> What makes you think they don't care about victims?
I never said that anyone does or doesn't care about anyone else.
I said that the words written here on HN focused on the spectre of false accusations, rather than on the victims of harassment, abuse, and worse. I also said that this is a common, much-discussed failure mode, and that we should know better.
> There are personal (verbal, emotional abuse) and social (bullying) forms of abuse that hinge on slander, lies, and manipulation to punish people or to otherwise assert power. Wanting to make sure that is not an issue is wanting to protect people.
Right.
But in this particular instance, we're talking about wanting to protect people from those they're harassing. This list is very clearly not being used to bully anyone, and part of my objection is with the kneejerk assumption that this must be what's going on, and that privileged white men aren't getting sufficient protection in their workplace.
What I am saying is, rather than restricting our consideration to fringy concerns of how this list might harm white men (it doesn't), we should also (not even exclusively! -- just also) consider how it affects everyone else.
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What makes you think they don't care about victims? My loved ones and I volunteer a lot in this area.
> Why would so many of the HN comments jump to worrying about the false accusations...
There are personal (verbal, emotional abuse) and social (bullying) forms of abuse that hinge on slander, lies, and manipulation to punish people or to otherwise assert power. Wanting to make sure that is not an issue is wanting to protect people.
I guess we could argue about which kinds of innocent people are worth protecting, but I'm not really interested in getting into that business.
There aren't many specifics being posted here about particular stories, but there mostly seems to be consensus that egregious behavior requires at least immediate dismissal and that less cut-and-dry incidents require some sort of correction. There also seems to be agreement that better awareness of poor behavior is a good thing.
There just doesn't seem to be consensus that anonymous posts sent out by anonymous curators is the best way to go about this. That doesn't mean some people are indifferent to awful things. They're just wary that the tools we use to help people don't end up hurting others.