Stallman:
> the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing.
Selam G.
> [Stallman] says that an enslaved child could, somehow, be “entirely willing”.
VICE:
> Stallman insists that the “most plausible scenario” is that Epstein’s underage victims were “entirely willing” while being trafficked.
New York Post:
> MIT scientist says Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre was ‘entirely willing’
No, it's not.
There have always been consequences to speech. Before social media, the traditional media would be the method of choice of stirring up people into a mob demanding resignations. It's not new.
What is new, is that it is no longer a power centralized to owners of traditional media. It is now distributed, and thanks to Twitter specifically, in a way that promotes "tyrranny by the mob" which the founding fathers themselves abhorred.
This isn't the death of free speech. Instead, view it as tech kicking itself in the balls because the people making software didn't understand how humans would leverage it at a society level scale.
It's why many of us are working of federated but social public forms of media, like the 90s and early 2000's, because that worked at scale without a "tyrranny of the mob".
All that being said, it is hard to be all "free speech is over" doom-sayer when the person in question has repeatedly (and we're talking decades) said creepy things that cumulatively sets up a pattern of behavior. This isn't Joe Shmoe hopping onto the internet the first time and losing his job. It's disingenuous to try to spin this event that way.
I think that’s the point here. RMS was always a creep who had very odd opinions on many different topics. I never liked the man nor thought much about his opinions and yet I was using software he created. He is creep, but he was tolerated.
I find 2 perspectives here. First is - am I the creep right now who is being tolerated. Maybe? I don’t know 2050 standards. Maybe I am and will be removed because I shown 2050 Toxic Behavior for years, which might be criticizing social media. No idea.
Second is - RMS is a human being. Not every one of us is pristine human being nor have luxury of being pristine and perfectly moral. Biology and past traumas do their thing. As far as I know, there aren’t any crimes he committed and if there were, he should be properly sentenced. If he was tolerated for past 30 years, shouldn’t it be more in sense of “ok dude, your time is up, here are your accolades, pack your stuff and have fun” instead of having witch hunt bringing every single piece of dirt people can find? Nah, that wouldn’t make sense, right?
Free speech is not all over, because I’m typing this right now. I am aware, though, that criticizing RMS “process” might bring consequences to my life if the mob decides to target me. If this process progresses we’ll end up in the state where I won’t discuss anything online and keep all my knowledge and experience for myself. And there was a time in history where life was just like that.
Your best bet is to only ever express entirely uncontroversial vanilla opinions and hope even that is still acceptable in the decades to come.
If you truly feel this way, you can put money where your mouth is and do actions to remove your very own words from the digital world (because you own the copyright to them if in the US, under the GDPR in the EU).
Alternatively, you can support dismantling tools that build outrage mobs (Twitter) and be a proponent of good faith arguments with conduct becoming of earnest debate. Preventing the fearful future.
I hope you can see why I think lazily lamenting some imagined dystopic future makes me sincerely question the actual genuineness of the underlying fear, and the lack of evidence makes me question the rigor with which it was dreamed up.
The rumour would be more poetic if it said he liked plants, and that he feigned having a phobia to get people to have office plants.
Edit: removed unintentional copy pasta.
"We will, as always, be treated to much examination of the precise nature and mass of the last straw, with observations that it would not by itself be sufficient to cause spinal damage in camels, and is therefore utterly harmless."
I'm frankly surprised that his arguments haven't cost him his position earlier.
Of course he could also just be socially inept (i.e. no excuse for failing to learn good behaviour) and he clearly isn't disabled (anyone actually dealing with autism is doing life in hard mode).
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551458/asperger-s-oxy...
Recently I have been reading Sapiens, it the book Homo Sapiens is singled out about its ability to function in groups of up to 150 people. Other humanoids were not able to do that.
I think, however, that discussing thigs on Twitter/Reddit is the same thing as discussing things with thousands and even millions of people that are gathered in a single place. Our species does have the tools to make this possible(the internet) but lacks methods to make it functional. The only thing we have is to detect an idea that somewhat sounds band and oppress it before bad things happen. That way we have some wrongfully vilified people but at the same time, we are able to stop the creation of a group of extremists(some people will not understand the discussion, mistook it for a validation of their sick ideas and if no vilification happens they will take action).
Anyway, that's why we need privacy. We should be able to discuss things in small enough groups without fear of being vilified, in a group with no outsiders we would know if someone is up to something bad or and take an appropriate action instead of overreacting and mislabeling. High-quality public discussions are beyond our capability.
The government isn't telling him that he can't share these views, so take your free speech bullshit somewhere else. You're free to say things, and we as a society are free to show you the fucking door. He shared his awful views (and was an active abuser) for decades, and finally we're showing him the door.
That being said, the way that that happened is absolutely terrifying. Fact, that people rather crucify someone instead of argue, explain or prove him wrong is the sign of our times.
End of free speech is here. It’s free only if it doesn’t offend group powerful enough to destroy you, and it’s narrowing every single day. We’ve seen many instances of this happening both on personal, unpopular views and gossips and false accusations.
Want to keep your career? Best you can do is to steer out of the social media and don’t share your thoughts with anyone. Not only controversial ones, because what might not be controversial now, might be controversial in 10 years, and you will suffer because of it.