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Here is what the discussion looked like almost a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985 Very str
by constantcrying 2y ago
Here is what the discussion looked like almost a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985
Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted, while the facts of the case did not. There is a really cultural shift visible in how this issue is seen on here.
- echoangle 2y agoCan you explain the differences you see? People found the sentence too harsh at the time, too, it looks like.
- skylurk 2y agoSeems kinda the same to me?
- aspect0545 2y agoNow people complain about the pardon, back then people complained about the sentence. People love to complain.
- diggan 2y agoI know it seems almost impossible, but it might be that the group of people who complained about the sentence, may be a different group than the one who complain about the pardon.
- jkestner 2y agoI internalized a long time ago when doing customer service that people don’t write you when they’re happy.
- looofooo0 2y agoI am very happy with your informative comment. Thanks you, you can go on with your life now.
- echoangle 2y agoAren’t most comments in this thread supporting the pardon?
- hombre_fatal 2y agoPardons are inherently political. If your guy does it, it's good. If other guy does it, it's bad. And like most political topics, it's hard to have a earnest convo divorced from that simple dynamic.
- agos 2y agoare they the same people?
- kllrnohj 2y agoyou know there's a pretty massive gap between "double lifetime sentence + 40 years w/ no chance of parole is too harsh" and "10 years w/ full pardon expunging the record is bad". A really, really fucking massive giant gap between those, in fact. But surely it's just that people love to complain, right? Can't possibly be that they thought something like 25yr was more reasonable?
- tim333 2y agoI guess people feel ten years in prison was adequate punishment.
- reactordev 2y agoI don’t disagree but I also don’t agree with the life sentence. If he was charged properly with the crimes stated during his trial, maybe that would be warranted but he wasn’t charged with it, only the website charges and conspiracy. Which some of them could apply to meta or craigslist if you got creative.
- immibis 2y agoWhat I don't understand is why Donald Trump, of all people, is being lenient on drug traffickers.
- cess11 2y agoCrypto commodity grifter gets known crypto commodity laundering expert out of jail.
- acdha 2y agoHe’s famously flexible based on whatever he thinks is advantageous now. This could be as simple as his claims to have been unfairly persecuted by law enforcement, it could be part of his wealth gained from cryptocurrency, or it could simply be that he thinks it’ll make his opponents angry. Rich people often act on whims just to show that they have the power not to need to justify their actions.
- lupusreal 2y agoIt could be any of that, but it could also be as simple as libertarians requested it, he told them he would, and he didn't feel any reason to renege on that. (I do think there's probably an element of deliberate disrespect to federal law enforcement and the justice system, but that alone doesn't answer the question why Ross specifically?)
- Nevermark 2y agoThere is a high correlation between his condemnation of drugs and characterizations of families, many poor and desperate, illegally crossing the border. Most illegal drugs by far go through regular border crossings, but he hasn’t obsessed about them in the same way.
- diggan 2y agoAFAIK, it wasn't done because he wants to be lenient on drug traffickers, but because the overall case of Ross Ulbricht is huge in certain political circles that he was pandering to during the presidential race, so seems he's "paying back" for those votes or something.
- rescripting 2y agoI'd be wary of drawing correlations like this. The people who commented on that thread are not going to be the same people commenting on this one. The topic isn't even the same; in the first thread the topic is his sentencing, and in this its his pardon. The attraction for people to post on Hacker News is mainly to complain, and so in the first you get complaints the sentencing is too harsh, and in this one you get complaints that he shouldn't have been pardoned. Its not necessarily a cultural shift, just an artifact of the types of discussions people have online.
- smeeger 2y agoits crazy to look at this old thread and know that i almost certainly left a comment in it. although ive created and left behind hundreds of accounts in the meantime. i first got on HN feb 2015 when i read an article about “famed god” getting arrested in las vegas… his shirt had “hack the world” written on it and when i googled “hack the world famed god,” not knowing about the movie reference, it gave me a HN thread about the incident. and then HN became my home for almost ten years… i didnt have facebook or instagram or vine. i literally just spent all my time on HN. now that the displacement of programmers by AI has begun, somehow my interest has waned. at the time, the murder for hire accusations seemed legitimate and they still do today. hopefully they charge him with attempted murder if the statute of limitations isnt up.
- echoangle 2y agoIt was dismissed with prejudice, and can’t be tried again: https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Doc_14_Dismissal_Indictment_7-26-2018.pdf https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Doc_14_Dismi...
- smeeger 2y agook. so for some reason the federal government indicted him on attempted murder in 2018(?) and for some reason the charge was dismissed… on what grounds was it dismissed? and i believe he could still be charged by the state of California or another state so hopefully we will see that edit: this section of reasons’ article summarizes the situation nicely. “Now that Ulbricht has no chance of having his initial conviction and sentencing overturned or adjusted, it's likely the feds out of Maryland decided the indictment no longer was needed to make sure the government had some further means in their back pocket to punish Ulbricht for showing a safer, saner way around their insanely damaging drug war.” the reason the charges were dismissed is similar to the reason he wasnt charged initially: because attempted murder charge was unnecessary from the prosecutors point if view. not because he is innocent of the charge. the article also notes that torture was an element in those murders. this guy should not be walking free
- krisoft 2y ago> Very striking to see how the sentiment has drastically shifted I'm not sure. I have two questions on that. Is there the appearance of a sentiment shift? I see plenty of people arguing both against and for incarcerating him in both this thread and that old one. And then if there is an appearance of a sentiment change (which I'm not sure about) is that evidence of a sentiment change or just selection bias? People who are okay with an outcome are much less likely to write a comment than people who are upset. That alone would change the bias of the comments.
- MisterTea 2y agoI see the same arguments: too harsh, not harsh enough, he tried to have people murdered, etc.
- costcofries 2y ago[flagged]
- mtoner23 2y agoWhy does anyone care what ai thinks?
- costcofries 2y agoWhy don't you?
- rhatsgf 2y agoThe facts are: Trump now does NTF and coinschemes himself and got talked into this by his new entourage. That is what most people here complain about. And he does this to distract from the fact that he will not stop the Ukraine war, not stop H1B etc. Many of the same people also complain about the Biden laptop and Biden's pardons.
- Projectiboga 2y agoHe just fired or transfered everyone government involved in supporting Ukraine in their defensive war.
- jonnycoder 2y agoHe just revoked Biden’s Eo that strengthened h1b
- canjobear 2y agoIt seems like the same set of arguments to me.
- epr 2y agoAs someone who's been following this since the beginning, the most striking difference is the assumption that Ross was in fact the DPR ordering hits, which he repeatedly denied. Obviously, he could be lying, but that's the main question for me. Since people now assume he was the one and only DPR (I wonder if people didn't get the concept from The Princess Bride), they assume DPR chat logs where murder-for-hire occurred must have been him as well.
- meowface 2y agoBoth threads seem to share a similar sentiment: he should not serve much time for the drug marketplace but should for the murders-for-hire. There's just a difference in how many people believe those allegations and to what extent they should factor into the sentence given the charges were dropped despite the allegations almost certainly being true.
- efficax 2y agolife in prison was too harsh, but a full pardon is too lenient.
- eschulz 2y agoPerhaps, but I'm of the opinion that if a sentence is unjust, or if the means to convict violated the defendant's rights, then the defendant should walk. While this may seem unreasonable, it's the only way to check the state which has unlimited resources when it decides to go after somebody. I don't really have an opinion on this case because I'm not completely familiar with all the details. It's certainly going to be contentious.
- WaitWaitWha 2y agoJust to be clear, a pardon does not expunge or erase one's criminal record. > life in prison was too harsh, but a full pardon is too lenient. I think you should compare it as: life in prison was too harsh, but 10 years is too lenient.
- larkost 2y agoThe idea of a pardon is exactly that: it erases the record of the crime/conviction. I think you are thinking of a commutation. That ends the punishment while not absolving the person of the crime. So the January 6th criminals who got pardons no longer have a criminal record (on this count at least). The 14 people who were only granted commutations are still counted as felons.
- WaitWaitWha 2y agoI must have read it incorrectly: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/2006/08/31/pardonopfinal_0.pdf https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/200... > As these opinions confirm, a presidential pardon removes, either conditionally or unconditionally, the punitive legal consequences that would otherwise flow from conviction for the pardoned offense. A pardon, however, does not erase the conviction as a historical fact or justify the fiction that the pardoned individual did not engage in criminal conduct. A pardon, therefore, does not by its own force expunge judicial or administrative records of the conviction or underlying offense.
- whimsicalism 2y agoyes, HN is becoming increasingly hyperpartisan and not even in a very interesting way
- knodi 2y agoYes, by cultural shift if you mean, moral bankruptcy.
- robswc 2y agoTo suggest there hasn't been a cultural shift is insane, imo. I wouldn't argue that both sides have gotten more extreme, rather the political spectrum curve has flattened. There is much less rational discourse in general. Reddit is a great example. Even 10 years ago you could have mostly rational discussions. Now its no better than Facebook. I saw a post today about people being upset the government is giving OpenAI half a trillion dollars. They didn't even realize it wasn't government money. They didn't want to be corrected.
- whimsicalism 2y agothe internet has a lot more people on it, it is much less self-selecting than in the past. even this website is a lot less self-selecting than in the past
- eric_cc 2y agoReddit started off libertarian in its early days and has since gone radically far left. And similarly, HN has slowly drifted further and further left. %-wise there are just fewer libertarian-minded people here these days.
- runarberg 2y agoThis debate about IQ could have been had yesterday, and I‘m pretty sure I saw a pretty similar debate a few months ago on this site. Not much has changed there at least. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629493
- modeless 2y agoMost interesting post here. A good indicator of the real change in HN readership over the years. For the worse IMO.