Parent was edited from “Let's see evidence of misconduct before rushing to judgment.”

It was reported. Penalty of differing opinion.

But why is it flagged? That is a reasonable comment.

Also, what's with the rampant brigading here. Every reasonable comment here seems to get immediately and automatically downvoted.

There's a lot of comments making arguments that were basically discredited decades ago, and people have got tired of having to rebut them every single time and gone straight to the downvoting.

Hacker news voters seem to have got a lot less tolerant of this kind of tired regressive culture war stuff lately. But this article is still on the way to being flagged off the front page. There are certain subjects this site is just not capable of having a mature, informed discussion of.

Before posting opinions, one should verify them against "Hacker News Tired and Discredited Wrongthink Opinions Directory".

Edit: As it seems, the rule applies to this comment too. Dear reader, if you feel uncomfortable are offended by this comment, you are the problem.

Typically that kind of evidence doesn't just make itself available due to the nature of the crime. If employees themselves are orchestrating protests, they probably have information we don't. You can't just start dropping names and slandering.

A big mistake to believe those protestors are acting rationally. I'm not saying they are not, but assuming that they are is a mistake.

Those two lines of logic don't go together. If in your opinion it's a big mistake to believe they're rational, you are saying they're not being rational. There's no neutrality there.

You can assume that there is unknown information being acted upon. Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity. Or at the least not be involved without clear knowledge.

>Unless there's proof otherwise that the protest is lying you infact can and should assume it's authenticity.

Thank God that's not the way justice system works.

"Innocent until proven guilty."

One could reasonably assume that the protestors are innocent until proven guilty.

> you infact can and should assume it's authenticity.

Why should you?

Because you treat others as you expect to be treated, and respect your fellow human kind. We do this because if we have an issue we want to raise to everyone there will be people to help empower that.

Given that the individuals protesting are employees about their workplace there is information we may not know, and given the history of mega corps violating rights it would be unreasonable to automatically trust the company over the workers putting themselves out there.

If you have reason or evidence against, then by all means don't support the protest, but you should look at this from their perspective and at workers rights in general.

How can we see the evidence if the victims are silenced by their contract (forced arbitration)?

Do the eyewitness accounts of your female peers and friends not count as evidence?

No, if it's one person leveling an accusation and there is no corroborating evidence (either physical or more witnesses), it's not enough. Otherwise it would be within anyone's power to have people fired or put away for rape without evidence.

> No, if it's one person leveling an accusation and there is no corroborating evidence (either physical or more witnesses), it's not enough.

Whether it is sufficient evidence is a different question than whether it is evidence. It's certainly difficult for nothing other than a victim's testimony contradicted by the accused with no other direct evidence to meet the criminal standard for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but it's equally certainly less difficult for it to meet the civil standard of preponderance of the evidence that would be applicable in court for sexual harassment claims, and for lots of other human actions, action based on evidence with a lower threshold than preponderance of the evidence for any single offense may be reasonable.

I mean I'm not saying give ultimate judicial authority to any accuser. Just that we should be able to respect our peers' opinions as being worth something more than "not at all". Granted, I should have perhaps made that clearer rather than slipping into rhetoric.

> either physical or more witnesses

This makes rape un-prosecutable.

There’s substantial corroborating evidence for rape. It can be traumatic, but read through some trials of convicted rapists and review the evidence presented.

That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.

I'm not saying it's the only evidence required but just that it counts > 0. I don't think that should be particularly controversial.

Particularly when you get many people saying the same thing independently, in a social context rather different to that of Salem in 1693.

>That's how we got the Salem witch trials and why mere accusations aren't usually enough.

That's how plenty of hard-working, innocent, Americans got blackballed and had their careers ruined by McCarthyism.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities resulted in many things, but the Hollywood Blacklist alone was something like 150 names of almost entirely innocent people. Those people couldn't get work because someone accused each of them of being communists, often with zero evidence.

> Those people couldn't get work

Wasn't it revealed that most on the list continued to work in Hollywood under pseudonyms?

I mean, certainly denying work was the intent of the list, but...

Eyewitness evidence is the least reliable kind of evidence there is.

Yeah, for determining which of six strangers in a lineup is the one who mugged you in a dark alley. IDing someone who harassed you at work seems easier.

Most other evidence is necessarily less reliable than eyewitness evidence since it relies on eyewitness evidence to attest for it's provenance.