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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I am glad this was written without naming the people involved. Although I see nothing wrong with naming names in situations like this (see below) the lack of specific names meant I could focus on the experiences (as related by the poster) rather than having the specific people colour my opinion.

The reason I think specifying people by name would have been OK is that 1 - they were presumably an issue for a number of attendees due to (prior) publicly stated positions and 2 - they apparently made subsequent statements via "broadcast" media such as Twitter, for anyone to peruse. This would be quite different if the people were more private, and if all discussions had been private and/or via non-broadcast tools like SMS or WhatsApp. Plus naming names could cause me to read what they had said and even disagree with the OP, at least on the baseline of non-inviting them. However the anonymity made the post much more interesting.

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> I see nothing wrong with naming names

As he is pursuing legal options, I’m guessing his counsel told him not to.

He named people (and showed pictures of messages) on Twitter in this convo [1], FWIW.

At this point, I think it's more to avoid further escalation, as said in the article.

[1]https://twitter.com/unbalancedparen/status/11223070591548702...

I watched this unfold on twitter, and in the organizer's defense, he only addressed the situation and the culprits after those people started a public discussion regarding the ban. The organizer was defending himself.

It's a difficult situation to be in.

Moral of the story: Strike first, strike hard, no mercy?

More reasonably but still on the aggressive side, does this mean that now we have to publicly announce when speaker invitations are rescinded to get ahead of the story?

At first glance, it kind of does. Although it makes you wonder what you'd actually put in this public announcement. Would you simply state the facts (along the lines of "sorry, but X isn't going to be speaking after all.") or would there be more detail (read: speculation) included?

I don't really think there's a way to win this. In the event that you're wrong, it'll blow up. In the event that you're right, it still probably will blow up, depending on whether that person (or their fans) go on the offensive or not.

The only actual winning move is not to have played (only inviting people that you know, doing advanced due diligence on anyone a degree of separation away), but are you really winning if you do that? It would seem to seriously limit your horizons.

Pretty cool show.

I think it is wise to publicly announce both speakers who have accepted invitations and speakers whose invitations were revoked (don't even have to say they are revoked, simply stating "unfortunately John Doe will not be speaking in our conf" should be sufficient). If not for these situations, then simply to inform visitors whom they can expect to hear in the conference.

Link no longer works.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2oL_vh...

Account is suspended it seems.

The account still is up. They just deleted their tweet.

Seems you are right, bit the localized error message said it was suspended.

There is no need to guess, it’s stated. “I’m currently analyzing with different attorneys and advisers the steps to take next. One of the pieces of advice they gave me were not to give any names to avoid escalating the situation even further. It pains me to do so, because I feel I need to warn the community so that this doesn’t happen to more people. But I understand this is the way things work and right now I need to trust that the justice system in my country will do its work.”

Sorry, I should have said "I see no moral or ethical prohibition on naming names of people who [meet the criteria I described]"

Yes, OP had a good reason not to do so! and it made for an interesting essay.

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