Facts Conveniently Withheld | Hacker News Reader

Facts Conveniently Withheld

medium.com

35 pointsmikeklaas7 comments

An important concept that the Internet tries its level best to keep people from remembering:

If you don't know what to think about a story, you are not required to formulate an opinion about it.

I flagged this story, and the other Github stories, and the YC/DNC story. You're free not to, but that's how my religion chooses to venerate Internet Witch Hunt Freakout Day.

Although some might attack this for being anonymous, in this case anonymity arguably makes the story more credible, not less. At the least, we can be confident that the article isn't much influenced by fear of reprisal. This is not the case for most other communications on this subject.

This doesn't make the article true, of course, so absent corroboration we must rely on internal evidence to assess credibility. To my eye, such internal evidence indicates that the story is credible. In particular, the details in the article explain for the first time exactly why Theresa Preston-Werner would have met with Julie Ann Horvath and why the conversation turned so quickly from casual to serious. [1] It also explains more credibly the relationship between Horvath and the allegedly "harassing engineer".

It's tempting to try to shoehorn these incidents into the "sexism in tech" narrative, but we should be willing to concede the point if the shoe doesn't fit. My own guess is that several people screwed up, there were misunderstandings galore, and there's plenty of blame to go around.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes...

Authorial credit conveniently withheld.

Also, something about this story doesn't make sense: if she was spreading "vicious rumors" about a co-founder, why wouldn't she just have been fired immediately and escorted out of the building? That's what probably would have happened in most other companies.

And if the allegations in this story are true, why wouldn't they have surfaced when the story first came out?

You make a good point, but bear in mind that Horvath is the first person to leave GitHub, and for this reason alone GitHub definitely isn't "most other companies". I find it credible that, even in the face of such alleged terrible accusations, GitHub would try to work things out with Horvath instead of just firing her.

I think you mean, strategically.

Fairly damning if there is any credibility to this. The issue is that most people have already picked a side in this argument (in this case, the loudest vic), and aren't looking for alternative facts to change opinion. The witch-hunt demands further executions aside from the chief witch; the anon writers realize this.

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