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Comment by msgodel | Hacker News Reader

I think the correct thing to do is to punish accusers of provably false allegations as harshly as the accused would be.

You might say "this will have a chilling effect on legitimate accusations" and you might be right, but the situation is bad enough now that it's created a pretty extreme chilling effect on socialization in general.

EDIT: I don't normally do this but argue your point. If you continue playing games like down voting very reasonable ideas that you disagree with eventually all of us are going to come together and leave you out of the discussion entirely.

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This is how its done in many non western societies: if you allege something, you better have the receipts to back it up or face similar consequences.

> punish accusers of provably false allegations as harshly as the accused would be.

Are you aware that here you are arguing for criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, for writing a letter?

You probably should expand on that.

Edit: some people seem to be okay with this notion! Would love to hear thoughts on how stiff criminal penalties for what is in the end expressing are at all compatible with societies that claim to value free speech.

Note that the author of the post does not present any proof that the allegations are false. Similarly, the other side likely cannot prove its allegations are true. So we are here discussing long prison sentences for unprovable opinions. I would love to hear how people justify that.

Writing a letter for malicious reasons that had a very predictable outcome for an apparently innocent man*

You can downplay any action by breaking it down to its foundations and stating it that way.

> very predictable outcome for an apparently innocent man

None of this is obviously accurate. More to the point, no court can adjudicate the "predictable outcome" of a letter or whether the reasons were malicious.

They actually can, and have.

In fact, that’s a fundamental facet of a libel claim.

That sounds about right. Playing games with this needs to be frightening or you'll have people abusing it which is not only bad for innocent people who are accused but also discredits legitimate complaints. It's impractical for everyone to "believe all women" if half of them are lying for sport.

> Are you aware that here you are arguing for criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, for writing a letter?

It's about writing a letter that can result in someone else receiving criminal sanctions on the order of 10 years in prison, when that someone might not have even written a letter.

Provably false is essential here.

> Provably false

As far as I can tell, nobody has offered (or likely can offer) proof of anything on either side and yet people are talking about long prison sentences for speech.

Yes that is precisely what I meant.

Free speech is not the same as freedom to falsely accuse. Libel is absolutely illegal and has been since before the US was a country. Allowing things like this to happen means men and women formally socializing with eachother except in really limited or alternatively psychopathic ways isn't practical. It needs to stop and the only possibilities are

a) Just exclude women entirely like we used to.

b) Punish them very harshly for lying.

I think most people would be more upset by a than b. I hope the feminists and egalitarians realize that this is the pro feminism argument as the only practical alternative is to return to a formally patriarchal society. If people can't appreciate the point I'm making then I suppose we'll end going with a which is unfortunate. Everyone who doesn't will eventually be cancelled by the same group of people they're aiming to support.

We already have legal remedies for libel and defamation, I am not suggesting we remove those remedies.

What is being discussed here is adding harsh criminal liability ultimately for expressing opinions, since we know that two people can experience the same event in very different ways.

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