Is the RMS petition just cyberbullying? | Hacker News Reader

Is the RMS petition just cyberbullying?

debian.community

13 pointsfsfellowship6 comments

I am very sure this does not represent a majority opinion of the Debian community.

This is disgusting and a real honest-to-god violation of de Blanc’s free speech rights. Calling for her arrest is downright fascist. Her open letter is not cyberbullying and RMS is a major public figure who should reasonably expect public criticism. Public criticism of public figures is not cyberbullying. If the author really thinks it’s defamation then that’s a civil case. Instead the author is using the threat of state violence to try to silence a critic. This is Taliban-level stuff.

It does take a certain amount of gumption to defend RMS’s “free speech rights” by trying to arrest someone you disagree with. I wish I could say these people are hypocrites, but they know exactly what they are doing. Speaking personally: it’s a lot worse to be arrested than it is to be kicked off the board of a nonprofit!

I'm no fan of RMS, but it does seem cruel to oust him for just one of his (innumerable) faux pas.

How?

Any one of us would be tossed out of our job for far, far less. People here act as if Richard Stallman has been tortured, humiliated, tarred and feathered and sent to the stocks, but the truth is he's been gently mollycoddled and protected from the consequences of his behavior for decades and never even suffered more than minor inconvenience.

I had a post show up on my Twitter feed where someone claimed Stallman licked a colleague of theirs on the arm. Even passing out the "pleasure cards" people here think are so quirky would get anyone here fired. Stallman apparently gets away with touching and licking women at will.

I'd feel better if the mob cited his lifetime of shittiness, rather than focusing on exactly one incident. My favorite was when he gloated over Steve Jobs' death the day after he died: http://stallman.org/archives/2011-jul-oct.html#06_October_20...

Cancel culture embraces cyber bullying.

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