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Comment by cwkoss | Hacker News Reader

Scoble should be entirely blacklisted from attending any tech conferences. Boycott anything he touches. His entire livelihood is based on the fact that he has an audience and can promote things: he is very vulnerable to public opinion.

Let's destroy his career. Everywhere he posts, remind people that he's a sexual abuser.

Hopefully, if we can proverbially put his head on a pike, it will scare other potential abusers from committing crimes like these.

EDIT: Wow, seems like this post is making the rape apologists feel insecure. It's raining downvotes.

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That's exactly the opposite of what the author of the article hoped to accomplish:

>I’m very mixed on this. I believe if we don’t provide paths of redemption for badly behaved people, we enable abusers as much as we do by remaining silent. I also believe we need to talk about these things plainly, and we need to seek to help and elevate the victims.

>The demonization of either rapists or victims is what makes the subject unapproachable, and doesn’t let anyone intercede to get abusive people the help they need, much less the victims.

I appreciate the author for writing this article and respect her courage, but I disagree with the proposed solution.

I think fear is the only emotion sexual abusers will be deterred by. If the treatment of Scoble doesn't make other powerful sexual abusing sociopaths fear for their livelihood, they won't change their behavior.

Total scorched-earth ostracism seems like it would have more impact than any other option.

The problem is to assume that he's a sociopath, but I'm inclined to think not, particularly in light of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15512398. It's possible to have empathy for someone whose actions are disgusting. The world isn't black and white.

Scoble's not a sociopath. He's a man. Pretty normal. Not exceptional.

Sexual abuse is not normal.

If you've been following to #MeToo campaign or if you ask a woman, it is normal (in the sense that it's common, not that it's inevitable or acceptable).

Thank you. HN seems pretty unenlightened to (or in denial of) ubiquitous misogyny.

> EDIT: Wow, seems like this post is making the rape apologists feel insecure. It's raining downvotes.

That's seriously uncharitable, and a clear (multiple) violation of the site guidelines in a thread that has managed to mostly stay above that. Please don't post like this here.

The site guidelines are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Everyone commenting on HN should follow them.

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