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.