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Comment by itbeho | Hacker News Reader

Susan Fowler tweeted that Chris Sacca has been DMing her on Twitter, tring to "manipulate" her to stop tweeting about him. This after his blog post claiming to be changing his ways.

https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/881198112923987968

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Isn't such a statement without example a form of public manipulation? The NYT article that got this going only said about Sacca, "At a mostly male tech gathering in Las Vegas in 2009, Susan Wu, an entrepreneur and investor, said that Mr. Sacca, an investor and former Google executive, touched her face without her consent in a way that made her uncomfortable." And Sacca publicly responded, "Yesterday, the New York Times wrote that, back in 2009, a woman I knew well at the time accused me of touching her face at a mutual friend’s party in Las Vegas. At the time, we had known each other for years, were in a private party setting in Vegas, not a work event, with no investor-investee relationship, we were not in business together, we didn’t work together in any capacity, and I also wasn’t even a venture capitalist yet as I didn’t close my first fund until May of 2010. There was no imbalance of power between us."

Given this, would a message to Susan Fowler, concerning tweets, "That's really gross. And so many people praised him for it! Ew! No!" and "Wait, so: the day before a story is published in the NYT about him being a creep, @sacca writes a medium post about how much he's evolving" asking her to not continue attacking him be necessarily unjustified?

A message that encourages her to direct her energy more constructively towards the real perpetrators could be called manipulative, but if many would find them agreeable, they'd never be posted by Susan, as they'd reveal her to be acting manipulatively.

Hold on a second. You're making judgments about a situation you've only heard one side of. What is 'manipulation' in this context? Susan hasn't elaborated but wishes to convey that it is in some way nefarious. But is it? I'm sorry, I don't think it's fair to just pile on this individual for this with so little information, even if he was a dick in some other situation.

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I find myself playing a contrarian on these forums much more than I'd like to but this topic tends to have people dropping all semblance of nuance, and fairness.

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