The sites that ran articles quoting the garbage medium article should get sued over this. RMS lost his job and doesn't have anywhere to live because someone who never met him decided to write a hit piece instead of talking like an adult.
False assertion of fact: There must be a false assertion of fact about a person;
Communication: Such false statement was unprivileged and communicated or published to a third-party;
Fault: There was fault on the part of the plaintiff, amounting to at least negligence;
Damages: The statement or publication caused damage to the plaintiff or was ‘defamatory per se’ or ‘libelous per se’.
So point for point:
False assertion of fact: Sites wrote that RMS said the sex slaves were entirely willing to be sex slaves.
Communication: It was published online for everyone to see.
Fault: The sites didn't verify that he didn't actually say that, and were negligent in not doing any research beyond what was presented in the medium article.
Damages: RMS lost his job and it appears he's currently homeless.
How is what happened to him not considered libel?
Selam Jie Gano, an MIT alum, posted on Medium about an email thread in which Stallman argued that the late Marvin Minsky—an AI pioneer accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre—had not actually assaulted anyone.
Early in the thread, Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.
The second paragraph looks, to me, as if it's the author of the Vice article that's making the claim, not Selam Jie.
There's a huge difference between a false direct quote and an editorialized interpretation of someone's words.
she presented herself to him as entirely willing
was re-phrased to
then he says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be "entirely willing".
'Presented as' and 'be' are subtly, but critically different, so paraphrasing him like that is a lie. At the same time, it's close enough that it could be argued it's an honest mistake. Given how short the original quote was, I highly suspect the decision to trim it to a mere two words was malicious. But convincing a court it wasn't an honest mistake/misinterpretation would be difficult, and it's close enough to the truth that "reckless disregard for truth" wouldn't apply, I assume.
Other publications repeated this, with titles such as Renowned MIT Scientist Defends Epstein: Victims Were "Entirely Willing" - which is again false, as he neither defended Epstein (if you must interpret his statements as a defense, it was only for Minsky), nor did he claim the victims were willing.
In sum, the reporting contained damaging false statements - did you have some specific reasoning why this wouldn't be libel (even if difficult to prove intent in practice)?
Edit: Yes, I agree, merely quoting the initial article wouldn't be libel. However, many articles repeated the creatively re-contextualized RMS quote themselves, without attributing it to the original medium post, and made it look like it was something they themselves were stating.
I don't respect principles wielded selectively and as weapons.
If this forum wanted to avoid getting overrun by these people, they’d ban them. People who use terminology like “SJW” are toxic and spread like cancer, pushing away people interested in actual debate or intelligent conversation.
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/on-cancel-culture-the-new...
> pushing away people interested in actual debate or intelligent conversation.
It's fascinating how "actual debate" and "intelligent conversation" mean, to you, avoiding words that you don't like. The most parsimonious explanation for the spread of these terms is that an increasing number of people intensely dislike the things to which these words refer --- and that every day they're less afraid of being called "toxic" for criticizing our culture of censorship and pitchfork mobs.