Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

There are several people who have severely traumatized me by actions they took to harm my body, violate my sexual consent, and/or manipulate my life so that I was under their power in ways I didn’t agree to.

I couldn’t imagine convincing a jury of any of these. If you make saying they happened a criminal exposure for me, I can’t warn others of the danger those people put me in, or even process my pain and grief, without fear of losing a court battle I have no chance of winning.

I’m sensitive to the damage false claims can do, but I think it’s unreasonable to say that people should be liable in a court of law to prove things that are private and unprovable. And it has a chilling effect, where people who’ve experienced similar trauma will be discouraged from sharing their experience because the risk is too high.

It’s already dangerous to accuse anyone with any kind of public presence of anything, people will defend them to the point of harassment, stalking and violence, out of pure loyalty.

Adding legal repercussions for stating that a thing happened where no one could produce conclusive evidence to confirm or deny it just means more people suffer privately without even the recourse of telling anyone what happened.

NAL, but I don't think talking to your friends and acquaintances privately rises to the level of libel or slander, or at least it would be very difficult to prove if it did.

What is the alternative that you would like to see? Should we be able to destroy any person we want simply by making an accusation without evidence? Should we throw out presumption of innocence and fair trials and just chuck people in jail the moment someone accuses someone of a crime?

If someone is making a public accusation with the intent of destroying someone's livelihood and reputation, I don't think it is too much to ask that we have some way of verifying that the accusation is true.

> NAL, but I don't think talking to your friends and acquaintances privately rises to the level of libel or slander, or at least it would be very difficult to prove if it did.

The suggestion was to “strengthen libel laws”, presumably to reverse this.

> What is the alternative that you would like to see? Should we be able to destroy any person we want simply by making an accusation without evidence? Should we throw out presumption of innocence and fair trials and just chuck people in jail the moment someone accuses someone of a crime?

I’m actually more or less comfortable with the existing US laws. Accusing someone publicly of harming them in an unprovable way is relatively protected speech. I’m opposed to changing that to penalize people who were hurt by someone, want to disclose the fact that it happened, and couldn’t possibly survive a trial they never initiated.

> If someone is making a public accusation with the intent of destroying someone's livelihood and reputation, I don't think it is too much to ask that we have some way of verifying that the accusation is true.

That exists.

Ok, I did not interpret strengthen libel laws to mean extending them to private conversations. Instead, I was thinking of something to deter Internet pile-ons like the article discussed.

Where is that line? I keep most of my Internet life relatively private. But this means I’m already hesitant to use the platforms I do have to describe things people did to harm me. I’m the one who’d be piled on if it got an audience. Adding the potential for expensive lawsuits just means I’ll be more hesitant to warn anyone that someone did something harmful, to me or to anyone else I believe. Why do I have to keep these conversations private?

We have laws because there are dishonest people. You might as well ask why do we have laws against stealing? I'm an honest person and if I go take something from someone's house without asking, I'll just bring it right back with no harm done. Some people aren't honest, though.

I... don’t understand what you’re trying to convince me of here? Are you trying to morally equate me hypothetically naming people who’ve abused me to stealing from them, if I couldn’t defend a non-legal claim of what happened in court? I sincerely do not understand what you’re saying should change.

I understand that you are telling the truth. Do you understand that sometimes people do not tell the truth?

The question is what level of consequence are you saying we should inflict on people before some kind of evidence beyond an accusation is required?

If it's "I tell my friends about what happened, and then they turn down opportunities to work with that person". I don't think anyone would or could sue for libel about that. I am not proposing that they be able to. I apologize if I gave the impression that that is what I was proposing.

If it's "I make an accusation, and that person should then be unemployed and destitute and indelibly branded a sexual predator for the rest of their life" then maybe somewhere in between those two extremes, there is a point where some evidence is required, and the level of harm being done to the accused requires some stronger justification. Maybe current libel laws do not accurately delineate that point because of the advent of the Internet and the possibility for a person to experience widespread harassment based on a few claims going viral. Is that reasonable?

No, I don’t think that’s reasonable. In the spirit of “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, I don’t think adding more legal liability serves anyone. Moreover, it serves even less people who already have few resources to redress wrongs.

It’s not like this concept of “mob ruined my life” is some new concept, it’s something victims of abuse experience or withhold their stories to avoid, and have forever.

Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice? His life had been ruined? Not at all. But at least one of his accusers was so afraid for her life that she went into hiding. Imagine how much more dangerous it would be for her if she were legally penalized for “ruining his life”, which she didn’t do, but absolutely became a part of the anti-cancel-culture script. Imagine how that could be abused by someone in such a high place of power.

People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so. If it’s in the court of public opinion, the truth comes out. We know this because the few cases where people lie are always repeated by people motivated to penalize truth telling.

I’m afraid to name people who’ve hurt me here, people no one on HN knows, because I fear retribution. Adding the possibility that I might be tangled up in years of legal battles I can’t afford simply for saying what happened is utterly terrifying to me. And that’s coming from a place of relative privilege where I don’t expect half the danger other accusers might expect.

No. There should not be legal penalties for describing abuse without legal proof.

So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation?

> People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so.

The point is that not every person who makes an accusation is someone who has been hurt by others. If there is no scrutiny allowed, how are we supposed to tell which is which? You're looking at this from the perspective of the person making the accusation, where you can know with certainty that is true. Someone on the outside doesn't have that ability.

> So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation?

It always matters whether an accusation is true. Penalizing accusers doesn’t produce fewer false accusations. It discourages true accusations.

> You're looking at this from the perspective of the person making the accusation, where you can know with certainty that is true. Someone on the outside doesn't have that ability.

You’ve completely misunderstood my perspective. I’m looking at it from the perspective of the person afraid to make an accusation.

Nobody is saying we should penalize people for making accusations. Being asked to substantiate your claims is not a penalty. It should be understood that people will ask that when you make a public claim, especially if you are asking for something to happen as a result of that claim.

I'm not sure what we gain by encouraging people to make unprovable accusations. From the outside perspective, people will be predisposed to believe one way or another, and in the absence of any evidence they'll just go to their predispositions and a lot of irrelevant argument will take place back and forth with no possible resolution, because there is no real evidence. Why is this helpful or desirable?

> Penalizing accusers doesn’t produce fewer false accusations. It discourages true accusations.

Why would the rate of true accusations go down while the rate of false accusations remain the same? My intuition is that they'd both go down, with false accusations decreasing more than true accusations.

> Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice?

Remember, indeed?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27299548

This is absurd. The “mob” that “ruined” his life did no such thing. Multiple accusers had credible accounts, media did scrutinize their accounts and determined that one wasn’t credible while others were. He wasn’t “cancelled”, he has a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the most powerful country in all human history. This “mob” theory is ridiculous. Yet one of his accusers was so afraid for her life she went into hiding. This is exactly why I’m opposed to penalizing accusers.

> Multiple accusers had credible accounts, media did scrutinize their accounts and determined that one wasn’t credible while others were.

Like?

> No. There should not be legal penalties for describing abuse without legal proof.

This also means, by definition, that there are no legal penalties for lying about abuse without legal proof.

If you piss off the wrong person, they can now stalk you on the Internet “warning people” about how you’re a sexual predator.

No evidence, no way to get them to stop. Better hope you don’t anger someone with a lot of followers. What a shitty world.

This is a very challenging interaction. I will try to keep a very even tone in this message.

The parent's last paragraph seems to set up a strawman, an extreme that seems to me to covered by current libel laws. (Is it not? Explain if I'm wrong.)

It is _possible_ that current libel laws don't "accurately delineate that point", but I am looking for a stronger argument in favor of change.

Based on the posts here, I think that the role and power of "viral"-ity is not well understood. In uncertain situations I would like to seek a clearer understanding instead of simply turning to legislative solutions - surely the question that will come up is "where is the line" and if we can't say we're not ready for a law.

@eyelidlessness Thank you for a very measured set of responses; they are beyond my skill or patience.

Thank you for this. I think you’ve expressed a lot of what I didn’t have emotional space to say, with at least as much skill and patience. I appreciate you joining in

Reply on news.ycombinator.com