Nick Farr's 30c3 Jake Appelbaum story of abuse and harassment
medium.com
medium.com
His account and Meredith L. Pattersons, who has also given talks on most C3s I went to, make these accusations very real and very credible. I hope there will be more than just this internet campaign coming out of it (which I think is really not doing any good there and puts a lot of people off because it really looks like an attempt of character assassination).
If he says this is what Jake did to him, I can't imagine it isn't just like he says.
Here's the other problem with this whole scenario: there are accusations of everything from "he made fun of me" to "he harassed and intimidated me" to straight up rape. Now it just looks like people just don't like him, removing credibility from the most serious accusations. And to be fair, i've known of him being a douchebag for over 10 years. But that also doesn't prove or disprove anything, it just makes things seem more plausible. So while I believe Nick's story, I don't know any of the other people with stories, so my opinion of them is still undecided.
It's hard for me to look past Nick's pattern of being awesome and past Jake's pattern of being a dick.
Essentially, what I think we all have to understand, is that "cult'ing" is habit-forming and when you are the Hacker Messiah, nothing stands in your way of adoration from the filthy masses. Nothing.
A fundamental lesson that I came away with from the whole mess was that a measure of a person is how they treat others. You can allow for some variance in temperament, or the stress of a situation (I have flamed people back in the day), but as long as one acknowledges overreaching, or the wrong of getting too personal... it shows a basic fundamental respect for other people. The psychopath I had to deal with had none of that - it took time to gather enough data to see through his charming behavior and "acknowledge" whatever compliments he may dish out never quite felt sincere, considering the bulk of his behaviors were essentially bullying behaviors.
As for your feelings of regret, I am there too. I should have been more assertive, in retrospect, to get this person to back down - we were always butting heads in some fashion, but it was more sniper fire-ish - when he did cross the line, a thorough public chewing out (as professional as possible) on Facebook (that was the comm channel he insisted everyone use for business purposes) might have taught him some respect. Or enraged him so much that he would have finally tipped his hand about his true nature. But the group's standard response "well, that's Peter... he really needs to get off social media once in awhile, his dog is sick, his mother just died...." Rationalizations But over time, the cognitive dissonance builds up enough that you can't ignore it all anymore.
This doesn't excuse the level of JA's alleged continued hostility, but this is an example of why, for conference-level situations, talks and topics should be discussed by a group of people, rather than just having one person make the decision. I could see why a talk accusing JA of being an informant might be funny in a close-knit group, but it sounds like people actively hated JA by this time, and this conflict, combined with the paranoia that is probably natural in this field, would add to JA seeing this as an aggressive act of hostility. With one decision-maker who has a quirky sense of humor and/or more laid back attitude, such a talk could seem harmless. But I think if another person had been part of the talk-filtering process, they would've seen the proposed talk as unnecessary antagonism.
But while JA had a right to be angry about the proposal, that doesn't justify harassing Farr, or demanding the private details of the proposer, or obviously, any of the other allegations against JA. Good for Farr for standing up for the privacy of the individual who proposed the talk.
To be crass, I threw this person on the schedule and gave them a deadline with every intention of removing them the next day to shut them up so I could go to sleep. The LT schedules change up to and during the event itself and I've rejected a lot of talks once it was clear that the slides or revisions contained inappropriate material.
The goal of the event is to give everyone a chance to take the stage, the point is to not curate beyond clustering similar topics together. People sing songs, do dances and any number of crazy little things and sometimes will blow you away with an amazing idea.
That being said, I started training my potential replacements for the LTs at the 30c3 for the reasons you stated, among others.
I believe today, the talks are assembled by a team of three people with each person taking the helm on a particular day.
If the accusations are false, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where a bunch of people would pile onto someone (for whatever reason) to ruin the person's reputation. If accusations are true, I wouldn't want to be at a conference where someone can be that abusive towards others -- for years -- with impunity. Either way, sounds like a bad place to be at.
Q: WHY DID YOU MAKE THE SITE?
A: We made the site because we wanted other people to be aware of how Jake behaves. There has been a whisper network for years, but it doesn't reach everyone, and even if it could, open secrets do not protect people. We didn't want anyone to be victimized by Jake just because they hadn't been warned about him. Making a public site is the best way to make sure that everybody is aware of the stories about him.
Q: MAKING A SITE LIKE THIS SEEMS AWFUL. WHY DIDN'T YOU TRY OTHER WAYS TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEMS YOU WERE HAVING?
A: People have tried lots of things, including speaking directly with Jake and asking him to stop. People have talked about his behavior inside the infosec and internet freedom communities for years, and have tried many strategies for making it harder for him to victimize people. People have complained inside the Tor Project and been dismissed (until now, of course). Jake's behavior has been an open secret, in some circles, for years. He has still kept doing the same things.
Q: AFTER JAKE RESIGNED FROM THE TOR PROJECT, WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS SITE ANYWAY?
A: When sexual predators are kicked out of one community, they often move on to some other community where they do the same thing. Silence lets them do that. We didn't want him to be able to move to a different community and do the same thing to people there.
But there isn't any formal power structure. The only things "communities" can base decisions on are legal records and social reputation.
If you don't want to be at a conference where someone can be abusive to others, what exactly do you suggest they use to determine who can and can't get in? An extralegal quasi-judicial system that weighs rumors and conjecture to keep undesirables out? And how do you keep that process meaningfully distinct from a conference where a bunch of people pile onto someone for whatever reason to ruin a reputation?
tl;dr: It's not possible to have it both ways.
Maybe many tech communities are capable, and you just don't realize it because they're not having public showdowns.
http://grugq.tumblr.com/post/145440005263
"Why Misogynists Make Great Informants: How Gender Violence on the Left Enables State Violence in Radical Movements"
Never met Farr, but it's always sad to hear stories where positive contributors are ground down by this sort of unacceptable behavior.
Welcome to the snake pit.
No matter what all of you may think of the stand-up-ness of any of the folks involved, there are strong agendas in whomever is presenting a case here.
I, for one, am no longer involved in the Tor Project, but I am the founding executive director, and I haven't so much as spoken to Jake for years -- I believe I ran into him very briefly at a Tor hackathon about three years ago at the MIT Media Lab -- and haven't spoken him to any serious depth for a good nine years. So I don't have a serious horse in this race. I care about the project a good deal more but I've been retired, not on the board, and not particularly volunteering due to a stroke a while back.
But this kind of thing bites.
Sit down, STFU, and wait for the courts, if any, to settle it out. We went through this with Assange too. It divides people up.
There are a few things to say here.
The most radical thing you can do for a woman is to believe her. Fine. The most radical thing you can do for an activist, is to believe him or her. Applies to Jake and to Nick, amiright? But. To. Both. The best thing you can do for your community is to stop tearing it up at the roots with gossip, like archetypical old ladies. Which I feel qualified to say, as the local blue hair (ok buzz cut battle ship gray) retiree. Opsec says, every one of these reasonable sounding people is a liar with an agenda.
So, much as I would love to believe Jake, the women involved, Nick, and the tooth fairy, all of them are hackers at hacker cons, and you are all my peeps, and I love you. And there is no spoon, no truth, and no use to hacking this out in an internet forum as a form of vigilante justice.
My gray haired thought is this is all prurient, for a loooong time.
Please chill.
This is just the kind of thing that regardless of who is in...error...makes a community spin until it's sick and the good people fly away.
If we are wise we'll all work to de-escalate, not justify or discuss, until things can go through normalized channels.
I don't expect for an moment that will happen, but I feel compelled to make the appeal.
Shava Nerad founding exec dir, The Tor Project, retired 2007 but speaking entirely for myself
You are just lending yourself to number of the many judges of the court of public opinion now, yes? Here, you may take up the torch and pitchfork of office. Wield them proudly. If you can't catch Jake, who do you think you will go after next, now that you are all dressed up and no where to go?
The "slippery slope" is not a logical fallacy, but calling it one is a great rhetorical measure to shut someone up if you don't like their argument.
Similarly, the argument you cite above, if properly applied, is valid. How about McCarthyism and such campaigns. You obviously have to protect our precious bodily fluids. It is as easy to frame this as a way to put Jake in the framing of one of the last remaining purity taboos, framed as an anonymous anarchist group. How can an anarchist advocate of anonymity object?
Except that an anarchist would contract to confront a problem with all aggrieved parties in the open, not like this witch hunt. So these people are not acting like anarchists, they are just ducking state mechanisms and summoning a mob.
This is what puts anarchy in ill repute with the general public. It's not what anarchy calls for in these cases. So I am trying to act like a responsible anarchist and picking up his advocacy. If someone from that crowd wants to pick up their advocacy and Jake actually authorizes representation outside a court (which he hasn't, btw) maybe we can have a moot.
Otherwise, this is a mob.
I'm not going to delete it. That would be ridiculous considering my history. People can go look for themselves and ponder what this process means in comparison to any other sort of process that would be sane, safe, and consensual -- and accountable -- for all the people involved.
That site talks a great deal about the failings of the formal systems, but it really doesn't particularly seem to me to account for thttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crucible
I am not impressed. I am so not impressed. Even if it is 100% true, I am not impressed. And I am sorry for the victims if that is the case, and I apologize if they are doing this in good faith but it's wrong, and it opens up such potential for horrible horrible things in the future that they just haven't properly conceived of yet.
I am a feminist, and I have been raped, as many women have. And I say that this is WRONG. And I am a woman with Asperger's and I was chronically bullied and manipulated by asshats when I was younger, and I believe this is wrong.
The places this leads are a very fucked up rabbit hole and series of rabbit holes that go to a place that is not Wonderland, and where the drugs are not as pleasant as Dodson's epileptic fancies.
So Jake, if Jake is this predator, and say he is. Who is the next person that this is used against, this Blair Witch Predator doxxing? How popular will it become? Will it become the next GamerGate trend? Will we find TLAs stirring up little Stasi sites like this?
Or maybe just creating them for fun. How about our friends in Italy, or any of the state sponsored hacker funhouses, this site is so stylish, they could throw something like this up in an afternoon, for any of us. Even me. Even you? Do you have any oppo research? Anyone at FSF? Eben Moglen? rms? Any of my old friends? I'm sure we all have something worth digging up. I've done oppo. We all do.
Let's make this perfectly acceptable in our community. Let's make it meaningful. Let some real HELL into our lives, Joshua. We can make our community hell on earth. All we have to do is let the provocateurs be us.
This is the fastest route away from nonviolence theory and the Beloved Community and straight down that primrose path.
You are not the only person to come to that conclusion. The entire situation is bizarre. Usually highly rational people are suddenly acting like an angry mob. Requests for information and explanation are ignored or shunned.
> We can make our community hell on earth.
I've been watching major parts of free, democratic society crumble for several decades. Normally change is slow, but recently we seem to be accelerating the transition into hell. The transition isn't limited to just our community: the same attitudes that treat accusations as evidence and polarize people into ideological tribes resulted in violence at a recent political rally in San Jose. Tribalism is growing rapidly, and I am absolutely terrified that society is far closer to the breaking point than anybody realizes.
> All we have to do is let the provocateurs be us.
As Walt Kelly famously said, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
While I do share your worries, here's the context :)
> Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle.
> There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blast on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.
> Forward!
-- Walt Kelly, foreword of "The Pogo Papers"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11847211
This Internet mob BS is (a) avoiding the best route (police/court) for people involved to resolve the alleged crime and (b) wasting too much time that can be spent on privacy or activism work. I recall far as Hoover days the regimes Tor fights sought to create exactly these sorts of situations to weaken citizens. Best to not help them.
"""I agree under 2nd Amendment authority. All others have to be exhausted, though, before that can apply. So, first try your Congress people about passing laws limiting it. See if the LEO's will do anything about the abuse. Try the courts. If they all ignore the corrupt behavior, you're left with no choice but using violence to deter the aggressor. Just make it untraceable with an alibi."""
We know from the victims of stalkers that the police don't see it as important; they don't care; or if they do care there's not much they can do.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/apr/16/lily-allen-sta...
Seven years!
If I can offer anything, by the time it got to that point, I had already been told to "stop making drama" about the whole thing and somehow just pacify Jake by many people I trusted.
So I bring them a note! I bring them to my hotel room! Let's walk through the scenario in my head: What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper. Who's to say I didn't make the thing up myself to try to get back at Jake? Why would someone believe me just because there's a shred of something.
My whole approach up until I couldn't take it anymore was to just ignore, to let it slide, to not think about it and move on. THIS IS WHAT HARASSMENT VICTIMS DO and yes, I should have recognized it at the time.
I don't know anything about policework, but entering in a place illegally (I assume Jake or one of his friends doesn't have legal free reign in random German hotels) to intimidate someone into doing something is quite a thing. I could imagine the police caring enough to try to get fingerprints off of the piece of paper and perhaps come to the hotel room to check video footage and other fingerprints.
I'm not saying I don't believe you, but someone mentioned something that caught my eye as well, so I commented on it.
Up until now I hadn't doubted Jake's legitimacy. I also didn't agree with everything he said (having heard him speak and answer questions in multiple places, and briefly talking to him personally), but I figured it's just normal not to agree with everything someone says. Your article made me realize I should listen better and judge whether the good intentions are really there, and it made me much more hesitant when it comes to Jake and the Tor project in general (another comment linked an article with similar things about the Tor project as a whole). So thanks for sharing this.
What would I have to gain getting the police or others involved in a creepy note left in my room? The fact is, they proved they could gain entry whenever they wanted and no amount of police protection would do anything about that.
And then what...start rumors about creepy notes? Have people tell me I made the whole thing up? Get told by the Police there would be nothing they could do, or worse, invite them in to a world where they're actively detested?
What would all that do to the conference? It would be another circus taking away attention away from people who rightly deserved it for the great work that they're doing. Just like this whole thing is a circus.
The best thing that could have happened did, some friends of mine were scheduled to crash with me--one of whom was sick the entire time. After that, the notes stopped.
In your own home, it's one thing. On the road it might not strike everyone as quite so shocking.
"Hey, I think I lost my keycard, can you run me another one? The name's Farr...room 221."
As for getting a replacement key, yeah, that usually does require some work. In lieu of asking for a replacement you can call the front desk on your cellphone and tell them you're standing outside your room and can't get to your key, and can someone come unlock the door for you.
Edit: The requirement is explained under https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meldeschein for those who speak German. Basically, hotels and similar operations are required to record the data, mainly to properly apply hotel taxes. Side effect: together with the new registration requirement (you MUST notify that you have moved into a new apartment), and landlords actually being liable if renters don't abide, it makes it extremely hard for wanted persons to live in Germany.
Further: This is a direct description of what I have come to know as Jake's M.O. Not an isolated incident. This has to do with one person's behavior, it has nothing to do with the projects that person was involved with.
Maybe what Jake did to me wasn't all that bad. Maybe I deserved it. Fine, call me whatever form of coward or weakling you want but in the end, this was my hobby and I found other things to do with my life where I didn't have to put up with this level of stress.
But your document contains serious allegations which the body of it does not support:
> Jake has targeted, abused and silenced many close friends of mine, many of whom are researchers you probably know and respect. Whether it’s ripping off research or just harassing someone into submission, somehow we all felt powerless to do anything about it. He’s the perfect bully.
> Every criticism of him is met with suspicion, every accusation is some government-conspiracy-takedown.
> Those that tried to stand up to him were destroyed, one even took his own life after Jake stole his research. But that’s not my story to tell.
If you're not going to support these claims, you shouldn't make them. Now I get to feel like shit for calling this out-- and potentially causing you stress, because I am sympathetic to your experience...
I think your message would carry more weight if it was limited to your message, rather than setting the framing with a large number of serious but unsubstantiated claims.
Why is that? I am personally willing to believe "Multiple generally-trustworthy members of a community make accusations about a person P which, by their nature, cannot be easily substantiated to the public, which if true would imply that P is/has done X" as very strong evidence for "P is/has done X" - certainly enough to override my prior for "Most people are not/have not done X". And therefore, I think that people should make claims they believe to be true even when they are unsubstantiable by nature, and I am glad that these claims were made.
I'm not trying to make you feel bad for calling this out; you're just saying something that I see a lot in technical communities, in a lot of contexts. I would like technical communities to have a good, strong, evidence-backed way of reasoning about things like this. It seems so often that we default to reasoning about things the way the Anglo-Saxon legal system wants to reason about things when considering whether to point its monopoly on violence at a person. Especially for matters like harassment and sexual assault, we have strong reason to doubt that the legal system is well-suited in its current form at accurately making that judgment, let alone whether it is correct at judging truth, which it explicitly makes no claim to (Blackstone's dictum is specifically about how the legal system should minimize harm on the occasions it gets truth wrong). That default is baked into us by culture, but I think it's a bad default, or more specifically, an irrational and often erroneous default. Hearsay isn't allowable in a court of law, but that's not a reason that hearsay shouldn't be allowed to influence the personal opinions of community members who are making judgments for themselves and not for a government.
It's a share of what Jake is accused of: making it impossible to criticize or question.
From a perspective of statistics, these allegations are heresay-- and we've heard them elsewhere. The results in well known cognitive biases where evidence gets double counted when someone elses allegation is simply repeated by someone else.
What measure of proof do you require?
From what you describe, I don't think you were weak or cowardly, just inexperienced. There is absolutely no shame in that. Hindsight is useful for learning, but not for admonishment (by yourself or others). You had to make lots of decisions fast, amongst a bunch of bad choices with unknown outcomes. Your success rate for surviving bad situations so far is 100%, so don't beat yourself up too much, and tell the retrospective armchair philosophers to jog on.
It's really easy for me to think, when it's not happening to me, that "Of course I would do this, or that, but I'd never do nothing". And we see some of that thinking in this thread.
What people don't realise is that abusing people is an iterative process. The abuser has had a lot of practice at it, and refines the process over many years.
The victim (and that's a hard word to use about ourselves) hasn't had any experience of this kind of situation, and doesn't want to leap to the to them nuclear option.
I hope you're okay, and if you're ever in Cheltenham[1] I'd buy you a coffee[2].
> Maybe what Jake did to me wasn't all that bad.
It was bad, and most people would have had the same reaction as you.
> Maybe I deserved it.
No, you did not deserve it.
[1] The one in England.
[2] Or tea. Or beer.
One sane person using logic can't win, ever.
When there is a venue with a contract, whether that can be negotiated outside a state system, or comes with it, we can talk about this like a community. Until such time, this is torches and pitchforks, and bad precedent for our future, which is what we are for, what we are about, and what the accusers claim they are trying to preserve.
We all want that. Even the accusers have to acknowledge that Jake has contributed significant independent work to that. So in respect for not destroying the overall reputation of hacktivism in the outside world -- where we have accomplished things like:
Snowden convincing people that Comey is full of shit supporting people in Congress in the US like Leahy and Wyden Shutting down Free Harbor for it's eventual renegotiation Various leaks and their support many many direct actions many many civil disobediences many many cons and sharing information much public education through mainstream and less mainstream media and all the things that people count that I'm not enumerating because everyone has other goggles on their tin hats, this is just the first few slides on mine because I'm old and straight right?
but this stuff is morphing the world, not just our culture, and this reaches the US and EU and all over, out into tech press and MSM and everywhere else.
It is not about a bunch of play parties and cliques and hacker cons and thons and house parties and who knows who and whatnot and people being aspie and sensitive and whatever and whispering campaigns and whatever and consent culture and rape culture and all these things.
It's about that, and it's about a bunch of smiling gray faces who love to see us fight and destroy ourselves over this shit, as non-authoritarian cultures always do, like ulcers eating our own flesh. Because no matter what Jake did and didn't do, this mechanism is vigilante and abusive. It can not stand.
It is designed to prolong the chaos and damage. What is the end you have in sight? Where does the recursion end? When someone takes a hit out on him on some skanky dark net site?
This is what Hoover did to MLK in the 60s. And MLK fucked up; he was human. He was not faithful to his wife. He screamed and swore at this planning group in the SCLC.
Gandhi was a freaking monster in a lot of ways. He beat his wife. He was probably exactly a sociopath, within modern diagnostic bounds. Mahatma. Later, he sent troops to support Britain in WWII. he was not a pacifist in any absolute sense. He was HUMAN.
Mandela was in jail for years. Why? Because the Boers would not listen to the ANC when they were nonviolent -- the Boers felt they didn't have to. So Mandela took a deep sad breath, and they bombed a train which had civilians including families with women and children and civilian men, and the Boers howled for his blood! And Mandela came forward and said, "Put me in jail and don't look for the others, and I will come peacefully, and the ANC will return to nonviolence -- but understand, this is in our blood, we are Zulu, still." And the Boer listened. And this is why they always called him a murderer, Mandela. This man of peace.
This stuff is not easy. There are no saints. If you wait for saints to take up social change, you will live in hell forever.
So stop it. You are creating a world where no one will ever dare to move out of their front door and take up a life of activism, because they can not know if Jake is a sociopath, or a person who is being framed.
And unless we create some way to clarify that, you people are playing right into the hands of history that no one will come into this path. It's hard enough. It is FUCKING HARD ENOUGH to get people to take up peace and no money and justice and risk.
And you add our own FUD, on top of the FUD that gets rained down on us.
Find me a court, a contract, an actual way to resolve this, or use the state.
Fuck this noise.
Appelbaums reaction to this occurence seems quite strong. That other person wasn't the only one thinking the same. Too bad that talk never happened.
First of all shit happens.
Second, anyone who ever finds them selves in these situations, STAND UP and keep standing up.
Last, I hope Nick finds the will to go back... He seems to have the support of the community, and has the opportunity to make more like what he wants, and it should be. It is NOT too late.
Now that Nick has written his story however, it goes back on the front page of HN and the comments here basically support it as totally credible. (Which of course, Nick is pretty solid, so it likely is. Just as Meredith, Andrea and many others are solid and credible.)
Don't get me wrong, I very very much think that Nick should write up his story and feelings. But I think a lot of people need to examine themselves closely for why they couldn't believe the women who shared their stories yesterday, but now can today.
This is why women come forward less often. People have a shocking tendency not to believe them, no matter how credible or well known they are.
Please learn from this.
On the other hand, the http://jacobappelbaum.net/ site is clearly biased.
If the only thing you can see is that all of those are women accusing Jacob of sexual harassment, you're probably sexist.
Nick's account isn't the end of the process; it is the beginning. Now you have to evaluate, give the other parties a chance to respond, etc. Not pre-judging doesn't mean never judging.
Let me just start by saying I think you're a totally reasonable person and I respect your thoughts,[1] so let's talk some more about why we've come down seeing things a bit differently here.
So first off, I think that I've seen a lot more consistency from you than from other parts of the Internet. And that's cool, consistency is worth doing and I also agree skepticism is good. It's a value I hold. It's a value I know Meredith holds too.
What is also true though, and I think anyone who examines this closely will also come to the conclusion that claims women make get a much higher degree of skepticism, accusations of bias and face a much higher bar before being accepted or believed.
So even when you just compare responses to tweets people made (Nick tweeted yesterday too) or longer form stories that people wrote (that one site has collected a bunch now) you'll see the stark difference in how people respond to things posted by women vs. things posted by men. It contributes a lot to why being on the Internet as a woman is a much more problematic thing and why women don't get taken seriously.
It's a real thing, and it'd be best if we were able to learn more from it.
Please feel free to spend some more time to examine various threads and comments in various places. I'm sure you'll come to your own conclusions and I'll be interested to hear what you think.
[1] You may not know me, but we've got some mutual friends and I've generally appreciated your commentary before being pretty on the level!
In this specific case, I think you'll see non-sexual claims from men and women treated the same (although trolls probably dismiss them in a gender-specific way, i.e. going after Andrea's appearance and after Nick in other ways). I don't think ethical issues other than sexual issues would be treated/believed substantially differently based on the gender of the victim here.
(I also think a lot of people are uncomfortable discussing sexual violence related problems, so while those certainly need to be addressed as well, if some people only want to focus on the plagiarism/ethics/work-stealing/etc. aspects, that seems like it could still be positive. Doesn't mean other people can't pursue the sexual/violence related issues with a person.)
I do not believe in any way that the gender alone can be deemed responsible for your observation. What makes you even think that the same people who you saw alleging those women yesterday are the same who stand behind Nick here?
I reread the thread in question and yes...that is exactly what people were saying. Basically: Let's hold judgement until we have more information.
Unlike two vague tweets Nick wrote a very detailed story with lots of background. To compare the reaction to those two instances is very disingenuous.
I ran into a case of this a couple years back, when there was some campaign about "plagiarism" where I had direct personal experience that it was untrue. I posted about it and was harassed too.
AFAICT, for some reason or another there is a fair amount of toxicity around the tor project. I've never personally seen Jake generating it, but I wouldn't really know. But the obvious toxicity and witch hunt culture caused me to unsubscribe from the lists and avoid that community since several years ago.
Nick's story is interesting-- but it begins with a long series of vague allegations which are never backed up by the document. What it does show is that Nick put a person claiming Jake was a USG agent on a program, which I can understand why some might think it inconceivable that Nick would do so unless he'd been unduly influenced somehow, and then he got harassed over it. That sucks, but it doesn't rise to supporting the claims made in the first third of the document.
Who was this?
It isn't very obvious because I know no one involved.
Another commenter used the word bizarre. To me, it looks both bizarre and like smear campaigns by trolls that I've seen destroy people that were probably innocent. Now, I know Jake is an asshole and we now have one credible witness, Nick Farr, to extreme bullying. Yet, these are the exact kinds of tactics liars, trolls, SJW's, and spooks use on innocent people. The targets get "convicted by the media" without a trial or any real chance of defense. Many people wrongly assume large number of accounts saying same thing means it's open and shut.
They need to knock that stuff off to handle this right anyway. If one or more rapes happened, they need to contact the authorities to give full details on this. That FBI already wants to throw him in a cell with a number of witnesses claiming rape and others claiming bullying should make this easy (read: barely due process). In this case, Jake will be able to tell his side of the story, bring in his witnesses, and so on rather than one side's media campaign being sole decider of his fate. Plus, I find it hypocritical that the website describes its existence is to protect the next community from a "sexual predator." They'll tweet, accuse, make websites... all kinds of talk to "protect" others from a "sociopath"... but won't go to the police to attempt an arrest, conviction, and prison stay for same sociopath. Unheard of reaction in my parts among liberals or conservatives. Always cops involved when it's this public with people usually doing time.
I recommend people stay clear of both Jake Appelbaum and any of these idiots in the smear campaign. You can bet they'll do the same shit to you if you piss them off too much. Probably won't be rape claims but you'll be defending an online shitstorm. Nick Farr seems to be an exception who I hope recovers from any abuse he received and gets back to doing the good things people here describe. Definitely hang with him sometime.
The second time, I watched them turn on me incredibly rapidly, and from going from being supportive to being entirely bent on destroying me and my reputation in a day, this time I wasn't shocked but just felt a sick feeling inside: it was happening again.
This time I knew what to do though. I was pulled into a meeting after my 21st day of non-stop work. The meeting was attended by my boss who the psycopath had just been telling me he would "end" because of his sheer incompetence. Durimg the meeting I was told that adding a synthetic key column was unacceptable (the pysopath couldn't wrap his mind around why you would do this) he told me he had countermanded my request for the change in the ETL process but hadn't told me. When I pointed out I had proceeded under the understanding from my then boss that this was an approved change, he called me a liar, and when I protested that he hadn't told me he threatened to ensure that everything would be sent to me in writing. Then he told me he would be having a meeting with me and the CEO on the next day, a Monday.
I excused myself from the meeting. He had a smirk, because he felt he now had power and I could be used as a pawn to destroy the CEO, who had recently pretty much given the man's wife a nervous breakdown.
It was clear what the man's goal was: take down the CEO by any means necessary, even if it meant destroying those who had actually made every attempt to protect his wife (who was my manager before she left). I suddenly realised that his plan to bring down the CEO was to remove all competent employees and effectively neuter the CEO, which - truth be told - wasn't very difficult as the CEO was an arrogant twerp who thought he knew about management and IT, but in reality had no idea.
Faced with a situation where I was being undermined by my immediate manager, whose incompetence was literally destroying the company, and caught between the anger of a man I consider to be a psychopath, and on the other side dealing with an arrogant, unethical and unheeding CEO, I realised that with my level of burnout and exhaustion my mental health was going to suffer very badly. For me, this was unacceptable - at my most stressed I get thoughts of suicide, but I have a young family who I love...
Faced with this, I quietly wrote my resignation letter, ensured it said pleasant things and wasn't critical of anyone, printed it out, put it on the CEO's desk and left the building.
If you get targeted by a psychopath, know that as you aren't one yourself they are almost impossible to fight back against because, unlike you, they have no guilt and no compunction against using other people as tools to achieve whatever means they deem necessary. If their best option is to be nice to you, then that's what they'll use. If they realise that you can be used to destroy an enemy, then they'll do whatever it takes to manipulate you into undertaking their actions. They will be very effective at this, and often you won't know till too late you've become entrapped in their machinations. They certainly won't hesitate to drop you at the first sign you can't be manipulated or you have realised what they are up to.
So if you meet such a person, you probably have not much realistic chance of beating them at their own game - they are much, much better at it than you. Don't feel bad about this though: the reason they are better at it than you is because they have no sense of guilt or shame, and have almost zero empathy. There is something deeply wrong with them, but they either don't know it or don't care. They are a cancer on society, and you should feel happy you aren't them. But what it does mean is that to beat them, and protect yourself, you must starve them of oxygen, and to do so you must remove yourself from their presence as quickly and abruptly as possible.
In my case, I'm glad I did. Six weeks later the incompetent manager was forced to resign when it became apparent that it really was him who destroyed everything. Nine month later, and through his own unethical behaviour and sheer incompetence, arrogance and stupidity the CEO has been sacked. The one who engineered this is now in charge and has taken over the CEO's position - just as I predicted. My former colleagues are in shock, but seem amazed at what I predicted has come to pass.
I left a sociopath 10 years ago... and I still have angry feelings towards him. That bastard would be so charming and nice to your face; meanwhile, he was sabotaging my career behind my back, while I trusted him completely. His goal was to replace the CTO of our small company; and he knew that as long as I was around, the CEO wouldn't give in to his blackmail. So he set about poisoning the CEO about me.
We worked mostly on government contracts. The CEO had cofounded another company (with blessings of the directors), and wanted some source code that we had worked on. I wasn't sure if it was legal to share the code, so I went to the Sociopath and asked him (since he had been there longer than me). He told me, in clear terms, that we were not supposed to share the code. So I tried to ignore the CEO's order, buying time, putting him off. Little did I know that Sociopath had gone to the CEO and told him that, for whatever reason I did not want to give him the code, despite his repeated requests for me to do so. Things simmered for a few weeks, until one day the CEO dresses me down in public: why are you not giving me the code, when Sociopath has also told you to? I was shocked; and then things started falling into place. I realized that for the last year or two, he had been slowly poisoning CEO against me. Little incidents that seemed strange now suddenly started making sense.
Fuck this shit, I said, and quit after a few weeks. After taking some time off to heal, I found another job and washed my hands off that shitty gig.
At one point I sorta considered ioerror a personal hero of mine. Not so much anymore.
I note that he does not deny any of Nick's factual claims. The denial is only of "criminal sexual misconduct", which is a legal claim (what misconduct counts as criminal?) rather than a denial of the specific factual allegations made @ http://jacobappelbaum.net/ (however they may be legally construed).
I can understand why Jake may not want to engage with them in detail — doing so would almost certainly raise more questions than it answers — but AFAICT, this is functionally a non-denial denial.
One thing I don't understand from Nick's piece (etc.) is whether the referenced "plagiarism" means only Jake insisting on alphabetical author order (thus making it seem like he did most of the work when he didn't) or something else.
<s>It's also saddening to read of yet another of us committing suicide, whatever the circumstances.</s> Having read other comments, I now realize what this referred to. I suppose it's fortunate that it is not yet another, but that loss is no less saddening for the time passed since. (FWIW, I've stayed with that person's partner at one point. They were incredibly kind to me at time that was difficult for both of us.)
…
Repeating two comments I made on Nick's Medium article:
1. Nick: in my limited experiences with you, you’ve been one of the most warm & welcoming people in the hacker community. I hope that at some point you get back your health and manage to resume attending conferences. Take care of yourself.
2. Jake espouses very hard line principles of source protection, right to speak, fighting bad speech with more speech, etc. I generally agree with him on those principles. (I’d rather not go into my opinion on his personality.)
If Jake had gotten the kind of threats from Nick that Nick describes getting from Jake, there’s no way in hell he’d comply. He’d probably have an aneurism, irretrievably commit the documents to public view after thoroughly anonymizing them, and make it very, very public.
Kudos to Nick for both protecting his source and trying to handle this issue with tact. It’s indefensible that Nick was treated this way for doing so, and a loss to the community for him to have come to harm for it.
I guess my problem is: even assuming all charges are true, the way this is done, and the way it's nodded off by people in the name of being decent (less questions asked = more decent?), while others dismiss it as some SJW stunt or conspiracy or whatever, is just a horrible precedent to me. This all out attack on the totality of a person, this "creating facts on the ground", and this binary dichotomy of "only one party can ever be in the wrong", the extreme polarization.
For what it's worth, I know how being gas-lighted feels, I know how it is to see someone go from friendly to snarling with utmost hatred back to friendly. I don't feel like sharing all that, but that's kind of how I know a bit about sociopathy and narcissism to begin with, I had to learn.
But that's also why that website kind of struck me as kind of weird, since it talks about sociopathy yet seems not only kind of devoid of compassion, but also reckless, seeing how the destruction of Appelbaum seems to be intended to be total and forever. As in, just because he's no good as a "community leader", who cares what happens to the human being - he didn't care either, he started it after all. No fair judge and no psychologist worth crap would talk like that, and that's why such things should be left to both ultimately.
Even sociopaths are people, even after having been clinically diagnosed. Human rights apply even to those who don't afford them to others. This is a principle that is more important than anything else. EVEN if you have to disarm a person, set boundaries, and so on, there is never a point where they're just fair game for anything. You know how free speech is about protecting the speech you despise? Same goes for human rights. Believing in due process for the innocent is easy, believing in due process of a serial killer, now that's where it starts to become more adult, and there is no crime so atrocious the perpetrator loses their status as human being. We know this is hard to grasp for many people, but when "hackers" start forgetting that as well, that's troubling.
So I am really not liking this whole thing as it stands, and am also not liking this dichotomy of "either you believe it or don't", since I'd still have all the above questions or objections even granting every claim is 100% true.
And the shaming of people who reserve judgement or ask for any evidence, or more substance in general, in light of such a huge, all out attack, also sucks. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, people can "command" their personal friends to "not question, just hug" when that's all they can take (and I don't mean that snarkily, honestly), but that's not something a society or justice can operate on. His character has been effectively assassinated, no matter what comes of this most people who saw that may never see the follow-up, and we can't even ask questions? You can't take abuse seriously and then say "nothing you do to an abuser is ever abuse", that's not justice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11839033
Also not one word about what might be wrong about what I said or asked. This is quite incredible.
And even if more substance comes forth, which I hope -- and I mean that, because it's not that I don't believe the claims at all -- that precedent kind of remains. When I say I find this, in the way and excess it's done, wrong even assuming the claims are true, I do mean that -- and if you disagree, then you should argue the point, ignoring and downvoting me just substantiates it.
So, people saying things on the internet, in the press, out in the world, in many ways are permitted to speak freely. Anecdotes and personal opinions are permitted in civilized discourse, when the context is not a legal court of law.
All this is just so much gossip, and it's people blowing off pent up steam, and airing out frustration. Big deal. Reputations are on the line, and not much else.
this "creating facts on the ground"
The real world doesn't actually operate on justice and ratios. Shit floats by. People get over it.
Dialog is not transactional. Conversations are not permanent and destroying. Not all statements are clinical diagnostics. As a dippy-doo in the peanut gallery, I don't feel very polarized. The internet flops about, and flippity floops, and so what?
That's hardly describes all that is going on here.
> Reputations are on the line, and not much else.
"Not much else", right. Can you tell me what would be at stake for the people to actually argue like adults, instead of ignoring and downvoting and handwaving? With any random technical subject any remotely valid question gets discussed, and now you're trying to tell me this is normal, that this isn't a shit show?
> he real world doesn't actually operate on justice and ratios. Shit floats by. People get over it.
So you're essentially saying you don't care because you don't care. You can call that a reply, if you want. Something you signed up for with a spooky name relating to a literary figure who killed himself, "inspiring" a wave of suicides. The only signal sending is a bit of creepyness, the rest is just noise.
> Dialog is not transactional. Conversations are not permanent and destroying.
What does that even mean? Is it really so much to ask to have at least the plagiarism claims backed up? You see, ignoring that, while claiming he ruined so many people, including someone who killed themselves (as a result? as result of completely unrelated things?), that also says something.
> People get over it.
People would also get over having haven answered in earnest, or not not downvoting things they can't or don't want to address. HN would totally survive having one story about this that doesn't get flagged, you know? So don't tell me to take this virtual lynching lightly, while you don't mind people apparently having huge issues with very simple questions.
a spooky name relating to a literary figure who
killed himself
The name was supposed to be borrowed from an absolutely harmless carmel candy. Something that could do no wrong, but I had to truncate it into something that would fit into HN's 15 character namespace.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I've rarely seen other people attribute malice to my actions at times when I know I'm being anything but, but when it does happen, the person is lashing out at any stranger.
Pretty much means the person I'm dealing with is isolating themselves, and it won't be possible to do anything right for them, regardless of any objective, rational information one might try to present.
In the 1984 movie, Ghostbusters, one of the main characters, Ray Parker (played by Dan Aykroyd), accidentally selects a childhood memory of a marshmallow mascot for the "stay-puft" marshmallow company. He imagines, in his own mind that this was a representation of harmlessness, only to find it transformed into something horrible, and used against him.
I responded to a comment and to a "personal account". Zilch replies, downvotes instead. I moan about that, I get your non-replies. So yeah, excuse me for lashing out at a throwaway who doesn't care about something I care about, and feels the need to tell me that.
> Pretty much means the person I'm dealing with is isolating themselves,
Awww, I'm so hurt. From whom though? From people I'm criticizing who can't deal with that honestly? From a throwaway? From "peers" who don't bat an eye to join a mob, all with their own plausible deniability? I never joined, you could not pay me enough to not want to distance myself from that kind of stuff. So you're exactly right, int he meaning of the word, I am isolating myself, putting on an ABC suit, say "whoa wtf is this, are you people crazy? well, I spoke my piece, the rest is on you."
> In the 1984 movie, Ghostbusters, one of the main characters, Ray Parker (played by Dan Aykroyd), accidentally selects a childhood memory of a marshmallow mascot for the "stay-puft" marshmallow company. He imagines, in his own mind that this was a representation of harmlessness, only to find it transformed into something horrible, and used against him.
That explains that then, thanks, but I don't find it so terribly monstrous to "lash out" at something needlessly during adressing everything else in a comment, too. That's just a bonus you can ignore, instead of fixate on.
> it shows me that you are looking for things where they don't exist, and deciding that you found them anyway.
Right, and you're telling yourself that being slightly annoyed by getting essentially mocked with a non-reply, and to then make ONE demonstrably false guess, that this somehow can be applied to everything else, and of course retroactively, too?
You're simply demonstrating the "type of character" kind of stuff I'm denouncing. Read Arendt, that's exactly how totalitarianism "thinks". Jake's a "rapist, sociopath, plagiarist", the victims are "victims", I'm someone who "is looking for things where they don't exist", and you're someone who is being "anything but malicious". Nothing of substance at all. The punishment "proves" the "guilt" for the thoughtcrimes, the type-of-person-crimes, as well as bestowing the appropriate immunity from criticism to others, and the sentences are nilly-willy and the hands of the executioners free of all guilt.
Instead of me asking some valid and uncomfortable questions, which don't get good responses because nobody HAS a good answer, it's now my fault, obviously because mentioning that I got no responses, and noticing that you then respond with nothing but "I personally don't care, that's how it is, if you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen [which you'd never say about some of these stories about a creeper even in cases where he stopped when asked to, then tried again, am I correct?]", and getting something about your throwaway handle wrong, which is the only thing you respond to -- all that somehow means I'm "looking for things that aren't there" and "isolating myself" and ladiblah. It's not you avoiding things and blaming that on me, nah. It's not you who prefers to talk about people rather than facts, and then looks kind of bad even when talking about people, in your mind.
Anyone who has ever been mobbed or dealt with a narcissist will find that kind of strategy very, very familiar. You saying you're not malicious is just you saying things. But this string of comments, in content, for those paying attention, is what it is.
Interesting, but speech is much easier to define than what makes a human. If we disable or remove parts of someone's brain (or if they're genetically different), at which point do they stop being human? What if there's no brain at all? I would say a bunch of meat isn't deserving of human rights. But where is the line, what if the brain has no emotions? Or no pain? No concept of self? No empathy?
Why are you asking me? I said what I think about that. If you disagree, just say what's on your mind directly.
But hey, would the people behind this campaign be willing to subject themselves to clinical diagnosis? How about this, everybody gets tested and then we have a forum where people have a little number next to their name, showing how much a sociopath they are. Then we're still just total peasants pretending to know about mental health, but at least we'll have a ranking or something.
> No concept of self?
That's interesting, seeing how so many valid questions go unanswered. Like, any documentation for the plagiarism claim. Or that maybe there is not just the binary of "abuser and victim", that maybe even someone being guilty of something doesn't warrant simply declaring them non-human. No discernible reflection I can make out.
Oh, and coming back to the above, are you saying people who are heavily mentally disabled or have personality disorders should be stripped of human rights, and subject to lynchings by mobs if they ever do.. anything? "Just a bunch of meat", right?
I'm not trying to shut you up by acting offended, to the contrary, I find it kind of incredible to open such a big can of worms in two lines and leave it at that. Leave it in the subtext, leave it in the gut instinct of the mob. How about not using lip service of being against abuse for perpetrating and apologizing abuse? You can't just randomly suspend the humanity of someone on a whim, because you have this stub of a philosophical question you yourself don't even seem to care enough about to actually put in words.
I've met and engaged both Jake and Nick at various times during their visits to Europe, and I've been left, each time, with the sense that - in both cases - there is a huge desire to create a cult of personality. In Nicks' case, it seems relative benign and harmless - he is a loud, funny guy, very boisterous and entertaining. Jake, also: loud and boisterous, but not so entertaining. Jake seems to travel with a laugh track everywhere he goes (fawning sycophants whose job it is to fill in the gaps between Jake's sentences with laughter)..
The point is, these are the kinds of characters that our scene attracts. It should come as no surprise that they are locking horns .. imagine if we were somehow able to harness all the power which either personality cults' provide and somehow channel it for the good of the hacker scene. Jake could do whatever it takes to set himself up as the Hacker Messiah, and Nick could keep the Circus from burning down/feeding itself to the lions.
Alas, this won't be the end of it, I'm quite sure. This sort of public dissing is precisely the sort of thing few are really capable of dealing with sanely .. perhaps the mob will just eat itself.