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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I don't even know what there would be to discuss with this story. It seems like the only possible outcome of it is a lot of personalized Internet drama. If there's an important story here, someone will eventually write it, and maybe that will have a place on HN. But this one-line page isn't that, and I flagged this story, and hope others do too.

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Hmmm. Would you feel the same way if there wasn't so much ambiguity around his departure? There's often HN stories when notable people depart notable organizations/projects.

I definitely understand where you're coming from. This comment section certainly isn't even remotely productive and I can understand and mostly agree with your choice to flag it. But purely out of interest, I do wonder where you feel the line is. I do find it interesting to know when various people change their affiliations. It's one of the things I actually often find out about on HN, since I otherwise wouldn't end up keeping up with any of it.

I feel like most of the people commenting here probably don't know any other Tor project members by name, including the founder's, and don't really know what Appelbaum did or the project either. So the fact that we're off to these ridiculous races on this thread based on this one-line post is especially galling.

Speculation can on rare occasions be interesting, when it's done by informed speculators. But that's not what we have here, is it?

Nope.

I just think that the submission's merit is independent of the page full of awful comments it generated. The submission itself seems about as HN worthy as other "X leaves Y" submissions. IMO, the comments are a problem in the HN community, not a problem in the submission.

Pragmatically though, flagging the story and getting whatever this comment section off the front page probably makes sense.

Yeah, I agree. Unfortunately, I think the comments inflict more harm than the good the story logline provides.

This thread is just plain bizarre and probably the lowest quality content I've seen on hacker news. Glad you flagged it.

People are posting related info they've found. Seems entirely valid to me (especially given that the media botches a lot of stories, like the last two revelations of "the real Satoshi").

The other comments had me rolling my eyes. But far as Tor and Appelbaum, remember that Appelbaum was the public face of Tor and defender of Wikileaks for many people. Also did lots of work on these issues. Was the fieldguy in many countries deploying the tech. Justifies a specific interest in Appelbaum over others where some, including me, were wondering if aomeone missed a writeup somewhere about why he left and what's his next plans.

All this other stuff seems tabloid. Not what we need on HN.

Evangelist. Not developer.

"did lots of work on these issues" is misleading. He was an imposter and that was precisely his official role in the tor project.

I didn't say developer. So, dont correct it. I also addressed broader issues than merely Tor code. He did lots of outreach plus helped deploy Tor in a lot of rough areas. Post Snowden, he took a role both informing and being an evangelist.

You can't unroll years of video presentations and writeups by one comment. So, please cite reputable sources saying all that was a hoax in his official job duty on Tor to hoax people.

ok. I am neither a fan nor a foe of jake.

His role was evangelism, he was successful with it, but it does not affect the technology in any way. Just as the death of your car salesman would affect your customer experience but not the way Ford builds cars for you.

I have no idea what "deploying Tor" means, but apparently it means loading an installation package on a machine. So come one, you could impress non-techies with that but...

I respectfully disagree. He had enough involvement with the project (speaking about it publicly) that his departure on its own is sufficiently newsworthy.

(FWIW, I know a bunch of the Tor devs, Tor founders, and various anti-Jake people across areas. I've also known Jake for about 20y. I just think "person publicly associated with the org leaves" is newsworthy, since Tor itself is newsworthy.)

"I flagged this story, and hope others do too."

It's totally flagworthy but this is the same thing as 'soliciting votes' which is supposed to be a Bad HN Manners.

I agree and try not to do this often, but this is embarrassing even by HN drama standards.

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