includes) that the organizations themselves have duties that are enforceable through the actual legal system, and they would rather not fail those duties in a costly way. And those duties often include duties to both potential victims and accused, so determining the facts in order to take the correct actions to uphold those duties requires some method of resolving disputes.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rexpop 3y ago
  > do we really want to create another legal system? Yes, yes we do. The current legal system is inadequate to the task. It is costly, intimidating, strenuous to wield and aggressive in its penalties. Accountability and recompense can be more judiciously attained by interpersonal conflict-resolution practices at the lowest institutional level, ie at the leaf-nodes of the social hierarchy. By asking us to rely on an unreliable legal system, you are asking us to accept victimization. If institutions return to "passing the buck" as they broadly were before, eg #MeToo, the buck will not stop. It will ricochet off the indifferent law.
- RangerScience 3y ago
  IMO/AFAIK - Our existing systems are actually just plain bad at handling "intimate crime", for a whole host of reasons. AFAIK the US legal system was designed first to handle "the state versus a person", and second "contract enforcement". It's also designed "to be blind" (to very arguable success), and "slow but inevitable" ("gears of justice"). One of the main reasons it doesn't work to well in community management - Call it the "tip of the iceberg" effect. Where there's one problem, there's usually a whole bunch more, even if they're smaller. I removed someone from my community in exactly this kind of situation; they had a couple of explosive breakups, and once people started talking more and more came out (outside of the relationships). After we'd (myself and another leader) talked to everyone we possibly could, two things became apparent: 1) He'd end up hurting someone else again if we kept him around, and 2) none of the "evidence gathering" steps were necessary. If someone is unable or unwilling to accept any causation of another's harm, then they can do nothing to prevent that harm from recurring. Which matters when it's clear that it keeps happening, and they're always involved. So yeah - all of that and more means the legal system is poorly suited to handling what's basically a heavy-duty form of community moderation.
- DSMan195276 3y ago
  Fundamentally all businesses/entities have to decide who they want to associate with, Lichess is not required to do anything with USCF or the STL Chess Club. There's plenty of non-criminal reasons to not associate with someone which the legal system will never cover, so the fact that some action may or may not rise to the level of criminal doesn't really tell you very much in regards to what Lichess should do about it. There's also the fact that Lichess is probably happy to associate with people who have committed other kinds of crimes - are you suggesting they should blacklist everybody who has been convicted of a crime in the past? Or should they make a list of what crimes are/aren't ok? If we're making a list of which crimes are "actually" bad, then aren't we back at the same problem of Lichess having to decide what they're ok associating with? Additionally Lichess isn't even based in the US, so which country's criminal laws is the owner supposed to use? It's not like any of these alleged crimes could be tried in France. There's just no other solution to what you're presenting that is reasonable at more than a surface level.
- burnished 3y ago
  Disclaimer: keeping situations that are clearly criminal 'in house' is bizarre and I agree - forward to the authorities. Many situations fitting the mold of this article are not so cut and dried so I am primarily addressing that here. Well, from a practical stand point not every instance of inappropriate behavior is illegal, and not every instance of illegal behavior is prosecutable. If you want standards for behavior in your group you probably have expectations of time to resolve and level of evidence than the legal system is not going to meet. From a more philosophical perspective it would make sense for groups to form and enforce norms - the law sets a minimum expectation of behavior after all and has very different goals/principles. A legal system might err on the side of leniency/underspecifying in order to preserve liberty, and have requirements around process and evidence in order to put constraints on the authority to put a person into a cell for the rest of their life. Rules around who can attend a tournament don't have the same scope or impact and are probably not improved by including the assumptions of the legal system. From a pedantic standpoint they are not at all creating another legal system because they have precisely zero authority, they are enforcing social norms through freedom of association. That you might see similarities probably isn't surprising given the need to investigate claims and take action, especially given the increased desire around transparency and hence published standards. Side note; I feel your core observation but I personally wonder how much is something new vs a function that has broadly existed in organizations that is becoming visible due to expectations around transparency and action.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  > From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. Increasingly, many legal disputes are handled through arbitration, which is literally this. There are a lot of motivations for avoiding the courts: arbitration is usually faster, cheaper, and can be more discreet. From my understanding, big entities really only take something to court when they want to rely on legal precedent or establish a new binding precedent.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Every organization beyond an individual has a legal system. Whether the rules are formal or informal, defacto or defined is irrelevant, there is a legal system of some sort. Within the family, it may not be there in writing, but Mom and Dad run the show. The rules are the ones they set for the household. The neighborhood has its norms, unspoken or baked into ordinances. The congregation has its rules, the corner store has a boss that says what goes... If you have an organization, and it has even the slightest hint of formal governance, you have rules (laws) and a legal system. In this case, yes, chess organizations must deal appropriately with problems of sexual misconduct, including following the laws of the land. In the situations cited in the article, in particular, even if there were now criminal charges leveled, the legal system of the chess federations should have ensured that one member could not gain a position to continue preying on other members. They should do this regardless of what other supervening laws exist. Those other laws will come into play, but there does need to be governance of acceptable behavior within their sphere of concern.
duxup 3y ago
I want to address this more generally. I'm not taking issue with any of the claims, I don't know what is true or isn't. The thing I wonder after reading this is how many organizations struggle to deal with these types of situations. Employers, schools, universities, clubs all seem to now have to have a process to address these things. And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way... It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things, nor do they necessarily have people qualified to do so (even Big US Universities for all their resources have demonstrated their own ability to do poorly in every way). We all have ideas about how we think these groups should act after the fact, but how do you really get it right? How does any organization decide "We're going to address these kinds of claims, investigate, and act appropriately?" Where do they even start?
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Conflict is fundamentally intractable. If it were so easy to avoid conflict, we wouldn't need to address it!
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    "Conflict is not abuse" yes. But also, abuse is not conflict. Organizations and communities have their own ways of limiting, tempering, and mitigating conflict within them that relates to the domain of the organization. But however effective those methods are, they will be insufficient to handle cases of interpersonal manipulation, abuse, sexual harassment, etc. Because again, those things are not conflict.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  I mean, we have such organizations...they are called courts.
  - glenda 3y ago
    And from what I can see those courts have shown to be pretty ineffective against crimes like sexual assault.
COGlory 3y ago
I'm confused what Lichess wanted here. One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy. This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events. What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have been done. Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the incident with Timur
- altairprime 3y ago
  They want each organization to publicly state (“acknowledge”) that they acted and communicated inappropriately in the past regarding these events. In their exact words from the post: > However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.
  - thereddaikon 3y ago
    Not happening. The sad fact is, people and organizations rarely admit to wrongdoing. You usually only see it happen in court and even then they may deny it even when judged to have done wrong.
- hgsgm 3y ago
  Lichess wants women and girls to feel safe. When women and girls feel safe, Lichess can once again endorse USCF. It's not lichess/Thibault's job to fix USCF.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  What are you talking about? There are like... a thousand things that could have done better here, and which were still being done long after the complaints. Ban the people. Completely totally remove the people who are assaulting underage girls from any event and any association. Don't "provide an escort", wtf. Ban them.
veave 3y ago
Lots of allegations, lots of testimonies, zero police reports, zero convictions.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I don’t have to see a conviction to kick someone out of my living room.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    No, but if are a large organization like USCF you probably want to have a higher bar than just an accusation.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      Sounds like they have multiple allegations from multiple victims across multiple years. That seems like a reasonable cause for USCF to investigate those allegations.
      - mkeedlinger 3y ago
        This comment [0] doesn't list their sources, but their list of events certainly makes it seem more conclusive than I was initially impressed skimming the post. That seems to be causing some confusion between the "just an accusation" and "it's not just an accusation" people. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296
roschdal 3y ago
[flagged]
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  This is about Freedom of Association, a protected right under the first amendment.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    No one is challenging that.
    - nickthegreek 3y ago
      Apologies then, as I interpreted the OP's comment to state that since this man hasn't been convicted in a court of law, Lichess should not behave this way.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        That conclusion doesn’t even follow your interpretation though. He can think Lichess is wrong for disassociating. That doesnt challenge supposed first amendment rights. Keep in mind the lichess dev doesnt have first amendment rights. He’s french.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Do you really want to belong to an organization that bans based on accusations? That seems like a great way for someone dishonest to avoid playing someone they know they will have a problem beating - just accuse them of sexual harassment and you don't have to worry about it. Things like the above have been done in the past. That is why the courts have complex and slow procedures to solve problems. I hate it as well, but any alternative is at least as bad - though perhaps in a different direction.
    - Daishiman 3y ago
lubesGordi 3y ago
Wasn't aware Lichess had journalists doing research to write articles and conduct interviews.
nonethewiser 3y ago
[flagged]
- gnulinux 3y ago
  Seriously? Wanting women to be able to enjoy chess without sexually assaulted is SJW stuff now? Get a load of this!
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    That’s neither what I said nor meant.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      It's difficult to interpret your comment as having any other meaning.
      - nonethewiser 3y ago
        You can want women to feel welcome and be safe in chess without being a social justice warrior. In fact im not even sure a social justice warrior even wants that. Im not saying Lichess is SJW because they want women to feel and be safe in chess. Im saying they are a bit SJW because they infused ideaology with their totally idealogical site. Communism, atheism, feminism,etc. Of the developers own admission.
        mandmandam 3y ago
        [flagged]
- ajkjk 3y ago
  Lichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't. We are lucky to have them in that position.
nonethewiser 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

95 points by giords 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

One thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate. From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?

duxup 3y ago
Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path. Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough. US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.
- lettergram 3y ago
  > Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path And for good reason, the current legal system assumes innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt (for criminal cases). Civil cases have a lower burden of proof. These protections are there for a reason. Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. sexual “misconduct” is even more insidious, because most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims AND likely have too low of a burden for a civil or criminal case… In other words, feel free to make claims, but without proof it’s hard to justify ruining someone’s life.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    > Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. To this degree? No. This is not likely. > We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case. > most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims Citation needed. I need evidence that most people making accusations are doing so "long after the fact" AND have motives outside the offending incident to do so. On a side note: Codes of Conduct and Guidelines have existed long before the modern era. Private entities are free to handle these however they want, and suggesting they leave everything to the courts is a new and unique perspective that needs more backing to suggest it would be a better system.
    - lettergram 3y ago
      > Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case. Claims are not evidence, can anyone see the claims? Can I see the rebuttal from the accused? The point I’m making is this is not “justice” it’s “injustice” because it’s not actually adjudicating a dispute. What’s happening here isn’t a “trial”. Here’s what I understand from the article — a group of people (who likely know each other), accused a high profile competitor of sexual misconduct, 4 years after the incident. There appears to be no police report nor any other legal action. That’s it… so to me it’s hard to say “yeah let’s ban someone and ruin his name!” Because quite frankly, I don’t see any evidence. Note: there could be evidence! I just don’t see it presented here.
      - wuiheerfoj 3y ago
        Testimony is evidence, just not _conclusive_ evidence. The reality is for such cases there’s basically never going to be conclusive evidence; I think that’s why they cause such a divide amongst people
    - RangerScience 3y ago
      (to be clear, I'm pretty sure I agree with you @jasonlotito) > long after... motives after AFAIK/IME this actually does end up being true, but why it's true matters - 1) It can take a long time for someone to realize what they've been through, and it can take even longer for them to get to the point where they can talk about it. 2) A lot of folks seem to take the stance that they don't want to deal with everything involved in bringing up what happened to them until they start seeing it happen to others.
- dvt 3y ago
  > Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path. Yeah, it's a difficult path because of pesky things like evidentiary rules, burden of proof, and presumption of innocence. False accusations happen, especially in mega-competitive spaces like sports/chess competitions. I'm not sure why so many folks believe that destroying someone's livelihood, career, and reputation is ethically permissible based simply on a paragraph with zero transparency. Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial?
  - runako 3y ago
    > Hypothetically, if you were falsely accused, wouldn't you want a fair trial? You can't force an accuser to file a criminal complaint. The mechanism available in this case is a defamation civil suit.
altairprime 3y ago
“No” certainly isn’t a viable answer, as it resulted in the evidence of inaction and blame-shifting presented by Lichess. However, your opinion as indicates hostility to “Yes”. In light of that contradiction, what action do you recommend organizations take other than refusing to govern their members with regards to sexual assault?
hgsgm 3y ago
USA is a free country. It also has a Federation enshrined in law, with powers reserved for the non-Federal government. That idea of self-government permeates society. We don't wait for the government to tell us what to think. Other countries have different culture.
squokko 3y ago
I don't see any evidence of Lichess being "pushed into" this. It's owned entirely by a single person. I don't recall any PR campaign to pressure Lichess into doing this. This feels much more like one person making a decision about who he would and would not associate with. I don't disagree that moral panics and mass hysteria are real but this does not seem to be a case of that.
glenda 3y ago
I don't believe anyone wants to create a new legal system, but the reality is the vast majority of sexual assault cases aren't resolved in court due to existing social issues. These "judges, jurries and prosecutors" are just people who don't want to associate with potentially dangerous people regardless of the legal outcome. Beyond legal consequences to crime there have always been social consequences too - I think the major difference compared to the past is that these companies put out press releases instead of just blacklisting someone and moving on.
- duxup 3y ago
  I agree that often that's not the goal, but if you have multiple parties making different claims ... all of a sudden you have to determine facts to make a decision based on and suddenly you've got a sort of mini justice system and you're learning all the ins and outs of such a system, making the same historical mistakes and so on.
- lettergram 3y ago
  > I don't believe anyone wants to create a new legal system, but the reality is the vast majority of sexual assault cases aren't resolved in court due to existing social issues If by existing social issues, you mean lack of evidence, statute of limitations, then sure. For instance, I see zero evidence that anything occurred here. There may be evidence, but the point of the justice system is to publicly disclose it and debate it such that the public can make a determination. Once determined (by a jury) a punishment, agreed upon by the society is handed down. The alternative is issuing unsubstantiated claims to the public. Then blacklisting and deplatforming the person do they cannot defend themselves. To be honest, that’s effectively what led to the US revolution — lack of due process, ability to redress grievances and representation. It’s very unamerican, that said, many of these organizations that do this aren’t American so it is what it is.
  - jasonlotito 3y ago
    > It’s very unamerican This is 100% wrong. American' are very much in favor of instilling their own ethics and morality and guidelines on things they own. Which is exactly what is happening here. Your belief that you can dictate to others how they can manage their own property is the unamerican thing here.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
If that's the way you want to approach it, which does have some value, the starting question is "why isn't the legal system sufficient or able to address this?" Which is a many-layered question but let's go. The needs of a small organization are different from an entire state. Transgressions can be disruptive or destructive to organization-scale relationships without rising to criminality. And the the traditional feminist answer of "why can't the legal system address sexual assault" is "it wasn't meant to." A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. The definitions of it and the standards to be met for deciding it has taken place were decided by men, to enforce against other men. The way women feel about their interactions with men has not traditionally been a prioritized factor in the legal system.
- the_lego 3y ago
  > A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. "Regulated" in the sense that the average prison term for [edit: federal cases of, see reply for closest approximation I could find for non-federal average sentence] sexual abuse is 17 years? their average sentence was 211 months - https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Sexual_Abuse_FY21.pdf https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    The US Sentencing Commission: (1) only gets referrals related to federal sentencing (which are a small and not-representative minority of “sexual abuse” cases (if you look at your own document, the majority of the cases are charges specific to one form or another of child sex trafficking—almost half for production of child pornography alone, while only 10% are rape, the specific thibg being referred to in the post you responded to.) (2) Doesn't include statistics covering situations where law enforcement, prosecutors, etc., decided not to pursue charges.
    - the_lego 3y ago
      Then robbery and assault and battery are also only "regulated", because they have similar conviction rates: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system https://www.rainn.org/statistics/criminal-justice-system And I couldn't find data on the average non-federal sexual abuse prison sentence in the US, but for the UK it's 8 years: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/26/rape-sentence-average-eight-years-justice-figures https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/may/26/rape-sentenc... So on what basis, other than "men bad", does the claim that rape is merely "regulated", and that the legal system wasn't (Shouldn't that be "isn't"? Or will we argue about what the legal system was like a century ago, and imply but not state that it hasn't changed?) meant to address it, rest? In the UK, the police have even withheld evidence from defense lawyers to ensure convictions for rape. Does that affect the claim how the law is basically pro-rape, or is it completely immune to evidence, so long as a single rape can still occur? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/06/05/basic-tenet-justice-system-innocent-proven-guilty-eroded/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2018/06/05/basic-tenet-j... A simple matter of faith, no matter how badly society treats accused rapists: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46235634 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46235634
paulddraper 3y ago
100% I expect a "chess federation" to be good at.....federating chess. Why do we expect a chess federation to be good at policing, investigating claims, collecting evidence, following precedent, passing judgments, and balancing collective and individual interests? We have actual, legitimate justice systems that do this. Are they perfect? No. But why do you expect a bunch of chess nerds/experts to be any better at it? --- You're complaining that a plumber did a crap job fixing your car. I 100% believe you that they did a crappy job, but also maybe you should have hired someone else?
- lbotos 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080054 said it well, because there are things an organization may choose not to accept that aren't crimes.
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > Their goal is to protect their members. That is the goal of the legal system as well. > There are things an organization may choose not to accept that aren't crimes Sure. Dress code, etc. But sexual assault is a crime.
    - RangerScience 3y ago
      > That is the goal of the legal system as well. Gonna strongly contest that. The legal system only gets involved once protections have failed. (well, the judicial part of it, at any rate)
      - the_lego 3y ago
        That still provides deterrence, and safeguards against future harm from the same perpetrator. Regardless, the chess federation is not being asked to act on pre-crime either, so in that aspect they are no different than the legal and police systems.
runako 3y ago
> If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system At base, because the legal system: - takes too long to be a useful preventative measure - frequently involves re-traumatizing the victims, including via requiring public testimony of incredibly personal information - often results in acquittal, frequently because victims choose not to submit themselves to trial The goals of the legal system are essentially at odds with those of civic organizations. The legal system is designed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a solid standard to use before e.g. incarcerating a person. However, this standard is not necessarily stringent enough to vet people who supervise minors. More to the point, no private group of people is compelled to allow any individual to associate with them.
- paulddraper 3y ago
  [flagged]
ianburrell 3y ago
The legal system has a much higher bar to put people in prison for crimes. Organizations have a much lower bar for deciding not to associate with people. Their goal is to protect their members. Also, there are lots of things that are problematic but not crimes. "Sexual misconduct" could mean sexual harassment, which isn't a crime but shouldn't be allowed in organization.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  But Lichess has neither the means nor interest in uncovering the truth. So why active as a judge?
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Because they've decided that doing so furthers their aims.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Notice that courts don’t really “uncover the truth” either, not even on paper. They just establish likelihood of guilt — just like any other org could.
  - compiler-guy 3y ago
    Because it is a question of probability. Not of certainty. And protecting their members is more important than the competing interest of the accused.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    How so? They can gather evidence and hear testimonies as well as anyone else can. They don't have the power of the state to compel testimony but tempered by the lower consequences of an incorrect decision.
  - arrakeen 3y ago
    who, then, should decide what organizations and people Lichess associates and works with?
  - 3y ago
JoshTriplett 3y ago
It makes sense that the legal system and individuals' freedom of association would have different thresholds for deciding to act. Suppose we say that the legal system needs to have 95% probability of guilt to render a guilty verdict, and its associated consequences such as imprisonment and/or restitution. A high threshold makes sense for such systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio). Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have a person for whom you have 80% probability of their guilt. That, then, is not enough to render a guilty verdict; 20% is clearly "reasonable doubt". 80% probability of guilt, however, is absolutely enough for reasonable people to say "I don't want this person associated with my organization", or "I don't want this person presenting at my conference". This, among many other reasons, is a very good reason for organizations to have their own standards which are independent of those of the legal system.
- em-bee 3y ago
  no it's not. it subverts the principle that someone is innocent until proven guilty. with so many associations becoming mandatory (eg: i can't do my job without a google account) we can no longer allow any organization to reject people based on their own judgement. at least for the larger ones that don't have trivial alternatives.
  - constantly 3y ago
    Innocent until proven guilty is primarily a legal principle in the United States and doesn’t really apply to the court of public opinion. And in fact for many of the good reasons presented by the person to whom you’re responding, really shouldn’t apply to the court of public opinion or the principle of freedom of association.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      doesn’t really apply to the court of public opinion i strongly disagree with that. allowing public opinion to judge people without proof leads to mob rule. any rumor can destroy someones life. as a society we must not allow that to happen. innocent until proven guilty should apply to every interaction we have with any human being. if there are suspicions it is ok to take precautions, and obviously those who are victims should be able to seek and get support even if they can't prove what happened. but any actions against the accused must not be irreversible until a verdict has been reached. part of the reason this is necessary is because as a society we are not doing well with forgiveness especially in cases where someone has been wrongfully accused. to many times their life has been destroyed anyways.
nonethewiser 3y ago
This is literally the definition of social justice. I just wanted to emphasize because this the term has lost a lot of meaning since it’s used as a catchall (by both opponents and proponents).
- lolinder 3y ago
  No, it's not. It's one possible parsing of the words "social" and "justice" when combined together, but "social justice" has been used in its current form since at least John Stuart Mill in 1861: > Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.
spanktheuser 3y ago
I’m curious why you feel the actions of a private group amount to a legal system. To me they seem quite different. In one the punishment amounts to expulsion from the group and damage to reputation. The actual legal system has more consequential punishment (confinement, monetary loss, permanent record as a felon & sexual predator) but also higher standards of evidence, procedure, defendants rights etc. To me, the “amateur legal system” you identity is closer to a more formalized version of what a friend group might do when they decide to ostracize someone due to boorish, misogynist or similar behavior. Since the chess association size exceeds the Dunbar number a lightweight process is needed to ensure proper function.
bravoetch 3y ago
Yes, if you sexually assault a colleague at work there are consequences like losing your job and that's a feature not a bug.
ipython 3y ago
The legal system is exorbitantly expensive. I had a neighbor sue me over a land dispute (yes, they’re that petty). My lawyers informed me that I was looking at $80-200k in legal bills to take even this little thing to trial. It doesn’t surprise me that organizations actively try to avoid it.
- sshine 3y ago
  Sorry to hear that. I lived with someone for several years who was in a legal dispute with their tenants. Once one lawsuit was over, the other part retributed. I never knew them when they were not either suing or getting sued. It taught me this: don’t ever go to court if you can avoid it.
tptacek 3y ago
This is a little like suggesting an HN ban should require formal due process. These are private organizations, and everybody involved here is exercising their rights of free association. Lichess can ice out other organizations for all sorts of reasons, moral, legal, commercial, and aesthetic. You in turn can respond to their actions by choosing how you'll associate with Lichess.
moate 3y ago
Such is the problem with free speech: it enables free association. Alternative language for what you're saying: Should we force people to allow everyone access to them/their company/their spaces? If not, how do we determine what groups are and aren't protected? Tangential: Why would banning criminals be fine for you, and what crimes warrant exclusion? Should tax cheats be excluded from chess orgs? What about someone with a DUI?
- altairprime 3y ago
  There are several arguments on this post to that effect: that, yes, organizations should have no right to exclude anyone for their behavior, and should be forced to accept anyone who demands membership. Banning criminals is a popular rhetorical construction used by those who do not have felony records, in order to scaremonger others into supporting an argument that promotes existing biases and status quos; in this case, in favor of the “sexual misconduct is disregarded” bias.
  - moate 3y ago
    Oh I know, I once got into a massive Twitter blowout with Brendan Eich because he believes that all computing conferences should invite "the best" speakers (how do you determine that? well I assume "invented JS" would be a qualifier...) regardless of their personal or legal issues. It's a tough philosophical space balancing between free speech/association and criminal discrimination and I think it shouldn't be surprising that an ecosystem that produced a "free speech absolutist" like Musk who bans dissenting opinions would also create a group of people who think that everyone has to tolerate them no matter how abhorrent their behavior or ideas as long as it doesn't cross a line into "criminal".
    - altairprime 3y ago
      I would change one word only here, to represent the flexibility of beliefs that typically ensues from any unfavorable interpretation thereof: > as long as it doesn’t cross a line into “excluding them”.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
Large organizations are in a middle ground between "You are forced to participate" nation-state groups and "Leave at any time with little impact" groups like a small club or friend group. Different levels of proof are appropriate at these various levels. For a nation-state, you need to be damn sure before levying a punishment, because the impact of punishment is much greater. The trade off is a much more rigorous investigation of potential wrong-doing, and a certain level of acceptable false negatives. It's better for a nation-state to let a couple people get away with crimes versus falsely convicting someone. In a small, informal group, the greatest punishment they can issue is a relatively low-impact exile, so levels of proof can be extremely low: a vaguely plausible rumor will probably get someone kicked out. Big organizations like universities, chess leagues, and workplaces are in a middle ground. Exile from such a group is a much bigger deal, as it can threaten someone's livelihood, future, or incur other fairly large opportunity costs. However, they can't throw someone in prison, so compared to the nation state they need less confidence to levy their punishments, and thus are expected to be less accepting of members getting away with inappropriate behavior. All of this comes to head with the issue of sexual harassment and assault. It's a very hard category of crime to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt", because often the only witnesses are the victim/accuser and the perpetrator/accused. If an organization takes a stance of only kicking someone out when they are convicted in a court of law, they are stating that they are willing to accept some level of misconduct, which is greater than most would like.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems? That's not a legal system, and the reason for it is (or, at least, includes) that the organizations themselves have duties that are enforceable through the actual legal system, and they would rather not fail those duties in a costly way. And those duties often include duties to both potential victims and accused, so determining the facts in order to take the correct actions to uphold those duties requires some method of resolving disputes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rexpop 3y ago
> do we really want to create another legal system? Yes, yes we do. The current legal system is inadequate to the task. It is costly, intimidating, strenuous to wield and aggressive in its penalties. Accountability and recompense can be more judiciously attained by interpersonal conflict-resolution practices at the lowest institutional level, ie at the leaf-nodes of the social hierarchy. By asking us to rely on an unreliable legal system, you are asking us to accept victimization. If institutions return to "passing the buck" as they broadly were before, eg #MeToo, the buck will not stop. It will ricochet off the indifferent law.
RangerScience 3y ago
IMO/AFAIK - Our existing systems are actually just plain bad at handling "intimate crime", for a whole host of reasons. AFAIK the US legal system was designed first to handle "the state versus a person", and second "contract enforcement". It's also designed "to be blind" (to very arguable success), and "slow but inevitable" ("gears of justice"). One of the main reasons it doesn't work to well in community management - Call it the "tip of the iceberg" effect. Where there's one problem, there's usually a whole bunch more, even if they're smaller. I removed someone from my community in exactly this kind of situation; they had a couple of explosive breakups, and once people started talking more and more came out (outside of the relationships). After we'd (myself and another leader) talked to everyone we possibly could, two things became apparent: 1) He'd end up hurting someone else again if we kept him around, and 2) none of the "evidence gathering" steps were necessary. If someone is unable or unwilling to accept any causation of another's harm, then they can do nothing to prevent that harm from recurring. Which matters when it's clear that it keeps happening, and they're always involved. So yeah - all of that and more means the legal system is poorly suited to handling what's basically a heavy-duty form of community moderation.
DSMan195276 3y ago
Fundamentally all businesses/entities have to decide who they want to associate with, Lichess is not required to do anything with USCF or the STL Chess Club. There's plenty of non-criminal reasons to not associate with someone which the legal system will never cover, so the fact that some action may or may not rise to the level of criminal doesn't really tell you very much in regards to what Lichess should do about it. There's also the fact that Lichess is probably happy to associate with people who have committed other kinds of crimes - are you suggesting they should blacklist everybody who has been convicted of a crime in the past? Or should they make a list of what crimes are/aren't ok? If we're making a list of which crimes are "actually" bad, then aren't we back at the same problem of Lichess having to decide what they're ok associating with? Additionally Lichess isn't even based in the US, so which country's criminal laws is the owner supposed to use? It's not like any of these alleged crimes could be tried in France. There's just no other solution to what you're presenting that is reasonable at more than a surface level.
burnished 3y ago
Disclaimer: keeping situations that are clearly criminal 'in house' is bizarre and I agree - forward to the authorities. Many situations fitting the mold of this article are not so cut and dried so I am primarily addressing that here. Well, from a practical stand point not every instance of inappropriate behavior is illegal, and not every instance of illegal behavior is prosecutable. If you want standards for behavior in your group you probably have expectations of time to resolve and level of evidence than the legal system is not going to meet. From a more philosophical perspective it would make sense for groups to form and enforce norms - the law sets a minimum expectation of behavior after all and has very different goals/principles. A legal system might err on the side of leniency/underspecifying in order to preserve liberty, and have requirements around process and evidence in order to put constraints on the authority to put a person into a cell for the rest of their life. Rules around who can attend a tournament don't have the same scope or impact and are probably not improved by including the assumptions of the legal system. From a pedantic standpoint they are not at all creating another legal system because they have precisely zero authority, they are enforcing social norms through freedom of association. That you might see similarities probably isn't surprising given the need to investigate claims and take action, especially given the increased desire around transparency and hence published standards. Side note; I feel your core observation but I personally wonder how much is something new vs a function that has broadly existed in organizations that is becoming visible due to expectations around transparency and action.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
> From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. Increasingly, many legal disputes are handled through arbitration, which is literally this. There are a lot of motivations for avoiding the courts: arbitration is usually faster, cheaper, and can be more discreet. From my understanding, big entities really only take something to court when they want to rely on legal precedent or establish a new binding precedent.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
Every organization beyond an individual has a legal system. Whether the rules are formal or informal, defacto or defined is irrelevant, there is a legal system of some sort. Within the family, it may not be there in writing, but Mom and Dad run the show. The rules are the ones they set for the household. The neighborhood has its norms, unspoken or baked into ordinances. The congregation has its rules, the corner store has a boss that says what goes... If you have an organization, and it has even the slightest hint of formal governance, you have rules (laws) and a legal system. In this case, yes, chess organizations must deal appropriately with problems of sexual misconduct, including following the laws of the land. In the situations cited in the article, in particular, even if there were now criminal charges leveled, the legal system of the chess federations should have ensured that one member could not gain a position to continue preying on other members. They should do this regardless of what other supervening laws exist. Those other laws will come into play, but there does need to be governance of acceptable behavior within their sphere of concern.

duxup 3y ago

I want to address this more generally. I'm not taking issue with any of the claims, I don't know what is true or isn't. The thing I wonder after reading this is how many organizations struggle to deal with these types of situations. Employers, schools, universities, clubs all seem to now have to have a process to address these things. And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way... It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things, nor do they necessarily have people qualified to do so (even Big US Universities for all their resources have demonstrated their own ability to do poorly in every way). We all have ideas about how we think these groups should act after the fact, but how do you really get it right? How does any organization decide "We're going to address these kinds of claims, investigate, and act appropriately?" Where do they even start?

hgsgm 3y ago
Conflict is fundamentally intractable. If it were so easy to avoid conflict, we wouldn't need to address it!
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  "Conflict is not abuse" yes. But also, abuse is not conflict. Organizations and communities have their own ways of limiting, tempering, and mitigating conflict within them that relates to the domain of the organization. But however effective those methods are, they will be insufficient to handle cases of interpersonal manipulation, abuse, sexual harassment, etc. Because again, those things are not conflict.
paulddraper 3y ago
I mean, we have such organizations...they are called courts.
- glenda 3y ago
  And from what I can see those courts have shown to be pretty ineffective against crimes like sexual assault.

COGlory 3y ago

I'm confused what Lichess wanted here. One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy. This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events. What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have been done. Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the incident with Timur

altairprime 3y ago
They want each organization to publicly state (“acknowledge”) that they acted and communicated inappropriately in the past regarding these events. In their exact words from the post: > However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.
- thereddaikon 3y ago
  Not happening. The sad fact is, people and organizations rarely admit to wrongdoing. You usually only see it happen in court and even then they may deny it even when judged to have done wrong.
hgsgm 3y ago
Lichess wants women and girls to feel safe. When women and girls feel safe, Lichess can once again endorse USCF. It's not lichess/Thibault's job to fix USCF.
ajkjk 3y ago
What are you talking about? There are like... a thousand things that could have done better here, and which were still being done long after the complaints. Ban the people. Completely totally remove the people who are assaulting underage girls from any event and any association. Don't "provide an escort", wtf. Ban them.

veave 3y ago

Lots of allegations, lots of testimonies, zero police reports, zero convictions.

kstrauser 3y ago
I don’t have to see a conviction to kick someone out of my living room.
- bluGill 3y ago
  No, but if are a large organization like USCF you probably want to have a higher bar than just an accusation.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    Sounds like they have multiple allegations from multiple victims across multiple years. That seems like a reasonable cause for USCF to investigate those allegations.
    - mkeedlinger 3y ago
      This comment [0] doesn't list their sources, but their list of events certainly makes it seem more conclusive than I was initially impressed skimming the post. That seems to be causing some confusion between the "just an accusation" and "it's not just an accusation" people. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296

roschdal 3y ago

[flagged]

nickthegreek 3y ago
This is about Freedom of Association, a protected right under the first amendment.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  No one is challenging that.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    Apologies then, as I interpreted the OP's comment to state that since this man hasn't been convicted in a court of law, Lichess should not behave this way.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      That conclusion doesn’t even follow your interpretation though. He can think Lichess is wrong for disassociating. That doesnt challenge supposed first amendment rights. Keep in mind the lichess dev doesnt have first amendment rights. He’s french.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Do you really want to belong to an organization that bans based on accusations? That seems like a great way for someone dishonest to avoid playing someone they know they will have a problem beating - just accuse them of sexual harassment and you don't have to worry about it. Things like the above have been done in the past. That is why the courts have complex and slow procedures to solve problems. I hate it as well, but any alternative is at least as bad - though perhaps in a different direction.
  - Daishiman 3y ago

lubesGordi 3y ago

Wasn't aware Lichess had journalists doing research to write articles and conduct interviews.

nonethewiser 3y ago

[flagged]

gnulinux 3y ago
Seriously? Wanting women to be able to enjoy chess without sexually assaulted is SJW stuff now? Get a load of this!
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  That’s neither what I said nor meant.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    It's difficult to interpret your comment as having any other meaning.
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      You can want women to feel welcome and be safe in chess without being a social justice warrior. In fact im not even sure a social justice warrior even wants that. Im not saying Lichess is SJW because they want women to feel and be safe in chess. Im saying they are a bit SJW because they infused ideaology with their totally idealogical site. Communism, atheism, feminism,etc. Of the developers own admission.
      - mandmandam 3y ago
        [flagged]
ajkjk 3y ago
Lichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't. We are lucky to have them in that position.

nonethewiser 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

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