I remember it going viral at the time, and since then a casual Google would have thrown it up pretty highly.
You’ll note Ito never claims he wasn’t aware of the allegations or the guilty plea, he simply says he didn’t ever see any evidence of that behavior.
Plenty of people would pause before accepting money from someone like Epstein and plenty of people, as we’ve seen, did not.
Those that did aren’t responsible for any of Epstein’s crimes, but it’s more than fair that they answer questions about why they took money from someone like him — even if the answers are uncomfortable.
> Basically, Milner is a crook, and if there was any justice in the world he and Usmanov would be in jail for what they have done. But there isn't, and there are people in the Valley who are willing to overlook ethics if you have enough money. The fact that Milner is now working with YC is a sad testament to that fact.
PG: VCs are not so high minded that they're offended by who his LPs are, believe me.
> Actually, it would seem to be just as simple as he implies. VCs in the valley care only about money and don't give a hoot about morality. You haven't debated the fact that Milner is linked to the looting of state resources; you've simply said that anyone else would also take his money if they could.
PG: even if Yuri's money was tainted in some way, it was being used as a counterweight to another bad thing.
This is the ultimate problem and it has nothing to do with US-Russia relations but rather with dealing with known seedy characters
Welcome to HN, where a 55 year old man having sex with a 16 year old girl is "not a great look".
Throw in the power and money imbalance, and still "not a great look".
Throw in that the child was having sex for money, at a time when she should've been concerned with getting good grades in high school, but it really should be a choice for high schoolers to engage in dangerous and - as it is - damaging acts like prostitution, so yup, "not a great look". A "red flag" perhaps.
We don't let 16 year olds drive cars (without restriction), buy cigarettes and alcohol, skip school (in some jurisdictions), or, hell, work full time or at hazardous occupations (in CA at least) for good reasons, but it somehow should be a choice to engage in prostitution, because the letter of the law in Alabama permits 16 year olds to have sex.
No, I don't think it's fine to feel that way, and I don't think the parent's opinion is "controversial". A rich 55-year-old paying for sex with an 11th graderis very much un-controversially a bad thing no matter how you wrap it, and no matter what the laws are in Alabama, medieval Europe, or Mars.
Please don't be an apologist for child abuse. It's not a great look.
> there are people in the Valley who are willing to overlook ethics if you have enough money.
Seems very little has changed.
While that's true of the substance of his sweetheart plea deal, there was a lot more involved than that, which was also widely reported on.
Legally, they can in much of the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_Unite...
And if they could, the laws would need to be rewritten, because that would make child rape legal.
Repeat after me: a 16 year old having sex with a 55 year old for money is child abuse.
No one can legally consent to prostitution, except where prostitution is legal.
A 16-year-old can legally consent to sex in much of the USA, which makes the act prostitution, not “child rape”.
> Repeat after me: a 16 year old having sex with a 55 year old for money is child abuse.
Whether that's legally true depends on the state. Whether it's morally true depends on the 16-year-old (the reason for variation in age of consent laws is that there isn't a simple, clear, consistent chronological point where a bit flips from a person being incapable of mature consent to sex to capable of it), and a lot of other factors (including, potentially, the state: legality alone does not control morality but it's not completely irrelevant, either.)
I'll just note that on HN, a 16 year old girl having sex with a rich 55 year old man for money is a morally ambiguous situation, whose morality depends on "a lot of other factors" (presumably, ones not including age, wealth, and power of the 55 year old in question).
When I was 16, I was having sex with a woman who was - let's just say old enough to be prosecuted in California. It was great. If the right 55 year old came around, why the hell not?
I guess you'll claim that I'm an abused child. That's bollocks.
Or maybe you think that only girls need to be protected/infantilized?
Nobody is arguing for a world where teenagers turn tricks for a living. And sure this situation brings up all sorts of questions, and isn't "fine". But 16-18 is definitely in the grey zone of adulthood, and the majority of US states grant them a lot of sexual agency already. There's a big gap between "just fine" and "hang 'em!"
My moral judgement basically comes down to: How did the 16yo feel about it? It's really their interest we're advocating for, right?
It keeps getting better!
I'll just note that on HN people think there's a question about how a 16 year old girl feels about having sex for money with a 55 year old known child abuser (old enough to be her grandfather).
Do I need to underline every word of the above sentence for people here to stop pretending this situation is something else?
This forum is full of programmers. Here, let me try logic:
IF ((girl.age == 16)
AND (girl.had_sex == TRUE)
AND (partner.age == 55)
AND (partner.is_rich_and_powerful == TRUE)
AND (girl.is_rich) == FALSE
AND (partner.paid_for_sex == TRUE)
)
THEN
girl.has_been_abused = TRUE
girl.has_not_been_abused.probability = MACHINE_EPSILON
Perhaps, but then there's all there more reason to do so. And thanks for lending your voice! Perhaps someone reading this will feel a bit better.
I think you may have glossed over this part of the comment you're responding to
He ran an interstate recruitment ring of underage girls not just for himself but for other men. There's no justifying anything with this man.
I don't think there is one real error here as you put it, but it's been made public he was warned about him before and people he worked with would refuse to go to his properties when invited and told him why (citation: https://medium.com/@EthanZ/on-me-and-the-media-lab-715bfc707...).
No need to be hostile, I'm just trying to understand the situation :)
Joi would love to pretend he (somehow) didn't know, but a colleague has come forward to say he warned him.
https://medium.com/@EthanZ/on-me-and-the-media-lab-715bfc707...
I think it's pretty common place to know a little bit about the background of anyone who is an investor in your interests. When you take or solicit an investment there's often a conscious cost-benefit decision on those dollars. Even people who need money and want to take risks often want to make the best risky decisions and deliberately place their bets.
Considering that that's basically pocket change to the MIT Media Lab they can afford to do their due diligence and turn people down if need be.
Some small charity you've never heard of that runs a summer camp for inner city kids or some no-name research lab at a state university's non-flagship campus (or whatever) is just gonna take the money because they can't afford to be picky. They're not gonna do background checks because the last thing they want is being in a position of weighing the need for money vs the ethics of who's giving it.
TL;DR: People and groups with less resources are less picky who they're willing to take money from but MIT doesn't have this excuse.
haha why are you proud of this? That's essentially the quintessential spirit of corruption representing everything wrong with this country and world.
It's a little different if you're a pro-privacy organization or climate change researcher and google or exxon starts stuffing you with money. There's a material conflict of interest in cases like that. That's the exception, not the rule. Some hypothetical summer camp has no conflict of interest taking the Koch brothers' money even if it disagrees with their politics.
Good you can end up like a friend of a friend that realized his investors were part of the Israeli Mafia. That guy was one of the few people who was ecstatic when tech industry cratered in 2001.
At best...
Epstein is the exception--he was a level 3 offender and could have been pulled for a felony for not checking in with the police. He shouldn't even have been walking around.
"While most convicted sex offenders in Florida are sent to state prison, Epstein was instead housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade and, according to the sheriff's office, was after 3 1⁄2 months allowed to leave the jail on "work release" for up to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. This contravened the sheriff's own policies requiring a maximum remaining sentence of 10 months and making sex offenders ineligible for the privilege. He was allowed to come and go outside of specified release hours.
Epstein's cell door was left unlocked, and he had access to the attorney room where a television was installed for him, before he was moved to the Stockade's previously unstaffed infirmary. He worked at the office of a foundation he had created shortly before reporting to jail; he dissolved it after he had served his time. The Sheriff's Office received $128,000 from Epstein's non-profit to pay for the costs of extra services being provided during his work release. His office was monitored by "permit deputies" whose overtime was paid by Epstein. They were required to wear suits, and checked in "welcomed guests" at the "front desk". Later the Sheriff's Office said these guest logs were destroyed per the department's "records retention" rules (although inexplicably the Stockade visitor logs were not). He was allowed to use his own driver to drive him between jail and his office and other appointments."
Info on his wikipedia page is well sourced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Conviction_and...
That's a sample headline from the first page of search results from the date range 2008-2013.
> I was never involved in, never heard him talk about, and never saw any evidence of the horrific acts that he was accused of.
But fine let's say you're right. "I knew he'd done this, but at his house I never saw evidence of rape or trafficking" isn't much better. He should resign.
Edit: Changed "unrealistic" to "presumptuous". I certainly think it's realistic that this person I've never heard of may be immoral or irresponsible, but what I don't understand is making that accusation based only on the correlation to the simple fact of his criminal background.
"Joi asked me in 2014 if I wanted to meet Epstein, and I refused and urged him not to meet with him."
Two: the justice system is supposed to work such that when you are done with it your debt to society is paid. The fact that Epstein got off so lightly, repeatedly, is the fundamental problem. An individual should not have to look up the criminal convictions of every person they interact with.
The justice system must exercise extreme caution. The standard for guilt is “beyond a reasonable doubt” which is a very high standard.
It’s precisely because the justice system must be so conservative that we in our private lives MUST do our best not simply to mirror the decisions of the courts, but to make decisions for ourselves.
It is ONLY in our private circles the victims have ANY chance at being protected, because the courts explicitly (and rightly) must wait for unequivocal proof.
Especially in sex crimes that proof is almost never there. Acceding to the courts is the equivalent of saying 90% of victims should receive no protection from anyone on Earth. And that there is no corner where they might be safe from their tormentor.
Hogwash. As we have seen so far, in Polanski, Weinstein, Cosby, Epstein, etc. these people did this repeatedly and were protected and enabled. The evidence was abundant and only needed someone in the justice system to actually do their job instead of covering it up in return for favors.
Sexual abuse in the single he said-she said case is problematic, and there may simply never be a good way to fix that.
Your way, however, allows accusations to destroy careers and reputations without evidence, and, in the case of genuine malicious actors, allows such accusations to become weaponized. See: Franken.
In addition, your mob justice is, in fact, most likely to enable these rich abusers because they don't really have to worry about the mob. Only plebeians like you and me will suffer at the hands of the mob because we don't have the resources to resist.
2. Yes, accusations destroy careers (of the falsely accused). Not believing accusations that haven’t been proven in court also destroys careers (of victims). So that’s not a real argument.
3. I’m not advocating any formation of mobs. I’m advocating individual employers, friends, family members make decisions for themselves and bar the accused from their private spaces at their discretion, not based on the decisions of the courts.
I’m an American though, so maybe I’m overly committed to private autonomy. But I’m not going to defer to my government about the safety of my people.
Yeah, no. If you are a convicted child sex trafficker I won't do business with you ever, even if the state is done with you. If you would, I'd say that's a moral failing on your part.
I shouldn't have to even think about doing business with a convicted child sex trafficker because he should be in jail.
And anyone you or I have contact with would have been in jail until doomsday if convicted of that.
? The point OP was making is that the justice system is meant to have punished/rehabilitated him to a point where they are satisfied that he is no longer a danger to society.
If he hasn't served his time, then he shouldn't be walking free to do business with people.
Either it is legal for him to do business or it isn't, and it seems that it was legal for him to do business at that time.
The fact rich people seem to be able to manipulate the system to do easier/less time than others is a separate and very valid point.
Like OP said, if you or I did what he did, we'd be in jail forever.
Maybe in this case people should have known, but taking it to the extreme, citizens can't be expected to hire private investigators to learn about their business partners.
If they are not on the OFAC list, and we aren't involved in an illegal transaction, then what is the issue? I am looking for complete, articulate sentences here. I honestly don't know the other perspective and haven't been exposed to an articulate reason to attempt to financially isolate capital.
If optics of a particular name actually were of concern due to records and disclosures, I would say just use a lawyer or new entity in specific jurisdictions, or lawyer+entity. This is something I would recommend for everyone if they can afford it, just to avoid grifters that realize you might have money and are willing to move it around. And yes, this also prevents other scrutiny, and avoids anyone having to make the decisions I am trying to understand.
Do you or do you not have a cause to support? Do you or do you not have a supporter? Simple questions with simple answers.
Can someone here articulate why they would blacklist transactions or persons that are not blacklisted by the state? Even if Epstein was actually in prison he could direct funds to causes he wanted to support. Convictions have nothing to do with capital controls. Why are you trying to control capital?
Because it seems his donations bought him access as well.
1) Didn't the money also support causes and do what it was expected to do?
2) Isn't his predatory nature with this access only visible in hindsight? There are incentives not to be repeat offenders of the same kind of crime, let alone any crime as a prior convict.
3) What is the appropriate response here? Don't let any convicted felon try to redeem themselves via donations? Shut them out of capital based networking just like poorer convicts that need the workforce are shut out of it?
I don't see this is a valid response or a piece of a coordinated response. We should try to prosecute sexual assaulting maniacs better. But I'm open to you all's thoughts on this scenario and what I think the open questions are
I applaud that the author wants to try to use his voice to raise money for victims, this has nothing to do with having been a recipient of Epstein money previously, except for the possibility that the author's projects got funded and they were able to use that validation and project success to have a voice to begin with, instead of disappearing into the rat race of wage work like most of us.
Edit: I hate meta comments, but getting downvoted for pointing out lies is tiring. I've read the apology. I'm right.
Plenty of SV investors looked the other way when Milner flooded the community with Kremlin-connected money, including PG (see his comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3143604 from 2011)
"
" On June 30, 2008, after Epstein pleaded guilty to a state charge (one of two) of procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18 "