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Comment by ncallaway | Hacker News Reader

If Musk sues I would happily throw money into that pot to defend Sweeney. Though, if he sues in a state with a decent anti-SLAPP law, I would also expect plenty of lawyers willing to pick up the case pro-bono, and only try to get paid out of awarded legal fees.

It would be a worthy cause, a very high profile case, and (depending on the jurisdiction) a not-insignificant chance of recovering fees. I'd be willing to bet Sweeney won't have to front the cash for his defense. But, again, if he does, it's a pot I'd throw some money into.

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Even with the knowledge that the doxxing is leading to stalkers endangering not just the wealthy target but also his young child, you would fund the doxxer?

That’s pretty monstrous.

If there is a kidnapping or murder down the line, your money will have helped enable it.

I don’t agree with your characterization of the situation.

I disagree with all of your factual assumptions, so I then disagree with your moral conclusion.

You can call me monstrous if you want. I frankly don’t care about your opinion of me at all. I’m happy to discuss my moral framework with you if you want, but we’re so far apart on the factual basis that I don’t think it’d be worth the time.

I don’t want to comment on you as a person, but I definitely would call the act deeply immoral.

Tracking the movements of wealthy targets in real time has zero value in terms of political freedoms. It’s primarily of use to kidnappers and other criminals. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s a security risk.

> Tracking the movements of wealthy targets in real time has zero value in terms of political freedoms

I mentioned factual disagreement, and those still exist. Without conceding any of those, this is our moral and philosophical disagreement. I don’t think the power of the state should bar all speech that you personally decide has 0 political value.

I think the first amendment rightly tolerates speech, even speech that many people strongly disagree with. I think the government should be extremely hesitant about telling people they can’t speak because their words have “zero political value”.

And I would vigorously oppose a party who is attempting to use the government to punish someone for speaking.

Look, if Elon Musk brings an action that alleges very clear defamation, or if he shows that Sweeney was actively inciting harassment I’d consider otherwise. But if the legal action is only for the actions publicly alleged (posting flight information), that’s simply protected speech by the first amendment. A lawsuit to suppress clearly protected speech is legal thuggery, and I would vigorously oppose that lawsuit.

In much the same way I’ve donated to the ACLU who has stood up for the rights of people I despise to speak.

I definitely don’t agree with your political belief that automated location stalking broadcast on social media should be protected speech, or the belief that the US 1st amendment actually does protect it.

I get where you’re coming from, though. Replace “Elon’s location data” with “Elon is horrible” or “we should tax billionaires at 99%” and I’d also support the right to broadcast it far and wide.

> I definitely don’t agree with your political belief that automated location stalking broadcast on social media should be protected speech

As is absolutely you right! And, were this more private data (like the location of his car being published), I’d be much closer to agreeing with you position.

I think the SCOTUS position on “reasonable expectation of privacy” is not great for taking into account the way our panopticon is able to process so much data that used to be public, but hard to gather at scale.

I’d be pretty willing to be convinced that we should have a serious discussion on the merits and drawbacks of significantly expanding privacy rights, to make some of that illegal.

That being said, the movements of airplanes are inherently public information right now, and already public “at scale”, so I just don’t see a world where I’d agree that aircraft movements should be a part of that framework.

> the belief that the US 1st amendment actually does protect it.

This is a less subjective claim, and is just not accurate. The first amendment absolutely allows someone to publish that information. It’s published publicly by the government! The first amendment absolutely unambiguously protects that information currently.

Is there any evidence for your first amendment claims here? I'm pretty sure not, but I'm willing to be surprised.

If making public info more public is legally dicey, then you'd better tell me why you're okay wit Clearview, LexisNexus, et al... And not this guy.

Musk needs to go after the stalker. He deserves a good SLAPP'ing. Fuck billionaires trying to buy their way to immunity to the consequences of their own daft behavior.

Please respond in good faith.

I am. I meant exactly what I wrote.

Donating to a doxxer with the knowledge that their work has already played a role in leading a stalker to the target’s young child is monstrous. Full stop.

Responding in good faith does not just mean that you stand by what you write. It also means that you respond taking the person you're replying to at face value, without omitting important context or exaggerating the situation. Claiming that the other party is "monstrous" and saying that they'll have blood on their hands is in no way appropriate here, especially considering that:

* The discussion is in a thread about SLAPP, with the point of contention being that Elon is suing to intimidate rather than for damages

* Elon has, in the past, implicitly and explicitly demonstrated approval of such activities

* It is unclear whether the information led to the attack

That, plus that fact that the money is not going to run the account directly, but pay for legal fees in the court case.

There's a lot of discussion here on all these topics. Ignoring them completely and jumping immediately to a conclusion that lets you call someone a horrible person is not reasonable or responding in good faith. You can make your point and disagree without lowering the quality of discussion.

You are not responding in good faith yourself. There is a clear and obvious distinction between calling a stance monstrous and calling a person monstrous. The GP did the former and I don’t think it was ambiguous — but even if it was, it is in bad faith to assume the worst interpretation.

Point taken, but a misstep rather than with intent on my part. I stand by the rest of my comment.

Yet again you are not responding in good faith. You defend your own admitted bad faith as a “misstep” but the other person’s alleged bad faith as “with intent”. Surely this is textbook bad faith.

I don't think so. The comment I responded to showed up in a thread of more than a 1000 others talking about the very things I mentioned. If you don't assign any intent here it's just someone cruising over the entire context of this conversation, picking a side (without any supporting evidence for why they chose their interpretation, mind you), and then using it justify making a fairly extreme comment. And then they extend it even further into "you know this could also lead to a murder so now your actions support killing children".

If any of {"the information is public/protected under the First Amendment", "Elon is suing to harass this person", "Elon is just straight up lying about the incident", "the attack has nothing to do with the account", "this is something Elon actually said he supports in the past"} are true the point being made changes dramatically. I don't think any of them have been settled at all. I'm sure 'AlchemistCamp has opinions on them as do I but in situations like these it's generally appropriate to make comments taking this uncertainty into account. Like, it could even be a curious comment, "it seems like this person's account is actively harming Elon's family, why would you possibly want to send money to fund it?", but as it stands right now it just jumps immediately into making the conversation worse.

On the flip side, I feel the problems in my comment, which I freely accept (…though not as bad faith), do not actually significantly alter its meaning. Nor do I think it ignores surrounding context like the comment I replied to did. My point was "I think your comment is bad because you jumped to a conclusion which let you dunk on this person's actions" and I wrote "I think your comment is bad because you jumped to a conclusion which let you dunk on this person" and I feel that this is something a reasonable person could end up doing, even if it's obviously not correct. Perhaps I'm missing what led you to focus on that part in particular, rather than the rest of the comment, where I feel the meat of it lies?

Both your initial comment and the first paragraph of this one are so uncharitable to me that it’s difficult to respond but here goes:

1) Contrary to your initial claims, I made an ethical criticism of a a behavior not a person (and even explicitly clarified this in a sibling comment)

2) The discussion about SLAPP was an off-topic tangent to the primary conversation of the account suspension and the security risks the anti-doxxing rule addressed

Bringing the discussion from the tangent thread to the primary topic is an improvement, not a worsening of the discussion.

3) Your implication that I “cruised over the entire” context of the thread of more than 1000 others comments to make snap posting is false on two counts. There were fewer than 1000 comments at the time and I actually had read over a hundred and already commented elsewhere first.

4) My position isn’t even close to extreme. Funding someone who is regularly de-anonymizing and broadcasting people’s real-time location coordinates against their wishes, despite being fully aware that doing so presents a security risk is morally reprehensible to many, many people—an important bit of context you yourself seem to have worked hard “to ignore”, in your own terminology.

You’ve made repeated made long-winded, meandering complaints about my critical 3-sentence comment, but at the least you’ll have to grant my comment didn’t make untrue assumptions about the other poster’s process of reading the thread, their frame of mind, their good faith in approaching the discussion, their reasoning process or their opinions.

I criticized only the specific course of action the commenter said they were planning.

We have the benefit of hindsight on this particular incident, which I think strengthens my point: it seems very likely that Elon was being purposefully misleading about the circumstances surrounding this incident, that they did not actually endanger his child, and that the ElonJet account had nothing to do with Elon's encounter with this person. I think it is reasonable to say your comment was on topic. However, I strongly disagree with your characterization that you "brought the conversation back on topic". Considering that there was already evidence on the day this was posted that Elon was acting with intentions other than genuine concern for the safety of his child, I think a "is Elon trying to get rid of an account he doesn't like?" comment thread is very reasonable and eminently on-topic. When Google cancels their social media product because "they are refocusing priorities" a thread about "hey I heard they had major security issues with the product, so they probably canned it rather than dealing with the fallout of a data breach" is totally fine, even if the official blog post mentions nothing of the sort.

Actually, if you came into the comment thread where a dozen people were already discussing this possibility, and just left a reply to one of the comments of something along the lines of "oh I guess Google thinks social is too hard, they want to focus on Android now"…that's kind of weird, right? This thread was operating under the assumption that Elon was basically lying, and trying to intimidate the ElonJet guy. The person who was going to fund him was clearly doing it because he thought he was giving money to the little guy standing up to the SLAPP abuser. When I said you waltzed in it's that you just came with "I believe every single word from Elon's side of the story and this happens to mean that you are funding a terrible thing". That was not the assumption that this thread was operating under. You can disagree with that assumption but you didn't go "guys why do you even think this is a SLAPP lawsuit?", you went "why are you funding a doxxer who might murder children". How is this an improvement to the discussion?

FYI I read the first sentence of your reply and stopped.

Your loss.

On the contrary. Reading it would have been my loss.

Do you have any evidence at all that there exists any sort of connection between the flight tracking and the incident with the car?

To my knowledge most cars don’t have tail numbers, and don’t register their flight plan with the FAA, so I don’t really understand the connection you’re drawing.

> with the knowledge that their work has already played a role in leading a stalker to the target’s young child

Objection, Your Honor, assumes facts not in evidence.

This knowledge doesn't exist. It's asserted without evidence.

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