"How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career."

I agree with this statement.

Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that.

However, that's not what I think happened. What happened was he shared an opinion on a hot-button issue, pedantic and maybe gross, and unfortunately had that go viral and was so hounded out of his position.

If Stallman's position is wrong, we should be able to rationally come to that conclusion as a society. He should be allowed to be wrong. If his opinion is so problematic that it makes him a real liability for the university, his removal should come after a period of deliberation, not after a flash of public outrage.

I can understand arguments that Stallman's position is a questionable hill to die on regarding the Epstein revelations, that even choosing to weigh in on this makes it seem like his priorities are out of order. I can also understand the argument that the email list he was arguing on was the wrong location to voice his opinions and he was making students uncomfortable. I also understand the idea that he should have been corrected by the university, either for this event or for his past behavior.

But what I don't understand, is this idea that firing people in response to media shit-storms is somehow something to be applauded.

> If Stallman's position is wrong, we should be able to rationally come to that conclusion as a society. He should be allowed to be wrong.

I share this frustration, unfortunately with many HN discussions as well.

When someone states a position that the majority finds repugnant, IMHO the most productive (long-term) approach is this:

Step 1. Identify where the minority and majority views diverge in terms of logical justification. With majority-repugnant views, this may require going back to very basic assumptions. E.g., rape is morally wrong, it's appropriate public policy to prevent moral wrongs, etc.

Step 2. Starting from there, try to understand why the views diverge, and debate which side (if either) has better justification.

I think this approach fails at least half the times I try it, though. A few guesses why:

- During Step 1, people jump to the assumption that I'm advocating the majority-repugnant position, rather than working within this two-step process. Once my character / motives are impugned, reasoned discussion seems to end.

- Many people are unable to engage in logical debate regarding ethics. And in frustration, or to subconsciously avoid having to accept that gaps exist in their ability to logically debate some topics, they are unwilling to engage in proper debate.

- Something in my mannerism is off-putting, or I'm in a forum where few people are willing to engage in a debate lasting more than several minutes :(

This isn't a seminar, so this isn't the forum where one can help change minds or come to a conclusion logically. The best you can hope for is to plant seeds and expose people to perspectives they might not be aware of. I've read of some studies where people generally clam up when presented with contradicting information (which sucks). Who knows though, at the very least you will change one or two minds, which can help if not a little.

I've also observed this. It seems to me that politics (which I'll use as a reasonable proxy for controversial views) has increasingly become more like a sport than an exercise in civic responsibility. As I like data I think one way to measure this is split ticket results. In 2016 34 states had senatorial elections. Each and every state voted the exact same way for senate and the presidency. This is hardly surprising in today's world, but this hadn't happened in more than a century. [1]

The point of this is that as people start to integrate political views into themselves (as opposed to just a view - something that's subject to change as the evidence does) it makes debate difficult. In many ways we're becoming more akin to religious nations. You're unlikely to find a nice healthy debate about the value, worth, and viability of Islam in most Islamic Nations. It is because such values have been integrated into the individuals themselves instead of being kept at arm's length.

And as a tangent one thing I would add is that it obviously was not always this way. During the Islamic Golden Age Islamic nations were world leaders in learning, education, and the collection of wisdom. We still retain fragments of this time in our language today. For instance Algebra, from the title of Ilm al-jabr wa'l-muḳābala by al-Khwarizmi around 800AD. During this time of growth and learning all things were open to question, including Islam itself. And then along came a lovely man by the name of Al-Ghazali [2].

In response to religious skepticism, which Al-Ghazali was unable to effectively combat on direct logical grounds, he chose to develop a new philosophy. And in his new philosophy he preempted skepticism by suggesting that there were no natural laws at all. When a leaf catches fire it is not because it was exposed to a fire or because it reached a certain level of heat but because, and only because, God willed it happen at that exact moment. And so the study of 'natural laws' is nonsensical, as detailed in his work 'The Incoherence of the Philosophers.'

And that idea, enabling one to revoke all logic and criticism and simply adopt the dogma without question or concern, was met with resounding praise and endorsement. That was 900 years ago, but this ideology remains a key component of Islam to this day. At the same time this was happening a lust for learning was just starting to take off in Europe... Kind of interesting to imagine that we could be on another precipice of change when 200 years from now e.g. China has become the world leader in education and people ponder the decline of the anglosphere.

Or this could be little more than the regular waxing and waning of insanity that in 20 years, perhaps sooner, will feel as distant as parachute pants.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/17/is...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali

"problematic person" eh...

He's clearly a freethinker, and we have all gotten a lot of advantages from his courage doing his thing and making his vision for FOSS a reality.

Now he's said his thoughts on this too... it's legitimate for him to do so and "problematic" everyone is in a huge panic to punish him in case the mob should get set on them.

We all have second-hand stories of how, when Stallman came to our cities (in my case Paris) for a conference, he acted like the worst fucking person on earth towards his volunteering hosts.

He was a terrible human being, and surely not very aware of how to treat other humans. He had no place in a research institution, or getting paid to pretend to be relevant on free software.

Good riddance, whatever reason we can find in his statements (yeah sure, I was 18 when my wife was 17, it wasn't rape, surely... but is that really the point people were making about his nice friend of Epstein ?).

People aren't for free speech, at all and anywhere: they are for people having the same opinion as them or follow an official line. He didn't do either, now he pays. For a genius like him, it should have been easy to understand you have to adapt if you want to lead, or you shut up if you see you can't lead.

I hope this isn't a minority opinion, but making people uncomfortable should not be a reason to take their livelihood from them. If they actively mistreat people and abuse their power to hurt people, that is different. Being socially awkward and insufferable might make you not want to associate with them, but to me that's not enough of a reason to take their life from them.

If you are in a leadership position part of your job is making sure people are comfortable associating with you.

Firing someone is not taking their life from them.

I don't agree with either of your statements. There is a dividing line, which I was pointing out, between making someone uncomfortable and being toxic. I'm not sure, tbh, but it sounds closer to rms was just socially uncouth, he didn't abuse his position of power or anything like that, he just was an unpleasant person. I don't mind may be some sort of intervention over that, similar to what Linus Torvalds faced. Perhaps he has been "called-in" so to speak but that hasn't been stated in this conversation so far. What I consider toxic is closer to retaliating professionally against subordinates you don't like, forcing subordinates to do unprofessional things like favors to curry good standing with you, etc. I could be proven wrong, but a lot of what I've read from rms is he was just annoyingly pedantic, silly at times with off-collar humor, and too much of a "true believer" in various causes. None of that I consider beyond the pale for being toxic, some of those traits (like the "true believer" bit) are actually somewhat commendable, and why extremists often are good in pushing us to better ourselves or at the very least question the foundations of the status quo.

Also, firing someone is taking their livelihood from them. rms might be more comfortable than the average worker, but part of the reason there are special rules around work is in society today people need to work to survive. rms might be wealthy and have a cushion, I have no idea and so this might not apply to him. On the other hand however, free software has been his life's work, and he is being forced out of the organizations he started in order to further that cause. He probably will be hampered from ever contributing to free software moving forward. It might not be on the level of a walmart worker living paycheck to paycheck (which sure is a larger problem) but it is a wrong, at some level, to him if he is not offered a better deal or a chance to change.

He has been acting in a manner that drives women away for a long time. There's been plenty of time to cut that shit out.

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman

You may not like the source, but they link to actual examples.

It's the leader's responsibility to create an environment that others feel safe joining.

He did a shit job at that.

I'm in a group he had been fine towards, but I've never found him someone I'd like to follow.

His bad behavior is not new, it's been going on for a very long time, why does he need more time to change? His statement on why he left makes it pretty clear he feels like he didn't say anything problematic.

> part of the reason there are special rules around work is in society today people need to work to survive.

In America at least, we have an entire social safety net intended to avoid that scenario. Doesn't always work as intended, but there are too many counter examples to that simple description to accepted it at face value.

What people often do need work for is self-actualization, money for non-essentials, or to feel like they're making meaningful contributions to society. I don't see anything about RMS stepping down from the FSF that precludes him from submitting patches to whatever open source project he would like, or precludes him from publishing his own thoughts and research on his own website.

Yup. Friend hosted him locally & has nothing good to say about Stallman whatsoever.

He’s had decades to listen to people telling him that his behaviour was unacceptable. The fact that he hasn’t changed at all is on him.

My mother hosted him and I didn´t hear anything out of the ordinary for Stallman...

I mean, you know he´s going to be monothematic about his beliefs, but I heard nothing besides that.

> People aren't for free speech, at all and anywhere: they are for people having the same opinion as them or follow an official line.

This just isn't true. Sure I want every one to respect my opinion but I don't want them to be a slave to it. I mean think about it if every one thought the same life would be boring as fuck.

>We all have second-hand stories of how, when Stallman came to our cities (in my case Paris) for a conference, he acted like the worst fucking person on earth towards his volunteering hosts.

No we don't. Your vague unspecified second-hand stories aren't any kind of evidence or argument. Come with specifics or this is just slander.

> Come with specifics or this is just slander.

Whether or not specifics are provided is irrelevant as to whether or not it's slander.

Specifics may be relevant to whether you personally believe it, but that's also not relevant to whether it is factually slander.

Ah, I wasn't aware, sorry. Is there an English word that constitutes an accusation against someone with no proof?

Allegation is the word you're looking for.

> a claim or assertion that someone has done something illegal or wrong, typically one made without proof.

Really? He was a "terrible human being" because he said something ignorant and was socially awkward / a bit rude in person?

I'm not defending what he said but this is a really backwards way to look at things. There are plenty of manipulative CEOs and public figures who are very careful with their speech while doing harm in their actions. Stallman turned down money for decades to do something good for the sake of public interest. There really aren't many people like that, in this industry or even on this site. It sucks he conflated his movement like this, but jumping to that conclusion based on something so shallow seems just as stupid.

It's also well-known that he would hit on any woman who moves. When conference organizers finally told him to stop coming up to women and asking them out, he started printing out "pleasure cards" with his contact information and an invitation to fuck on them and wordlessly handing them out to women instead.

In order to ward off his advances, women faculty at MIT have taken to taking advantage of his phobia of plants. They decorate their offices with as many plants as they can and have even taken to wearing plants just to keep him from hitting on them.

This is not and should never be acceptable behavior.

> his phobia of plants

Taking in mind that there are dozens, maybe thousands of photos of him on internet smiling near flowers, pots, pots over tables, cut flowers, taking photos of wild flowers, or posing relaxed on several jungles and forests, my congratulations to Mr Stallman for having overcomed his botagnuphobia so well.

This is not what you would expect from a real phobic person IMHO, so I wouldn't discard still that is just another stupid rumour (or perhaps some female students are overreacting badly to a rumour?).

> he started printing out "pleasure cards" with his contact information and an invitation to fuck on them and wordlessly handing them out to women instead.

Did anyone ever report this behavior to law enforcement? Did anyone try to obtain a restraining order against him?

> Did anyone ever report this behavior to law enforcement?

It is not illegal to invite (adult) people to have sex with you, orally or in writing, so there is nothing for law enforcement to do.

> Did anyone try to obtain a restraining order against him?

Offering sex to other adults isn't illegal, so there would be no basis for a restraining order.

He was creepy and unprofessional, not a criminal. “Be fired” is the proportional and appropriate response.

To my knowledge that's not a crime. However, it is creepy and unprofessional, and the sort of thing that gets you fired (unfortunately not quickly enough)

Wow... This makes RMS sound like a Batman villain who never quite made it big.

Epstein has always reminded me of someone Batman would fight. He even had henchmen and an island lair.

A while back some friends and I came up with his super-villain name. Batman had The Riddler, but Epstein would be... drum roll... The Diddler! Now roll that into one of those old campy Batman episodes from the 60s and you'd have a hell of a skit.

All I can do is laugh at this stuff sometimes. The alternative is to get depressed about the lack of judgement that seems to be routinely shown by otherwise very bright people who should know better. People seem to be such suckers for these charismatic psychopath types and their "energy."

In one (mostly non-canon-ish) novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Ultimate_Evil , he did take on a guy who was terrifyingly like Epstein; among others.

"I fear plants; my enemies will share my fears, because I'm Potman!"

I hope he never has the occurence to disguise as Poison Lenny in the next halloween, My poor heart couldn't afford more jump-scares.

> his phobia of plants.

> They decorate their offices with as many plants as they can and have even taken to wearing plants just to keep him from hitting on them.

I used to live and work around MIT and I'm trying to decide if this equals or exceeds the ludicrous batshit insane ass clowning that I witnessed. I'm not sure.

My stories don't involve Stallman, but... well... I'll just say "tech weenie weenie" and anyone around MIT who knows will know.

Mahketing mahketing! (maniacal clap)

In any case I'm not at all surprised that someone like Epstein would be sleazing around MIT.

I need to shut up now.

I think most people, especially in America, are very much for free speech. But inertia. And that inertia is especially pronounced when the mobs are going after somebody you don't agree with. Like the old poem goes:

- First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

- Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

- Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

- Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me.

That holds very true to this day in America. I really vehemently disagree with Stallman's views in many ways. So it's easy to not say anything, yet I do believe he has a right to say the things he does without getting depersoned. In any case I'd much rather the people that do abide his views do so publicly rather than in secret.

But beyond this, I think he chose a reasonable hill to die on. He undoubtedly knew his comments would spark a mob in the zeitgeist of today, but they really are about as tepid as you could get. He was saying it was a bad idea for terms, even if legally accurate, to be used in general speech when they mislead people as to the nature of a situation. If that's the new standard for moving from words to 'let's get rid of this guy', we may not even have a standard. And I think that's a point that will resonate for more and more people. Even if these people might be afraid to speak out for fear of becoming the mobs' next target, it helps bring about a positive change in society.

An analogy I love to consider is Lincoln. Did Lincoln end slavery and direct society accordingly or did society reach a point such that the creation of a Lincoln was, sooner or later, inevitable - even if by another name? And I think things like this bring us ever closer to creating our Lincoln because solving the problems of social media is not something that's going to be done in a clean fashion.

I'm sorry, no. Women at CSAIL cultivated plants in their office because they knew it would keep him out of their offices. He's a train wreck and has needed to go for a while.

> Stallman has been a problematic person for a long time. I'm no fan of his. If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that.

According to the Register, this is the position of both the SFC and GNOME

> On Monday, the Software Freedom Conservancy called for his resignation. "When considered with other reprehensible comments he has published over the years, these incidents form a pattern of behavior that is incompatible with the goals of the free software movement," the group said in a blog post. "We call for Stallman to step down from positions of leadership in our movement."

> So did the GNOME Foundation's executive director Neil McGovern, who said Stallman's Minksy defense email was "the straw that broke the camel’s back."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/17/richard_stallman_in...

Unfortunately, that reads like them finding historical justifications so a mob-induced disassociation doesn't look like it's mob-induced. They had time anywhere between "over the years" and few days ago to pull the trigger. Or they could wait a few days and do it 'after careful consideration'. Whether they bowed to crowd pressure or just wanted to score virtue points, this diminishes their stance in my view.

I trust that you know GNOME has had beefs with Richard Stallman at least as far back as the way he treated Mono developers (not the Mono project, but individuals). And I recall that, coincidental with that, his "Saint Ignucius" routine delivered in 2009 at Gran Canaria had some gross sexist commentary in it, too, which Lefty Schlesinger--a member of the GNOME Advisory Board at the time--called him out on, too.

You're right that this isn't new, but at some point the camel's back breaks and the idea that it's so implausible that what he said happened to, y'know, really upset people when they read it and that they'd had enough--well, it's a pretty cheap charge on your part.

Maybe I'm just getting too cynical, but this is not the first nor second time I've seen an outrage manufactured by a social media post of someone who took offense at a minor transgression, which ended up costing the transgressor their job.

I didn't know that GNOME has had issues with Stallman before, though I do believe it now and can certainly imagine it; I learned a few new, bad things about his behavior that I didn't know prior to today. Still, my point is - if they wanted to get rid of him for a list of valid reasons, they could've done it earlier, or they could've waited for the current storm to blow over and do it then. They picked this moment, and unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the timeline, they must've known it'll get carried by the media. So for better or worse, out of all possible opportunities, they picked the one where RMS is a subject of borderline-libelous and utterly nonsense shitstorm. Sure, people got upset when the news broke, but that's the thing with Internet witch hunts - people get upset over lies, and react without thinking, further fueling the avalanche.

Perhaps they do not believe it is utterly nonsense. I don't think it's nonsensical and I read the original-source thread before any of the follow-up reporting came out about it to potentially bias my opinion (beyond my bias of "Stallman is a creep" that I've known about second- and third-hand for a decade). His behavior was appalling: the attempt to construct a situation wherein someone Stallman knew personally happened to have clean hands while hanging out with a known pedophile and sex-trafficker of children, and then judging a protest through that lens, is just not okay, and even if he didn't have a history of gross behavior--which he does--I'd have had to have a real good reason not to eject him at speed from any business or institution over which I had authority for that alone. That it wasn't an isolated incident, and was known to not be isolated before this happened (more on that in a sec), would likely only harden my resolve to show him the door.

While it was known to not be isolated beforehand, it's pretty clear to me that a number of people have felt safe to tell their own stories in the couple days since this broke. I live near MIT but did not attend, and so I am not in any particularly privileged circles; despite that, this incident prompted a lot of people to speak up about RMS's consistent bad personal behavior as well as his bad public behavior. These sorts of things have a way of providing courage to people who have felt suppressed--someone is brave enough to kick one rock and dozens more come with. I would submit that if a nobody like me is hearing that stuff it is a near-certainty that people with hire-and-fire authority at MIT, and in decision-making roles at the FSF and GNOME, are hearing it and likely more.

This is what makes most of the protestations in this thread (not, I stress, the ones that you're laying out) so disheartening. On one hand you've got people adjusting their pince-nez and going "well, really, don't we need to have a conversation about statutory rape?" (we don't), while you've got another contingent who are all about clapping for pedophiles to "own the libs". It's just...really gross, and it's not about "free thinking" or "free speech" at all. (And it never really is.)

Perhaps they don't.

I might be biased otherwise (RMS lost a lot in my eyes due to new information I learned in this thread), and my initial introduction was the Medium post that started the media storm, but reading RMS's writing, I saw him explicitly not absolving Minsky from wrongdoing, but getting pedantic about the language, in an attempt to ensure the accusations being flung around are as close to what (he believed) could be made with available information. I immediately thought, "man, this is about the worst time to be pedantic, people will eat you for this alive", but honestly, trying to make the accusations wielded against a deceased friend accurate is laudable.

Much like I'm disgusted by some of the things I've learned today, I still feel that the original Medium post and the latter media reporting based on it are essentially character assassination performed to push a cause and (in the case of the media reporting) push ads. That's why I called it utterly nonsense.

I agree that things come in waves once you open the floodgates; RMS being criticized for one instance of bad behavior gives a reason to air other (perhaps less known) stories from the past. From my point of view, given that I consider this particular outrage over this particular misbehavior grossly overblown and based on mischaracterization, I'm just disappointed the camel broke its back immediately, legitimizing the current outrage. Even if getting rid of him for all the past transgressions, I would feel much better if they waited a few days.

That's good to know.

.

It all goes to the conclusion "you don't need free speech, you have nothing to say, google will talk on your behalf".

> If after a while the university had said, "Enough is enough, Richard, you need to shape up or get out." I would have understood that.

TBH I wouldn't expect that if they did for it to be public knowledge. In fact I'd assume that has happened.

> What I don't understand, is this idea that firing people in response to media shit-storms is somehow something to be applauded.

1. RMS wasn't just some random guy in the foundation, he was supposed to be a leader which means he should be held to a higher standard. Firing someone who doesn't meet that standard means your organisation has integrity which is important and should be applauded.

2. The downsides for keeping him around, especially since RMS didn't seem to be all that apologetic, are also important. The goals of the FSF are not advanced by being pushed into this media storm.

If FSF didn't do something, they would have been forced to answer alot of questions in the media about how they actually feel about age of consent laws, whether they took any money from Epstein and/or Minsky, how they felt about Epstein and/or Minsky, etc., and would then have had to give a number of awkward statements about this mess. Then they would have also had to answer many of those same questions from their donors. And likely if the controversy gained traction, their largest donors may have then been forced to answer their own set of awkward questions from the media about this whole mess. Especially if those donors also had ties to MIT. At some point, many of them would have also reconsidered whether they wanted to donate money to FSF, which would also be bad for the organisation.

All of which is to say that it's not about free speech, it's about protecting the organisation.

Stallman hasn't been silenced in any way. Free speech does not mean you can say whatever you like without consequence from private institutions and citizens, only that you may say whatever you like without consequences from the government et al.

Your conflation that free speech is under attack is disappointing - That's not what is happening here.

This has been said before, but free speech is beyond just government censorship and has a wider definition. Regardless of that, the idea that someone's livelihood is under threat due to their speech can be just as coercive as threatening a fine or jail for their speech. The idea that government chilling is someone kinder than private chilling is wrong.

> This has been said before, but free speech is beyond just government censorship and has a wider definition.

This has also been said before, but free speech specifically includes the right of others to dissociate from you because of your speech, as a central aspect of their freedom of speech, and in fact such dissociation is a central part of the concept of the marketplace of ideas supported by free speech.

> the idea that someone's livelihood is under threat due to their speech can be just as coercive as threatening a fine or jail for their speech

Yes, the fact that our society doesn't provide a minimal non-market guarantee of livelihood makes free interaction coercive economically coercive for many people. The problem is not with free interaction, however.

My freedom of association trumps your freedom of speech.

If people don't want to associate with a person who says awful things, it's not a violation of their freedom of speech to disassociate with them.

But my freedom of speech should trump your freedom to spin up angry Internet mobs that proceed to turn my words into lies that they use to rip my life apart.

Time will come there will be regulations aiming to fix that, because slander laws apparently aren't enough. And then people will come out and talk about freedom of speech, but the only answer will be, "you had it, and you misused it, and almost ripped the society apart".

> But my freedom of speech should trump your freedom to spin up angry Internet mobs that proceed to turn my words into lies that they use to rip my life apart.

Your freedom of speech doesn't trump anyone else's freedom of speech. If someone is knowingly or recklessly spreading harmful lies, you have recourse for that, but freedom of speech includes freedom of angry speech, and outside of harmful knowing and reckless lies, it included the freedom to be wrong in your speech.

Maybe you read different words from the rest of us, but RMS pretty much dug his own grave on this one.

There has to be a give and take, otherwise this logic can justify many things we've decided is wrong. Things for example like firing someone trying to unionize or for being black or a woman. There is a difference between freedom of association for an individual and freedom of association between a company/organization and its employees or members and that is part of why.

We have a give and take, it's called a "protected class". It lists reasons you can't fire people and includes reasons like being black or being a woman. We can update the laws to protect people in other classes as well, but I don't see anyone clamoring to make "defenders of pedophiles" or "creeps who alienate their coworkers" a protected class.

Yeah, because that would solve problems. Honestly, the same people out for blood would be church types in the 18th century. And by the mail in question I sincerely question the competence of the MIT in general, because Stallman was actually correct.

If somebody doesn't want to associate with somebody I think that's of course 100% fine, even if in response to nothing more than what somebody said. But if somebody chooses not to associate with somebody because of an online mob [1] - that's not so okay. Granted some line does have to be drawn here. I think it's great that social media was able to 'touch' an 'untouchable' like Weinstein that would have been impossible without the protection of a mob. But now that we've unleashed the beast, it's starting to gnaw at anything it can find. And Stallman's far from an innocent, but he's being depersoned here for some relatively tepid comments.

[1] - This event was started by somebody sending a copy of a discussion on a private mailing list to a third party. This third party then took social media and shared it. It fell flat, except for a handful of 'Twitter activists'. They then started spamming it off to their followers and media outlet they could find. Some of the clickiest baitiest institutions took it up along with some completely unrelated Twitter personalities. It all spun what were relatively innocuous comments into limited context outrage bait and that then caught the outrage train spot on.

So, if something was violated I assume there will be a court case that will ultimately decide if this was the case?

If someone was raped, I assume there will be a court case that will ultimately decide if this was the case?

correct

"Well, as it turns out, your Hollywood career promptly ended and you were blacklisted by every studio for saying, in the middle of the 50s Red Scare, that Karl Marx had some good ideas about the sociology of capital. But a court ruled that none of that treatment violated the First Amendment, therefore no one is allowed to be worried or have any negative emotion about what happened you, and hence no one's speech could have been chilled into silence by those events."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

McCarthyism was a direct violation of the first amendment. This does not compare.

Did you miss that I was referring to the non-Congressional aspect of the Red Scare i.e. the studios privately blacklisting communist sympathizers?

In case anyone missed my general point there, it was:

One can be worried about the chilling effects on speech, regardless of who is doing it; dismissing such concerns "because it didn't violate a law"[1] is confused, and a kind of category error.

[1] edit: or, in your case, relying on a court for all relevant judgments about this matter

Extending free speech in that way infringes upon people's rights to free association.

Neither MIT or FSF should be required to continue to associate with RMS if his views are repugnant to their organizational core.

I will say it again. Stallman is not being silenced in any way

Whatever you say might not even be free from consequences from the government. Freedom of speech is a bit of a nebulous concept in that sense.

I don't think the distinction between government and private institutions is that meaningful though. When a constitution is preventing the government from infringing upon a right it's usually a good idea if that right is protected against other people as well. In fact freedom of speech is covered by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which clearly wasn't intended to only protect people against their own governments.

Eh. You have a right to say what you want, but your employer has a right to not want to be associated with it...

What about the right to air a private conversation in front of general public for express purpose of forcing one's employer to disassociate from a person?

Consider this: were you to come to GP's office and show GP's boss a printout of them saying controversial things on HN, demanding GP's termination, GP would most likely keep their job and there would be a good chance you'd get kicked out by security. In order to get a company to fire someone, there needs to be a public mess, and those rarely happen organically. In this case, and other similar firings for wrongspeak that I can think of, a public storm was created intentionally.

Can't see it as anything else than a weaker, non-lethal form of swatting.

These are interesting questions to consider.

I'm not sure how "private conversation" should be defined. If someone wrote something on HN, is it really private? In the case of RMS, I don't know enough about this mailing list to know whether it was private or not.

I'm also not sure whether "private conversation" matters a lot. For instance, a governor of Puerto Rico was apparently sending homophobic and misogynistic messages around in a private messages. Is it less bad for being in a private conversation?

To your hypothetical: If I was so upset with someone that I felt the need to go to their employer and complain about them, that seems like my right to free speech and expression. If, after security kicked me out, I took the matter to the local newspaper and it caused an uproar, that also seems like my right.

> I'm not sure how "private conversation" should be defined.

I'm not sure either. HN, or CSAIL mailing list, are community chatrooms that sometimes spill out into the world at large, but their day-to-day activity concerns their respective communities. You do not expect to see what you wrote there aired in mainstream news.

> I'm also not sure whether "private conversation" matters a lot.

I suppose it doesn't in the case of publicly recognizable people or public officials; this sort of comes with the territory. But what private (or semi-private) conversations introduce in this picture is a "kill chain" - a chain of people or organizations involved in taking a private message and turning it into a mob forcing one's employer's hand. I think it's worth to take a closer look at that chain - especially in this case, where you can clearly witness an increasing level of misrepresentation happening. The original post, for instance, stayed just a bit shy of making accusations that could be subject of a libel lawsuit, implying but not stating a lot of things. And then the media coverage did its usual misrepresentation amplification.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for shooting the messenger - just that there should be some pressure in the society which ensures messengers are communicating their messages accurately. Ironically, the subject of this outrage is that pressure - RMS attempting to correct inaccuracies.

> If I was so upset with someone that I felt the need to go to their employer and complain about them, that seems like my right to free speech and expression. If, after security kicked me out, I took the matter to the local newspaper and it caused an uproar, that also seems like my right.

Depends on the reason for you being upset, I would hope that the paper would either pick it up and air it, or laugh you out of the room too. But you're right, it's technically your right to try. But still, I think there's something wrong with trying to end someone's career - thus causing significant, real, material harm to them - just because you personally found their speech offensive. It's like a lightweight form of swatting someone because you got angry.

Your point about the "kill chain" is well taken. I have not having paid enough attention here to have followed it in this case. But I certainly think the lack of nuance in the media is absolutely a real problem with many bad consequences.

> Depends on the reason for you being upset, I would hope that the paper would either pick it up and air it, or laugh you out of the room too.

Yes, absolutely.

In an ideal world, if there isn't a deeply troubling reason to be upset, a respectable media outlet should (in an ideal world) push back. And an employer should want to defend its employees against trumped up nonsense.

In this world, I fully appreciate that many media outlets love controversy and clicks, and it may be easier for a company to just fire someone than stand up for them and deal with said shit-storm.

> I think there's something wrong with trying to end someone's career - thus causing significant, real, material harm to them - just because you personally found their speech offensive. It's like a lightweight form of swatting someone because you got angry.

I agree completely that trying to end someone's career is very extreme. I take no position regarding the specific case of whether or not RMS should have resigned.

I would, though, push back against drawing an equivalence between swatting and trying to end someone's career.

I can easily imagine cases where I would try to end someone's career. For instance, if I had evidence that someone in law enforcement had a deep hatred of {women, men, gays, straights, Blacks, Whites, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, ...}, that would be deeply problematic. If I then saw them unfairly {arrest, harass, ...} someone in the hated group, it would seem very reasonable to object strongly to them continuing in their career.

> I would, though, push back against drawing an equivalence between swatting and trying to end someone's career.

I'm not standing 100% by this analogy, but the similarity is that in both cases someone, out of anger or spite, abuses a huge lever the society has to punish misbehavior just to ruin someone's day, but the lever has a good chance of ruining someone's life. This works for both "SWAT team" and "virality on social networks" as values of "lever".

> I can easily imagine cases where I would try to end someone's career.

In your example, it would be reasonable to object strongly - given that you had evidence that someone in law enforcement had a deep hatred, like if you "saw them unfairly {arrest, harass, ...} someone in the hated group". I'd still hope you'd try the proper channels first, but if they fail, this is a matter of public importance. But the kind of thing we saw here - in this RMS story and other public outrage stories - doesn't meet the standard of evidence you described.

(Also, law enforcement is a somewhat special case, because it's a position of privilege and power, when one acts with authority of the state. You definitely want to police people wielding this power aggressively, but you shouldn't apply the same aggressiveness to random folks doing regular jobs, like scientists or plumbers or programmers. Former is preventing abuse of power; latter is just destroying someone's livelihood through vigilante mob justice.)

So what I'm saying isn't "don't ever go after one's career", just don't do it if your reasons are that you are offended by something you read. Ruining someone's livelihood like this is one of the most extreme form of damage you can legally do to another human being; it's thoroughly aggressive act, and it should only be done in circumstances justifying it. Words alone almost never are.

I think we're in agreement on basically everything.

Does society have a right to not be associated with it? If every individual has that right, then a collection of those individuals working together retain that right if they so choose to do so.

If grouping up people does cause them to lose that right, perhaps that characteristics of rights kicks into effect when dealing with sufficiently large institutions, especially ones who have significant tie in with government far beyond some small mom and pop employer.

So let's have a new word for situation like this, describing the case when someone spins up an Internet drama around another person so that the resulting fallout ruins that person's life. There is still huge harm done, and it bypasses the court system.

"Cancel Culture" is the phrase I've heard used

Ah yes, the new term for "consequences"

I interpret it as the burning desire to impose those consequences, without sufficient thought as to whether it fits the crime. People want to be a part of something, even if it's an angry mob.

Whether it's good or bad for society is a complex topic, but spending your time riling up a digital mob every time someone says something controversial can't be a personally healthy way to live.

That’s a fairly glib response to a phenomenon which is magnified and made more damaging by recent changes in social media technology.

It’s an old saying that a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. Now it’s more like, 10 times around the world, and nobody even gives a damn what the truth ever was.

Or to put it another way, wrong-think statements can be weaponized against the speaker more effectively than ever.

Calling it wrong-think is so blatantly untrue. Orwell was talking about governments subjecting citizens to extreme censorship. Societies have always been able to do this without governments, that's how cultures are formed.

And we grew up laughing at the stupid taboos and weirdly abusive social norms our forefathers had. Only to create similar ones ourselves.

Did you miss the part when he explained his reasoning, and then another part where after discussing his reasoning and state of current research he realized he was wrong, changed his mind, and retracted earlier statements? I guess you might have, it was years ago.

Or did you, again, mean correcting language so that allegations made were accurate, allegations that later turned out to be discredited by witness statement?

EDIT: Turns out the realization and retraction statement was published 3 days ago, so in all honesty you could argue this was a reaction to mounting public pressure - but there isn't much evidence that he's lying here either.

I cannot believe that he has not faced criticism for those comments before now. In fact, I know he has.

So either he has very belatedly received enlightenment, or thought "uh oh, this one is about to bite me very thoroughly in the ass".

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

Cultures can have varying degrees of tolerance for diverse viewpoints, e.g. anything from mobs on Twitter to social credit scores in China. Attacking someone's livelihood for raising a philosophical question is somewhere on that spectrum.

There are a lot of incendiary political topics de jour where it's obvious that important voices are being silenced. See, for example, the pseudoaddiction post from SSC yesterday. Popular uprisings are often based on kernels of truth, but the conversation becomes distorted when experts or just laypeople with diverse viewpoints decide, fuck it, it's just not worth the liability of weighing in.

A couple weeks ago there was a story about a minor girl in high school charged by a prosecutor and found guilty by a judge of distributing child pornography--upheld on appeal--for texting her friends a video of herself. [1] But if it's political suicide to even try to have a conversation about how the laws on child pornography could be harming children, then it will never be fixed.

So at some point it should be acceptable for someone to stick their head out and say, "This term 'sexual assault' it doesn't really mean what most people think it means a lot of the times. It would make for much healthier discussion if we could be more specific!" Or, "These arbitrary age barriers (which change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) can catch innocent people engaging in consensual intimate acts." And it's also OK for someone else to say, "That's just not what happened in this case, because <reasons>... and you're blinded in this case by your relationship with the accused." But at the end of it, for everyone to agree that there was a conversation in good faith and everyone can decide for themselves who's right, wrong, or an imbecile trying to cover for a friend, without demanding a head on a platter.

You can take a look at what Lessig wrote about Ito [2] and likewise come away from it entirely incensed and calling for Lessig to resign, or pondering whether the story is more complex than the headline. Where in that case, the NYT took a complex issue that Lessig tangled with, and turned it into;

“It is hard to defend soliciting donations from the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law professor, has been trying.”

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/mds-top-co...

[2] - https://medium.com/@lessig/on-joi-and-mit-3cb422fe5ae7

Without "due process" Trial by Twitter(tm) is going to end like the Reign of Terror at the end of the French Revolution.

Stallman had said more than enough to merit his termination IMO, but he still deserved due process before such judgment was passed.

What due process does someone deserve before termination, and are you claiming Stallman didn't get it?

You assemble the evidence before as impartial a committee as you can, and you let them make the decision. I think in this case Stallman is an offensive personality who says offensive things on company time using company equipment. That's going to be a no-brainer.

That said, I have a nagging worry from watching some videos of his behavior that he is mentally ill and there might be a backlash from that.

But why we can't allow a process like that to transpire before passing judgment is beyond me. Why wishing such an impartial judgment upon him is downvote worthy is really worrisome to me. That's not what western democracies are about as I understood them up to now.

I Just do not believe we should make career-ending decisions like this based on the rage of a mob on social media, that's literally a Black Mirror episode (and a really bad episode of The Orville as well). I believe their role is to raise awareness of situations like to the point where the above should transpire. Does holding that viewpoint now make me subject to "cancellation" as well?

> Does holding that viewpoint now make me subject to "cancellation" as well?

No. But I do think you're not really looking at this situation objectively. Here's what you've said:

1. It's clear that an objective board should have fired RMS

2. We shouldn't make these decisions based on mobs

Additionally, we know he was fired. With that information, you can't make any conclusions. How and why are you so certain that some board didn't weigh the evidence and pass objective judgement? The problem with this fear of "cancel culture" (which as others have mentioned is really just "holding powerful people accountable when they do bad things culture"), is that so far I haven't seen any evidence that the bad things people fear have happened. RMS did a bad thing. He faced consequences for a thing that even you agree was a bad thing. Your only concern is that it is possible, not even certain, that the method by which he faced consequences for an action that we both agree was bad and deserved consequences might have not have been up to a standard that few employees anywhere get.

I want to stress that last bit: very few employees are afforded the privilege of an impartial committee to decide whether or not they should be fired in any circumstances. You're arguing that RMS should get a stronger protection than your average employee (either that or that workers should, in general, have much, much stronger protections than we currently give them).

tl;dr:

> I believe their role is to raise awareness of situations like to the point where the above should transpire.

To me, this looks like exactly what happened. Why are you complaining?

I think your understanding of the tech industry is rather unlike mine. I have been a manager previously and there is quite a bit of documentation and process involved in terminating anyone, so much so that a lot of really bad apples can jump teams without getting terminated if they time it well.

Even when they're caught, they get put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) which is shorthand for giving them 60 days to find a new job or to turn their life around internally. Usually, it leads to the former, sometimes the latter. I've seen both.

It's an imperfect and biased process. But the attempt is usually made because HR fears unjustified termination lawsuits despite the "at will" employee status of just about everyone.

Unless they've tried to hack the company's servers for private data, I've never seen anyone fired on the spot without the above process unfolding. Maybe your experience differs?

PS I also think Charles Manson and The Unabomber were unambiguously guilty. That doesn't change my opinion that they deserved the trial they got.

PPS If as amyjess seemingly suggests that female professors at MIT repeatedly filed complaints against him and nothing happened, well then carry on Twitter mob, good job, seriously.

> I think your understanding of the tech industry is rather unlike mine.

RMS isn't an employee of the Tech industry. He's a university something (visiting professor, I think, but not a tenured or official faculty position). Members of the tech industry are also unusually privileged in this regard. Ask a line cook or an employee at a department store if they're given a PIP if they are underperforming. And again, by all accounts, it is possible, and even likely, that there was such a process spurred on by the twitter mob. So its not clear to me what your complaint is. To address it, let me be more explicit: What would you like MIT to have done differently in this situation?

As I see it, they have a few options. They could of course not fire stallman. We agree this is unacceptable. Objectively he deserves to be fired. They could have already fired him, this is perhaps the best solution but requires time travel or foresight MIT lacks. I guess this suggests MIT hasn't yet developed that technology or skill. They could wait to fire him, which costs them PR, and potentially causes others to resign, for no gain (they're going to fire him). Or they could do what they did: fire him now. Again I wonder: what are you complaining about?

> PS I also think Charles Manson and The Unabomber were unambiguously guilty. That doesn't change my opinion that they deserved the trial they got.

You're conflating being fired from a job and being imprisoned, or in Manson's case, sentenced to die. Those two things aren't remotely comparable.

You might want to look into the story of Harris Fogel. He was a tenured professor who was unceremoniously terminated for seemingly correctable or even unintentional behavior. He's suing.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/04/former-photog...

Stallman OTOH didn't even have tenure. The bigger story for me is if repeated complaints of sexual harassment (leg grabbing etc) went nowhere until now. That's unacceptable and I suddenly side with the Twitter mob in that case because if so he's had his due process already. And in that case, not only is he an ass, but he probably drove a lot of women out of the field and that can't be undone.

> there is quite a bit of documentation and process involved in terminating anyone

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

No. They say, "Ralph, pack your stuff. You're gone." Hell, I've been laid off via a Jabber message.

> The problem with this fear of "cancel culture" (which as others have mentioned is really just "holding powerful people accountable when they do bad things culture")

That's, perhaps unintentional, misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what people worried about it mean by it. The problem with "cancel culture" is the propensity to "shoot first, ask questions later", the doling out of punishment grossly unproportional to the crime. Like in this case - ruining one's entire career for the crime of being pedantic and tactless on a semi-public mailing list[0]. Or, in another, overhearing a joke in a private conversation between two people and making a social media mess that resulted in termination of the joker.

The problem with "cancel culture" isn't the part where it aims to hold people accountable for their behavior. The problem is with the mechanism, which involves setting off a chain reaction. There's the wronged or felt-offended party and initial outrage, which gets amplified as the stories get reshared and republished, usually accruing misrepresentations and outright lies in the process, until the reaction fizzles out in a day or three, and punishment happens. You'll note here that the final impact is not correlated with the scale of the initial wrongdoing, but with how many people get outraged how fast, and how far they reshare, all of which is moderated by how misleading can the story be made and by what else is currently on the news.

I think it isn't fair to dismiss concerns of people worried that "holding people into account" - not just powerful ones, but regular ones too - increasingly often involves attempts at setting off a social equivalent of an ad-hoc, hastly-made fission bomb.

--

[0] - Yes, there's apparently patterns of worse behavior going back many years. But pulling the trigger in the middle of one of the bigger scandals in our industry, that's awfully convenient and points towards the actual reason not being related to past behavior.

> the doling out of punishment grossly unproportional to the crime. Like in this case - ruining one's entire career for the crime of being pedantic and tactless on a semi-public mailing list

The person I was discussing with agrees that Stallman's actions and history, combined, merited his resignation or removal. Yet they used the phrase "cancel culture" anyway.

Please don't blame anyone but Stallman for ruining his career. His history of pedophilia-apology, his history of acting badly, possibly to the level of harassment, around women at MIT, and recently his need to "well-acktually" statutory rape ruined his career.

> You'll note here that the final impact is not correlated with the scale of the initial wrongdoing, but with how many people get outraged how fast, and how far they reshare, all of which is moderated by how misleading can the story be made and by what else is currently on the news.

No, I don't note that. Pressure was put on MIT leadership by women at MIT, women who had historically been ignored when they raised similar issues about the same person in the past. As MIT said, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

> that's awfully convenient and points towards the actual reason not being related to past behavior.

No it doesn't. It points to the trigger not being past behavior, with which I fully agree. It says nothing about the scale of the reaction by MIT or the FSF. Those were without a doubt informed by a pattern of behavior.

> Yet they used the phrase "cancel culture" anyway.

Perhaps because his resignation/removal didn't happen as a direct result of the combined history of transgressions, but only after someone took a fresh, minor offense and blew it out of proportion, so that it ended up in mass media. There's a difference between resigning (or being forced to) because of a pattern of bad behavior, and that plus having your name in the Forbes under a headline that contains a lie.

> Those were without a doubt informed by a pattern of behavior.

If this issue didn't blow up across the whole Internet, do you think they'd terminate him now?

I'll just quote oneshot908:

> If as amyjess seemingly suggests that female professors at MIT repeatedly filed complaints against him and nothing happened, well then carry on Twitter mob, good job, seriously.

And add that it doesn't matter. If it takes a twitter mob to force MIT to finally act ethically and remove a person with a history of bad behavior, good thing twitter mob. The solution to your concern is simple: institutions should be more proactive about self policing. If RMS had been fired 10 years ago, this mob would have no reason to exist.

That's fair.

> shoot first, ask questions later

Oh my God, no. Stallman has been a problem for years. Shooting first and asking questions later is the exact opposite of the problem.

There has never been 'due process' when it comes to a private companies decisions regarding hiring or firing. Should we trust the government to make that decision for a private organization?

That's one of the purposes of HR. Watch any corporate harassment training video if you don't believe me.

TLDR: the accusation of harassment is 100% determined by the accuser. The determination of whether harassment occurred OTOH is decided by HR after judging the merits (or lack thereof) of the case.

I see no reason why MIT shouldn't have proceeded similarly. And while you might argue that's not 100% impartial, that's a lot better than a Twitter mob (to me at least).

Given the piles of video and text of Stallman being Stallman, and the "Hot Ladies" bit on his office door, do you really think they would have high-fived his conduct and told him to carry on? I'm cynical, but I'm not that cynical.

Or let's put this another way. The Unabomber and Charles Manson got their due process. Are you saying Stallman is worse than both of them? So I'm guessing you guys downvoting me no longer believe in our legal system? That'll end well I'm sure.

His sexually-inappropriate behavior towards women has been well-known for years. MIT has chosen to not do anything about it. The truth is that if HR thinks they can sweep something under the table to protect their superstars, they will.

https://twitter.com/corbett/status/994012399656042496

https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265

https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/d5dxf3/stal...

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/d5dxf3/stal...

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/d5dxf3/stal...

When it's this widely known that he likes to creep on women, the only thing that makes sense is that HR has had plugs in their ears the whole time.

That business card is wildly inappropriate I agree and I love the bit about the plants. Is there a story I'm missing here where complaints were filed and nothing was done? That would change my viewpoint 180 degrees here if so. Because that means the guy's behavior was repeatedly and officially pointed out to him and he IDGAFed the advice. It also seems like an even bigger story than Stallman himself on par with GOOG's behavior the past 5 years.

PS The Kelsey Merkley talk is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y0FuH5FNCo

Do you think it's fair to be fired, should someone spin a social media storm against you? Do you think this dynamic becoming increasingly frequent is healthy for society?

That depends. If there are valid reasons for me to be fired, (as there were in this case), yes. Irrespective of any social media storm, I'd fire an employee who defended paedophilia or excused rape, statutory or otherwise.

As a business owner, if I felt that an employees continued employment was a net negative for my profitability, I'd be forced to let them go. Perhaps I could keep them for a while, but that's the case.

Yes, I think powerful people facing consequences for doing and saying absolutely abysmal things is a net good for society. Going from no, to some, in egregious cases, accountability is great. RMS shouldn't get a pass for this. Especially not since he's done the same thing before. Especially since now it's concrete and deals with real people and not just abstract ideas.

The threat of an abstract "you could get fired too for saying a truly terrible thing" falls flat because, well, I don't make a habit of doing that. You'd have better luck claiming that I benefit from people making statements that could get them mobbed. But that too is unconvincing: people who I benefit from sharing their views are pushed out anyway via structural dynamics, often due to the things powerful people who don't face consequences do and say.

And then of course, it's not like my life, or his would be ruined. Damore is, as I understand it, gainfully employed and mostly out of the public eye.

I'll ask my questions again since you didn't answer: what due process does one deserve before being fired? What of that did Stallman not receive?

> Irrespective of any social media storm, I'd fire an employee who defended paedophilia or excused rape, statutory or otherwise.

That's fair. However in this case, his "eccentric" views were widely known for years in the FS/OS community. It took a media shitstorm to turn that into a firing offence, which tells you it's not about the content of the views.

> As a business owner, if I felt that an employees continued employment was a net negative for my profitability, I'd be forced to let them go.

That's fair too, and similar argument can be made for a non-profit. At best all I could accuse the various organizations that disassociated with RMS is that they lack backbone and yield to pressure, or try to capitalize on the outrage, but that's not a problem.

Market entities do what they do. But they wouldn't have to, if the story wasn't spun. It's not the e-mails themselves that ended his career, it's how they were fed to the media and then blew up there - especially as this story shows how the reporting doesn't even have to be truthful; lying in a headline and not linking to primary source is standard journalism nowadays.

> The threat of an abstract "you could get fired too for saying a truly terrible thing" falls flat because, well, I don't make a habit of doing that. You'd have better luck claiming that I benefit from people making statements that could get them mobbed. But that too is unconvincing: people who I benefit from sharing their views are pushed out anyway via structural dynamics, often due to the things powerful people who don't face consequences do and say.

Today me, tomorrow you. Each of us has said something that could be misconstrued into a fireable offence, and the problem is that structural dynamics and mob sentiments change; if you accept people being labeled as undesirable for just expressing an atypical opinion and attempts at removing such undesirables from the society, don't be surprised if five years from now it happens to someone you like.

> And then of course, it's not like my life, or his would be ruined. Damore is, as I understand it, gainfully employed and mostly out of the public eye.

Damore is young, and its firing was on such weak grounds that there was a lot of people who wouldn't mind him on board once publicity died down. (At least that was just after the firing; I haven't followed his life since, but I hear that he ended up radicalizing; wonder if the mob ended up being the cause.) RMS is AFAIK 66, and haven't worked in software in 40 years. His job was essentially being an icon of the movement, and now that this was destroyed, he's essentially unemployable. At best, he'll retire.

> I'll ask my questions again since you didn't answer: what due process does one deserve before being fired? What of that did Stallman not receive?

I purposefully didn't use the words "due process". Anyway, I'll answer with a counterquestion: what protections do people deserve from being killed in a flood or an avalanche? Floods and avalanches kill people, that's what they do. And yet protections are instituted so that innocent people don't find themselves unexpectedly in harm's way. Similarly, companies fire people who become a net loss to them, but in recent years, there's been an uptick of cases where someone's private or semi-public conversations have been misconstrued and blogged or Tweeted about with the express purpose of causing a public outrage and ruin the career of that someone. Maybe we need to talk about protections from such events, and even focus on the people who push others under the train because they find their opinions offensive.

So, you're saying anybody should be able to avoid being fired simply by whipping up a social media storm against themselves? I can see a lot of possible abuses here.

A social media storm around you rarely works to your advantage. Sure, if you're lucky enough (spinning up a drama isn't a sure-fire thing), you may avoid getting fired until the ruckus dies down and reporters move to a different story (i.e. couple of days, maybe weeks), but your life at work becomes a living hell as you're now a persona non grata and good luck finding another job, where sane employers would prefer to avoid someone with history of spinning public outrage against companies for leverage.

To continue with military analogies, social media storms are like gas weapons. They're effective if launched at a distant enemy (though if you're not careful, the wind may carry it back towards you), and not something a force would use around itself when engaged in combat.

Are you really comparing the murder of aristocrats to someone getting fired for defending a pedophile?

Do you really find murder to be equivalent to this?

Do you think that Stallman's life was ruined. I, and I guess lots of people, will still highly value his contributions. But at the same time I think his comments warranted moving on and passing the torch of leadership of the FSF. It is very different to work as a regular software engineer or individual contributor, than as the figurehead of a foundation. I wonder if he will still get invitations to be a speaker, and if he does, if he will be willing to do it, at least for a time.

I rather wonder the opposite. Not "what will become of Stallman, without the FSF", but "what will become of the FSF, without Stallman". Will the FSF still have the public forum it once had without Stallman using his public speaking and his standing in the free software community on their behalf? It is perfectly conceivable that Stallman will move on to bigger and better things and the FSF will sink into obscurity.

Is nobody else at the FSF capable of public advocacy? It seems to me that Stallman's unique ability was formulating the FSF's ideals in the first place, but once the platform is laid out, anyone who holds those ideals ought to be at least somewhat capable of promoting them. Even before this particular incident, it seems rms was not exactly well liked as a spokesman.

Well. The thing about these public speaking engagements of his at universities and stuff: There is image transfer going on there from a software developer celebrity to a spokesperson on copyright and related public policy issues. (Like when Bono speaks on environmental issues).

I went to see a Stallman lecture when I was at university too. They had booked the biggest lecture theatre and it was packed. But why? If my friend comes to me and says "Hey, I'm staying late today to see a talk by random spokesperson John Doe advocating free software. Wanna join?", my reaction is going to be: "Meh." You can have that any day of the week at any university that's seen as a desirable forum for public policy debate. But: "Wanna see the guy who created emacs and a billion other bits of software every one of us uses every single day? Wanna stick around afterwards for conference food and exchange a few sentences of smalltalk so that, for the rest of your life, you can tell people you ACTUALLY MET HIM?" Then "Hell yeah, count me in!"

They won't see another penny from me. I assume a large amount of people will feel the same. Can't wait for Stallmans next project, I will be donating to that instead.

notice that the FSF has not emitted an opinion yet regarding its previous president. I assume that they are still on good terms altogether.

Honestly? I hope not, but the guy suddenly and unexpectedly got kicked out from FSF and MIT, two institutions that form the core of his life - and I imagine self-image. And now other organizations related to the movement he started publicly disassociated from him. That had to hit hard, and as 'seanmcdirmid points out, he's also 66 and essentially unemployable now.

So if you take everything a man has in life - everything he anchors his identity to - and destroy it, and leave little to no chance of regaining it, what do you think happens? Personally, I am worried.

This is what consequences for shitty behavior looks like. It's the same if someone who has a stalwart career suddenly assaults the secretary at the Christmas party. Sure he's a hell of a lawyer, but he's become more of a liability than an asset. It's capitalism, and self determination.

Ok, let me be 100% frank.

If RMS commits suicide because his life was ruined after someone lied and spun his linguistic pedanticism as support for sexual crimes, if that happens, will you come back and say that "this is what consequences for shitty behavior look like"?

Also, his wrong is again his language pedanticism - comparing it to actual assault like you did just now is disingenuous and precisely what the crowd did to RMS.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

And it's even worse than just that, since that's him freely associating in response to an article containing this:

> The party said it wanted to cut the legal age for sexual relations to 12 and eventually scrap the limit altogether.

and

> The broadcast of pornography should be allowed on daytime television, with only violent pornography limited to the late evening, according to the party. Toddlers should be given sex education and youths aged 16 and up should be allowed to appear in pornographic films and prostitute themselves.

Interesting that you're using the same process - threats of suicide - that Stallman has used to get dates.

Didn't know that. I guess I keep discovering new things about RMS.

we already have a word for it - mob mentality. I am not saying that it's the right way to go about things, but it's certainly not a violation of free speech

> it bypasses the court system

That's why it's called the court of public opinion.

I've never heard that phrase used in a positive light.

Actually it's about ethics in computer science email groups.

In a way it is. I propose that taking someone's messages from an e-mail group and publicly spinning them with intent to cause public outrage to force their employer to fire them is deeply unethical and should be discouraged regardless of and orthogonally to the content of messages in question.

There is a group of people on-line who like to point to the "paradox of intolerance" as a justification for Internet lynch mobs. But this paradox works both ways. What it says is that society needs to combat people who label others as undesirables, intending to remove them from said society. But if someone fighting the intolerants ends up labeling tangential people as undesirable and unleashing pitchforks on them, that person is an intolerant too, and needs to be stopped as well.

Gah. No. Keeping communications compartmented and secret is how creeps keep on creeping. If you write an email to an email list you don't have an expectation of privacy.

I'm not arguing for keeping communications private. I'm arguing for not trying to trigger a social media chain reaction with a general public, with an intent to harm someone, every time you felt angry reading that someone's post.

There's a difference between information being available to the general public, and putting a spotlight on that information.

Lack of proportion is the problem for me. Mr.Stallman could be censured - but again the people went after his position/job for what are at the best mis-guided or flawed statements.

If Mr.Stallman were to be in Epstein's Island well that is whole level of any issue.

Committing Rape and Questioning the logic behind defining the "act" of rape are not the same.

A comment further up this chain explains that SFC and GNOME were tired of Stallman’s tendency to speak first and worry about bigger picture later.

Basically, looks like this situation was a long time coming.

Or, it was annoying but tolerable, until an opportunity presented itself to score virtue points while having past problematic behavior to use for plausible deniability.

It really wasn't tolerable though. As much as I deeply respect Dr Stallman's work, he has a long history of reputationally troubling statements:

https://stallman.org/cgi-bin/showpage.cgi?path=/archives/200...

https://www.stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html#05%20Jun...

I meant this technically: it was tolerable because it was tolerated. They could've disassociated from him after any of his troubling statements. They didn't.

It is, perhaps, plausible that he's a popular enough individual that they were worried about a mob reaction, if you will, if they cut ties with him because he did anything short of try to defend rape.

But to be clear, that's still a bed of his own making.

Politics. He disregards politics and politicians and they eventually had enough weaponry to remove the threat his disregarding their political aims was to them. Nothing more.

It's always interesting to me when people try to downplay politics as somehow "less than" the technological and theoretical aspects of software engineering. I wonder what those people imagine software is for.

The concept of “free speech” does not begin and end with the 1st amendment. There is also free speech as an instrumental value.

The instrumental interpretation of free speech is more limiting than the philosophical one.

Source: http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/03/instrumental...

Yes, and it is also broader than just the first amendment. Part of being able to maintain a free society is having cultural norms that do not require employers to fire someone just because they said something that others disagree with or find objectionable.

The first amendment is really of no use if expressing opinions outside the norm causes you to be fired by social convention. In that case, only being independently wealthy affords one any freedom.

In this case, even founding his own organization based on his own values did not protect him from being fired.

So if MIT were a state school, would you say free speech is under attack?

Certainly they would have less grounds for firing him, but there would likely be a court case challenge if they chose to do so.

But do you feel free speech is genuinely under attack in the one case, and genuinely not in another?

Does a person or institution have to be literally owned lock, stock and barrel by the public to act in a public capacity?

Yes - The first amendment is as follows:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In that vein, I would see the government limiting the ability for someone to speak out against anything as a violation of their Free Speech/First Amendment rights.

As written, this Amendment applies only to Congress, but it seems you reasonably infer that if the right of free speech is a limitation on Congress it should apply to state and local governments as well. Why wouldn’t it apply to other institutions operating in a public capacity, or operating with a public charter?

It has been "incorporated" to cover state and local laws by supreme court decisions, and that has not happened with places that are merely public spaces, and, in fact, the opposite has occurred. For example, you can be removed from a shopping mall if you refuse to leave when asked, and you were asked to leave because you were wearing a shirt that politely expressed a political opinion that either security or the management disagreed with. Unfortunately that is the constitution we currently have in the US.

Not sure why you say "Unfortunately that is the constitution we currently have in the US." after describing what is more a matter of how well we are living up to it.

A university is not a merely public place, but rather one which enjoys a charter from the state -- and numerous benefits as far as funding, taxation, access to information and research opportunities -- as an educational institution.

I think markets on private land like malls should have many of the same freedoms we enjoy in public spaces. Of course I think universities should as well. It’s unfortunate that in the second half of the 20th century we put so much of our public life on private property.

But the question isn't if part of the First Amendment is under attack, so why bring it up?

This is horribly incorrect. Freedom of Speech is a larger concept outside of how it is (and can even possibly be) codified in law. The US Bill of Rights is phrased in terms of a restriction on the government, because that's the only line that can be straightforwardly drawn within the framework of the Constitution.

An example of the concept being applied to quasi-public entities, with enough generality for the legal realm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

I value free speech in that I value the government's inability to limit anyone's expression with only a few reasonable exceptions.

I don't take "free speech" to mean anyone can say anything without consequence. The government has a whole lot of power and it comes with limits like free speech.

That doesn't mean that people in my employ can say awful things and I should just ignore it.

Free speech doesn't extend to being protected from consequences for how you express yourself.

If you can't express yourself on certain topics, there's a chilling effect where people just don't talk about them and no further progress can be made. There are now plenty of topics like this including gender [edit: I should specify that it's fine to talk about gender, but only if you have certain permissible positions on the topic]. This list used to include other things like being pro gay rights, pro equality for races or gender - but at least you were able to have those conversations without fear of being lynched and society moved forward. You should be allowed to voice a viewpoint that's against the mainstream viewpoint without risk of making yourself unemployable.

It's atrocious that our academic institutions, which used to be a bulwark of free-speech are leading the charge here.

Stallman made questionable, but reasoned statements. He perhaps should not have made them in a work forum, but the consequences here are way out of proportion to the "crime".

You've been throwing a lot of stones here, but I'm sure you've held or expressed viewpoints just as questionable at some time in your life. I know I have. Should you now be denied the right to make a living if they come to light?

Stallman's controversial opinions stood for ages when they were hypothetical.

But at this moment in time, they've intersected with the real-world activities of organizations that he has considerable influence over. He seems to have prioritized theoretical point-making over the organizational necessity of addressing people's concerns.

Running things and debating things are two different activities, and for Stallman those things are currently in conflict. Maybe he's tempermentally incapable of dealing with conflicting imperatives; in any case he seems to have taken the absolute route to resignation.

I think this is a better argument than merely talking about the content of the speech. That said the question is whether the punishment matches the severity of the crime. There was no due process here so we'll never know for sure.

Stallman is all about being technical. Technically, he resigned. So what due process was denied to him?

He was forced to resign. Holding a gun to one's head and telling them to recite a confession doesn't make it authentic.

I don't want to pretend he had no choice in the decision, but to pretend he did if of his own free volition is false.

You mean like how Stallman pretended that the underage girl that was on Epstein's island had sex with Minsky of her own free volition?

That was not Stallman's statement. In fact, Stallman's argument rests on the foundational belief that the girl was forced to service Minsky.

He reasons that because it would have been in the best interest of Epstein not to disclose the harm that's being done to the girl, she would have been convinced to present herself to Minsky as willing. Thus it is argued that Minsky might have had a sexual encounter without having realized that the girl is being forced to do this. In such a scenario, it is proper to accuse Epstein of harm, but wrongful to accuse Minsky of sexual assault.

All participants of the discussion should refer to the original MIT email thread and not base their opinions on secondary information. There is also a quote from a scientist who names himself as an eyewitness and clears Minsky of wrongdoing. He was not listed by the girl as present during the event and it may be too early to accept his words as the truth. However, if the girl's account corroborates his, then even the harshest critic should be obliged to exonerate Stallman's statement. It reminds me of the role of the lead in "Twelve Angry Men".

No. Comparing the two acts is uncharitable. The 17 year old was exploited and faced a much worse wrong. Stallman was wronged in my opinion but of course it isn't comparable to it.

Honor the facts please. First Minsky was approached by Guiffre at the island, and Minsky turned her down. Guiffre was already 18 at that time according to one statement. So both accusations on Minsky needed to be defended, which RMS did.

There was no sex, no rape, no violation of age of consent, just a lot of slanderous allegations by folks who had no idea about the background, and didn't read about it.

On the other hand the students allegations on their Facebook event had a proper basis, against MIT management. But this had nothing to do with RMS defense of Minsky.

There is rarely 'due process' when it comes to private institutions hiring or firing. Are you advocating for the government to intervene on behalf of citizens before allowing a company to make a financial decision?

This is an aside, but if you want my personal opinion, I wish workers had more power on their side in both hiring and firing (firing particularly). It need not take the form of the government intervening directly but regulation can't hurt.

I don't disagree with you - Most labor laws in this country are horribly skewed in favor of the employer

You should seek to form a union at your place of employment. That's what they are for.

Do you really think that no one has suffered for having conversations pro gay rights, civil rights, gender equality, and all those other previously inadmissible topics? No, they spoke publicly, and paid the (unfortunate) consequences of the day ... but they carried on because it was the right thing to do.

What exactly is it that we're trying to "express ourselves" about here? what "progress" are we trying to make on old men having sex with young girls?

If there's change to be made, then someone is going to have to weather the cultural storm that speaking out about it brings in order to bring change. If it's not worth weathering that storm, then maybe it's not worth having that discussion in the first place.

Of course not, it's my position that there shouldn't be such serious consequences for having a dissenting opinion. Minority opinions are in fact the only way we make progress in science our society. Everything accepted now was once a fringe idea.

There is a real conversion to be had about our statutory rape laws. They're absurd in some aspects. That's beside the point.

> Of course not, it's my position that there shouldn't be such serious consequences for having a dissenting opinion

Do you think an advocate for paedophilia and child pornography should be able to pick up a job in a childcare centre or primary school?

Are you really saying Minsky is a paedophile? You are exaggerating the situation here unfairly.

Stallman used to argue that 'voluntarily paedophilia' should be decriminalized, cf quotes from 2003 and 2006[1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/d59r46/richard...

Yes, I know. But that's not what we're talking about now. We're taking about the objectionable comments he made now, rather than his long history of objectionable opinions. It probably affected the decision to fire him though.

That really is what we're talking about now, try as people might to ignore it. This was the last of a long string of statements and actions that Stallman had been repeatedly warned about.

Well, at the very least the Software Freedom Conservancy was talking about past behaviour, as did various other commentators.

You might be right that widowlark's comment was in reference to the Minsky defense specifically - I didn't read the exchange that led up to the comment that closely, and took its opening line about minority opinions as a reference to pedophilia apologia in general.

I want everyone to understand the medium his comments were made in.

This was not just a "work forum", it was a mailing list containing thousands of people in the MIT computer science community, including professors, researchers, administrative assistants, graduate students, and hundreds of undergraduates.

This isn't just a matter of his comments being inappropriate, it's also about him arguing them in an effectively public forum.

But Stallman replied to an email advertising a gathering to protest MIT's handling of the Epstein scandal.

I have no idea if that sort of political email is common in the mailing list, but if it is appropriate to share/advocate the protest, surely it should also appropriate to discuss the topic?

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6405929-091320191420...

The original poster on the thread even raises a question of the ethics of having the discussion on csail-related before Stallman even gets involved.

I think people are missing the context of the level of shitshow that’s going on at MIT CSAIL right now with Epstein, Ito, Minsky, and now Stallman.

When the original story blew up over Media Lab and the Administration lied that they didn’t know anything about donations to Epstein, I can only imagine the chaos.

It's my understanding that a protest against Minsky was being advertised on the same mailing list. Was that an inappropriate medium for the protest to be advertised as well?

>He perhaps should not have made them in a work forum

Look, that's the reason he's gone. So you said it yourself. That was his decision.

You would think universities would be a little more lax than a Fortune 500 company when it comes to freedom of expression . They certainly have been in many other aspects. You can rail all you want against the oppressive patriarchy and talk about toxic masculinity, but to question the statutory rape laws (which are different in every country, so clearly there are different viewpoints on the subject) - that's unpardonable?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs. Warn him to take the discussion elsewhere and then wait for the outrage storm to blow over. People have such short attention spans in these social media days anyway.

> You would think universities would be a little more lax

They were. A casual look at Stallman's history will show you that his views (and behaviors), as well as his discussion of them in a public forum, are not by any means new or unknown within the community. They _have_ been ignored for a very long time by the university, the FSF, etc, right until he chose to take this particular moment in time to repeat his views, specifically in connection with a recent scandal.

I think that this _is_ sad in the sense that had folks been stricter with him earlier on, perhaps he would have understood why it was not a good idea to continue doing that, and avoided making these specific public comments at this specific time. It's really hard for me to believe that no one has ever _tried_ to tell him to (essentially) "take the discussion elsewhere" about this stuff, so I have to assume that people did, but he did not think that he had to follow their advice: he relied on being able to say what he liked, wherever he liked, with no real consequences.

And until now, he was correct. But today, people no longer believe that it's ok to be heralded as a pillar of the community (which as both the president of the FSF and the holder of an honorary position at MIT, he is) and be able to say whatever you'd like in a public forum. And enough people believe this today to make these institutions be unable to just ignore his behavior indefinitely.

> so I have to assume that people did

Yes, and that's basically why there is a "CSAIL minus RMS" mailing list.

The great thing about this country is that others cannot define your own tolerances or lack thereof. The university had it's tolerance tested, and Stallman lost. If you don't like it, I encourage you to speak out like you are now. But it's not unfair, and it's not a violation of free speech or thought.

So if someone starts firing open borders advocates or basic income activist would that be ok as well? Following your argument you could say a given company had its tolerance, it was tested and those people lost.

Firing people for political views, especially expressed in coherent not aggressive way is certainly violation of free speech and thought. It's also currently legal in US.

It would be likely legal, though the companies would probably face backlash from the public. That drives a lot of these decisions.

> So if someone starts firing open borders advocates or basic income activist would that be ok as well?

Depends. Had they repeatedly harassed women in work contexts over the preceding several decades?

If they repeatedly harass women in work contexts they should be fired for that. Waiting until they say something controversial implies the organisation was just fine with the harassment.

Now you're getting it. Next time fire the superstar when multiple women complain, not just when one of the complaints goes viral.

> if someone starts firing open borders advocates or basic income activist would that be ok as well?

Not all opinions are the same.

Advocating for open borders and basic income are fairly straightforward political opinions. So is being a member of the republican or democratic party, or saying you support lower taxes, or even that you voted for Trump. Had Stallman resigned over reactions to calmly expressing these type of opinions, the fallout would be very different, and I suspect most people would say something similar to what you've said, and side with him.

But if a person repeatedly says, in public, that our definition of pedophilia as a necessarily-bad thing isn't right, and that people are being too hard on the billionaires who recently got in trouble for this -- even if they do so calmly and coherently -- they are espousing views that many people believe would lead to actual harm to actual human beings. The same would be true for someone who openly supports fascism, or calls for the deportation of Hispanic-looking citizens (I want to avoid a straw-man here, so to be clear I am absolutely not saying Stallman supports these views; they're just examples).

In that case, don't other people have a right to react negatively to that?

As for the consequences of that reaction, that is somewhat proportional to the person's position. If that person was a gas station clerk who, outside of work hours, had posted something on a forum, then we'd again be having a different discussion. But the positions of President of the FSF and Visiting Scientist at MIT carry a lot more weight. Putting someone in these positions who not only holds but eagerly volunteers these types of views is seen as an implicit endorsement of these views by the FSF/MIT -- _especially_ when he chooses to broadcast these views directly to his work community, directly in defense of someone at the center of a recent scandal.

> Firing people for [their] views ... is certainly violation of free speech and thought

Stallman is free to _think_ what he wants. He's even free to _say_ what he wants -- he was never censured afaik. What he is no longer free to do is to continue doing so from the position of President of the FSF or a Visiting Scientist at MIT. Should an institution (such as MIT or the FSF) be forced to protect its personnel from all consequences for individually sharing _any_ opinion in any public forum? I don't think they should.

The thing is that there are many people out there who think that enforcing borders leads to actual harm to human beings and treat it as human right issue (detention camps etc.). On the other hand there are people who think open borders policy leads to actual harm to human beings as well (criminals getting to the country and hurting citizens etc.).

The line between fairly straightforward political opinion and what some people consider extreme is fairly thin in today climate. This is the case with Stallman's recent posting as well. It's hard to imagine (for me!) that the expressed opinion about the usage of the word assault or questioning sensibility of age of consent laws goes beyond reasonable discourse.

You have a point about pedophilia but that's from very long time ago. He also publicity stated he was wrong and thanked people who helped him understand that. He expressed that views in the distant past as well. He wasn't as prominent by then and he did it from what I understand on his private website. One way or another having sex with 17 years olds is not pedophilia by any stretch of imagination. I consider his comments which he retracted long time ago irrelevant to current situation unless of course we consider it acceptable to dig out every controversial comment from the past to help with character assassination today.

I do think institutions schould take care to not fire people over outrage especially caused by expressing political/philosophical opinions. It's illegal in some countries and treated as common sense there. It is currently legal in US but it doesn't mean it doesn't have grave consequences for public discourse.

> Stallman made questionable, but reasoned statements.

These problematic statements were made in the context of someone who has a long, long history of upsetting, angering and offending people with bad behaviour. People in CSAIL kept plants around them because Stallman hates plants and it functioned like garlic to a vampire.

Firing him may be disproportionate to the moment, but it's overdue given the history. The guy who fired him literally said "straw that broke the camel's back."

Interesting, that's different from why I value free speech. The idea is that dissent makes good societies stronger. When you fire a dissenter, even if they're a bad person, future dissenters (some of whom are good) realize that they have no principled protection. And that's true whether you're a government or a private firm.

it's unfortunate that you value free speech in a way that it isn't protected.

I bet libertarians could get leftists on board with protecting speech with from corporate interests as long as protections also cover unionization.

I'm a leftist and I've always been on board with protecting speech. Those who don't don't know the history of the left in the US, the red scare, where the phrase "fire in a crowded theater" comes from, etc.

Free speech is generally accepted to be in the service of “political dialogue”.

In so far as Stallman was discussing the law, he was genuinely engaging in political dialogue; in so far as he was speculating about Minsky or the situation in question he was not.

To say that we can exercise speech but must face the “consequences” is just begging the question — what “consequences” are compatible with a free society? If my boss says it would be a great thing if California secedes from the Union, and I say I doubt that would go well, we rely so much on other states for water, &c, &c ... I may definitely offend him. How acceptable is it that a person be fired in that situation?

There is more to free speech than what the law says about it. No one here as far as I can see argues that forcing RMS out is illegal. People argue for the principle that you should be able to express your views without fear of losing your livelihood. The problem is that there is no universally trusted authority on what is and what isn't acceptable speech. I find what RMS said to be less outrageous than what I regularly hear from politicians in recent presidential debates. Does it mean I should start firing employees expressing those views because of "consequences" or "freedom of association"? It would lead to a tribal world where you either walk the exact line of your institution/employer/group or you're out possibly with grave consequences for your financial and family situation.

In my country it's illegal to fire people for their political views even if the employer finds them immoral and incompatible with the culture they want to foster. It's part of legal and social framework to protect freedom of expression. Freedom of expression neither starts nor end with what The Constitution says about it.

Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences. I’m free to call my girlfriend stupid every day, but I should expect the consequence of soon being single.

There are clearly mob reactions to things, but there are also clearly inappropriate speech that should have consequences.

What he said here wasn’t in isolation as some idle musing. context matters. He wasn’t talking about the theoretical of a 19 year old. He was talking about this in context of Minsky being a 74 year old man with a 17 year old girl. Maybe he wasn’t aware of the impact of his words, but that shouldn’t get him a free pass.

> Free speech while extremely important cannot be used as a blanket cover to say whatever you want and expect not to suffer consequences.

That's what Joe McCarthy and the House Committee for Un-American Activities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism) said to leftists, union organizers, communists, and others in the 1950s. Is that the kind of company progressives prefer to keep, intellectually speaking?

Apparently the only difference between progressives and conservatives is which sacred cows that they're willing to mob you for for insulting. Fellow liberals, I beg of you, take heed; progressives are not our friends.

The difference in your example is that McCarthy was a government official, attacking political ideas, making what he did an absolute violation of free speech from the perspective of the first amendment. Is this really your best example?

I wonder where progressives get the silly idea that the Enlightenment philosophers that birthed liberalism said "Punishing people for speaking is bad if the government does it but its 100% A-OK if a mob does it." Perhaps you could show us some citations?

Because people listening to the speech also have the right to react to it. Or are you saying regardless of what you say I cannot take action because of it?

Should you also have a right to misrepresent the speech while agitating for someone's termination, in order for community and news outlets to pick it up, turn misrepresentation into lies and effectively force the termination to happen?

I don't like using the word "emergence", but there is a phenomenon here that's much more than a sum of its parts, and maybe should be considered differently. There's also the element of intent.

The bitterest pill to swallow is that the main intent on the part of Vice Media et al is advertising pageviews. Maybe Bollea can pay it forward.

> Or are you saying regardless of what you say I cannot take action because of it?

"Take action", my, my, what a genteel phrase to describe ruining people's careers and personal lives. Very civilized of you. One wonders whether those crowds who stoned unbelievers in an earlier era would have simply described themselves as "taking action" as well?

The answer to bad speech is good speech, period.

I really don’t get this attitude of being able to say whatever one wants in whatever context and not have any consequences. If I’m in a position of leadership and openly discriminate again some group, especially repeatedly and consistently I should not expect to go on business as usual.

the very fact that you feel the need to use a throwaway account to make this comment is sad

Maybe they dont care what enlightenment philosophers and liberalism has to say, when it's such a broken ideology that had no problems with tolerating gross inequalities related to race and gender, and have found philosophers and philosophies to follow that are less tolerant of blatant evil.

Or maybe they both value something higher then free speech when push comes to shove. For the far left its equality and protections of the vulnerable. For the far right is race, country, tradition and religion. So that seems like a pretty big difference actually.

> You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career.

First, "lynch mob" is inappropriate and irrelevant. Given Stallman's statements, in the forum in which they were made, many reasonable employers would have fired him, with or without some "lynch mob."

Second, Stallman didn't express his views in private conversation, but rather in a forum where those views would have made it very hard for colleagues to continue working with him. If I'm X and you tell me or to Y in private conversation, "X is an idiot" or something of the sort, then that's one thing. If you say so in a forum where others can read it, then you're showing public disrespect towards colleagues, which is a fireable offense.

Here's what he could have said instead: "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" That's it. It would have expressed his point just as well, and would not have shown disrespect toward colleagues.

You are giving the mob far too much credit. It is just the fall of the dice that made them come after Stallman for what he said this time and not another. Had he said "Have we seen evidence that Minsky himself engaged in illegal activity?" it would still have been a crapshoot. The quotes are so amazingly out of context that if they were in the same mood, Vice and friends would still have quoted this as "Stallman says rape not bad".

Media are trash. Cancel culture steamrolls everything, there is no way to avoid being their target other than complete submission. You can word what you say as carefully as you like, but if they perceive that you're a good target, it won't matter one bit.

It's not about what is said, this is simply a war.

Anyone who would talk about a mob is sure to place me among the pitchfork bearers, so I'm not surprised you'd think I'm giving us too much credit. Speaking for myself, I had nothing but positive feelings towards Stallman until today, and even today I gave him the benefit of the doubt until reading his actual emails. Even then I don't hate him; I just think he acted in a way that would be considered a justified cause for dismissal by many reasonable employers. I am also saddened to see that he appeals to science while having learned nothing about a subject he seems to speak so confidently about, while ignoring decades of scholarly work by those who've dedicated their lives to seriously studying the issue. I'm surprised to learn he's like that.

But I agree it's a war. It's a war that's been waged for centuries and even millennia between the hegemony and the margins, and it's a war we'll win, because we always have (well, it's complicated, but if you want to speak in those terms, that's fine by me).

As a European I find it difficult to follow this thread.

> about a mob is sure to place me among the pitchfork bearers

Who is the we and the them?

Since it was the “alt-right” Cernovich who took down Epstein and the “alt-right” who has been making noise about him for the better part of a decade I’m guessing you are “alt-right”? But what faction does that make doubleunplussed?

In my center-left country (by European standards - so “far-left” by American standards) a normal worker couldn’t be fired for making the comments Stallman made but a spokesman of the organisation probably could be?

> between the hegemony and the margins, and it's a war we'll win

Which side do you support? From an outsiders perspective it seems like Richard Stallman is in the margin of the margins?

I don't know who Cernovich is, but in every country a leading figure who makes such statements after decades of workplace problems with women (as it turns out) would be fired.

Just as important as freedom of speech is freedom of association. If your speech is seen as extremely odious, other people have the right to cut ties with you. And if you're in a prominent officer position, the organization as a whole has a right to disassociate itself from you because of those views.

So is Stallman's speech in question here odious? At first glance, not really. But when you put it in context:

The entire brouhaha starts with a sexual predator whose actions are known to but ignored by associates because money (or equivalently, power). Stallman is defending an associate of his who is tainted by association with Epstein. In the kinder light, this defense is essentially pedantry (just rape, not sexual assault). In the harsher light, this defense is "there's nothing inherently wrong with the entire situation here."

In this situation, I think the harsher light is closer to RMS's intent. He has made statements in the past saying that he believes there is nothing inherently wrong with having sex with children (although he has now walked back those statements). In addition, he appears to have acquired a reputation as a sexual harasser among women at MIT over the past few decades.

With that context, it does look like Stallman shares a lot of attributes with "prominent people whose sexual harassment has been ignored because they're powerful people, and who is not sorry about it." And pushing him out of leadership positions because of those views is acceptable consequences in my opinion. More so because it appears to me that he doesn't appreciate how power differential may affect the ability of people to give consent, he is in a position of power, and he appears to desire consent that may be unwilling.

Completely agree with you and it makes me depressed that we are living on an age that we are giving up the imperfectness of humans in exchange for fake puritanism on a standard that cannot be achieved by anyone.

I bet everyone here has one opinion that can definitely and very quickly destroy their lives. Let people be wrong, let them speak, let them think ... We can then convince and converge into a common good. Cancelling the guy that gave his life for the cause is appalling and is showing how evil social media is.

... MIT fired him not Facebook - you are not required to have perfect opinions that everyone agrees with to survive in this world, you are just required to voice them appropriately and at the correct times, which Stallman did not. Stop pretending that Free Speech is something that applies to anything other than citizens having protection from governments

The problem is the witch hunting. Invariably the wrongthink gets "leaked" to the bottom-dweller clickbait outfits like Vice or Slate who then feed it into the court of public opinion. I agree that there are a great number of things I shouldn't say at work, but that also doesn't mean I'm okay with the threat of being very publicly outed if I do. To me it's very close to the "well if you have nothing to hide" argument.

> appropriately and at the correct times

Where and by whom is appropriateness and timeliness determined?

private institutions, and mostly at their whim and discretion

So if it was Berkeley (a state school), he should have not been fired?

Yes, this has already been addressed. He would have been more protected if it was a state school.

> But it is also incongruous that somehow if she was a year older it would be ok.

It probably wouldn't be okay. She was coerced and trafficked, and many laws exist to make having sex with those people illegal.

In some places it's illegal even if you don't know they were coerced or trafficked.

So what is the difference between this and the way Eich was treated for his donation to Prop 8?

I'm not saying I agree with Eich - far from it. Seeing as an awful lot of people on this very thread were outraged by his behaviour, it strikes me as being contrary to be more understanding towards RMS for what is arguably far more heinous simply because they admire him more. Both Gates and Jobs are/were relentlessly and repeatedly pilloried for their "immoral" approach to business and freedom, but to question what constitutes rape or a suggestion that paedophilia is harmless is forgiven readily, because the individual "likes" the perpetrator is abhorrent.

> Seeing as an awful lot of people on this very thread were outraged by [Eich's] behaviour

I can't speak for everyone, but while I strongly disagree with his (implicit) views on gay marriage (I even protested against Prop 8 leading up to it passing, though I unfortunately wasn't quite old enough to vote against it at the time), I also was - and still am - pretty harshly critical of him being pressured to resign from the organization he co-founded solely because of his political leanings. He was the right leader for Mozilla, despite his politics; while it's possible that maybe he was some raging egotist bringing down Mozilla and running counter to its mission, I've yet to see a whole lot of evidence for that.

Meanwhile, Stallman is well-documented to be abrasive, uncooperative, and egotistical even to the people who supported him, and while this specific incident was rather benign, I can understand it as a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation. His dogmatic views - while sometimes absolutely spot-on - were also often at the detriment of the free software movement (e.g. the hard stance against OpenBSD's "blobs", and the hard-line stances against non-FOSS programs on FOSS operating systems despite multiple GNU subprojects releasing supported builds for Windows).

Stallman, in other words, was to the FSF as Ballmer was to Microsoft in the sense of being both passionate about their organizations and also being the reasons why their organizations were hemorrhaging influence. Ballmer's departure allowed Microsoft to regain its footing, shake off some of its more toxic dogmas, and become actually decent(-ish; shoving ads down the throats of paying Windows users is pretty scummy, but other parts of Microsoft have actually started to be better members of the broader tech ecosystem). Hopefully Stallman's departure will have a similar effect for the FSF.

Source or STFU? When did he say "paedophilia is harmless"? You can't even have a conversation about paedophilia in reference to a 17 year old without seriously going off topic.

"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."

https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%20...

That's a sickening viewpoint. It's from ten years ago, so I hope his views have changed since then. I'll still defend his right to say that, as long as it's outside the venue of his work. And if a preponderance of evidence were to support him, I'd have to accept that view, as much as I disagree with it. I strongly think he's wrong though and the evidence is against him.

I bet some people at MIT felt that view was sickening as well, and don't want their institution to be associated with that view. And actively want to show their community that they oppose it. I wonder how they could do that effectively...? Oh wait, fire the guy who said it! Brilliant.

Yeah, if he has a history of saying things like that, it's a much more understandable reaction.

However, as a university it still seems like dangerous territory. I think communists are just as sickening, in light of the horrors of the twentieth century. Should I fire them if I'm making those decisions at MIT. Like if a professor said the gulags are a worthwhile evil on the road to socialist utopia? Is it really necessary to end a person's career when you disagree with them on matters unrelated to their work?

This comes down to your allowance and interpretation on self-determination. There are consequences for every action - sometimes positive, sometimes negative. MIT made a calculation and rolled the dice. Most people are pleased, but it just as easily could have gone the other way. Every organization and individual has this right - you're essentially asking if its okay to make this choice if the outcome is negative - yes it is. Thats up to the individual to decide. Stallman made his choice and so did MIT

They did: https://stallman.org/notes/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September_20...

It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.

It did: https://stallman.org/archives/2019-jul-oct.html#14_September...

It looks like it was just an ignorant thought from a decade ago that had long since been corrected. Not a strongly-held viewpoint.

> as long as it's outside the venue of his work

But it wasn't outside of his work. It was on an email list whose recipients included 17- and 18-year old undergraduates.

Here is my conspiracy theory. It is completely hypothetical and unsourced and I really hope it is untrue, but any scenario should be considered.

Brendan Eich is a shill controlled by Google and US goverment agencies. The social media mob attack on him was actually a planned marketing campaign with aim to create an image of an independent, anti-establishment and alternative leader.

His actual goal is to create a "controlled opposition" for Google Chrome and a replacement for Tor Browser. Brave project is needed by Google in order to avoid antitrust charges from the EU when Chrome reaches ~90% market share. It will be still selling user data to Google and it will contain TOR backdoors known only to the US agencies (which will be easier to hide in proprietary browser).

Oh please. We use torproxy unmodified from upstream so the risk is fingerprinting — which is why we warn people looking for Tor-level network privacy on fear of life and limb to use Tor directly. Tor private windows in Brave are for users who should not have to find a trustworthy VPN to cope with untrusted wifi hotspots and the like.

The “selling user data” line betrays ignorance of how data is valued. Google doesn’t sell bulk data to advertisers, it gives API access to ad exchange operations that leak data but not the whole user profile, especially not the valuable correlations, brand loyalties, and shopping searches that run for weeks in case of cars or other major purchases.

Brave builds client only alternatives for anonymous donations and private ads that pay the user 70% of gross. We are making this verifiable on chain in the next stage of our BAT roadmap. If we defected and stole money or data, we would thus be caught and roasted into the ground by our lead users. This is by design.

Last thing: I am hardly an anti establishment leader. I am too busy running a startup, trying to get revenue to cross over based on flat and small/standard fees that leave the big fee to the user.

If you want to find controlled opposition, ask to see the terms of Google’s search deals with other browsers, especially the ones that have been slow and weak on tracking protection that is on by default. A Microsoft contact last year said he suspected those terms include proscription of tracking protection that is on by default, or at least that impairs Google search ads confirmation.

I didn't mean what Brave does now, I meant what it could do after the competition is marginalized or eliminated.

I'm sorry if this sounded like a disrespectful accusation. It was just my attempt to rationalize and make sense of the apparently irrational things that happened around your person. When identity politics and large capital are involved, I'm always suspecting machiavellian and cynical motives.

I wish you prove me wrong and Brave will become a real competitor for Chrome with strong focus on user privacy and security.

We are so far from cornering the market or even taking Chrome’s share that this seems like misdirection. Anyway, of course a monopoly or big enough company can go wrong, but Brave is built on ideas from https://brendaneich.com/2014/01/trust-but-verify/ and if future Brave ever went bad, I’d join many others in taking it down. It helps greatly, beyond the properties discussed in that blog post, that we don’t track, silo, or process any user data in the clear. Privacy by default must use client processing more, along with advanced cryptography, to blind and weaken the natural path dependent advantages of servers.

It's not a company. It's a university, for God sake. If no free speech there anymore, then where? In the kitchen, like in the USSR?

Now if he was a pedophile, he should be in jail. But he is not, he is exersizing free speech, no matter how disgusting it is, he is entitled to it. Should Nabokov have been made unemployable too for writing Lolita?

People keep saying he was "fired", but my understanding was he wasn't actually being "paid" to begin with. (Is that correct?)

Freedom is a two edged sword.

You are free to say what you like, but the rest of us are free to take actions in response to that so long as those actions don't violate your constitutional rights.

There's no constitutional right to a job or a board membership.

Consequences aren't out of line. Any person in any private company saying same stuff would be fired. Period. It is totally inappropriate and out of context.

> there are certain discussions you just cannot have

The way I look at this is through responsibility. It's like what we learned in Spiderman, "With great power, comes great responsibility."

So it's not that Stallman can't have this conversation anywhere. It's that when he has it so publicly, it makes people question whether he is wielding his power well.

Sometimes responsibility means not saying anything at all. Presumably, Stallman is at MIT for computer science and free software. Why is he speaking off topic to MIT students and alum? Presumably he could develop non-MIT relationships and have whatever crazy conversations he wanted.

More often, I think the responsibility is just to do a lot more work. If you're famous and you speak off the cuff on topics that you haven't researched, then your comments get a reach that's undeserved. It's a misapplication of your fame.

I thought that about PGs most recent luggage comments. This is something that had an answer that he could look up and share with people. Or if that's too hard, he could have gotten a thorough answer privately. Seeing him be so willfully and publicly ignorant made me question whether he deserved the power that comes with fame. Laziness like that is diminishing and eventually it gets to the point where people are so diminished that they should lose their jobs and/or positions of authority.

A point that I'm not seeing raised enough is that Stallman's current job is nowadays almost purely evangelisation and PR. He is a public figure.

In that context, fired is more than fair. His image being linked with pedophilia (on top of the other issues he has) makes him a really bad choice for the public face of a movement/foundation.

If he was, say, a lead engineer whose work was not tied to his image, we could have an argument - but that's quite clearly not the case.

The use of the word attack implies force. Clearly no one has been struck physically and there is no force involved. So the idea that free speech is somehow under attack must be misguided.

Don't be overly pedantic, verbal attacks are a thing.

They were mocking Stallman's penchant for pedantics

> without risking making yourself completely unemployable

Can you provide some examples of people who have been made "completely unemployable" by the twitter lynch mob?

Except it's not just about "free speech", it's about protecting the organisation's integrity which was already shot because of Epstein. Context matters, and in this case MIT couldn't afford to just let him off with a warning after already being hit for taking money from a sex trafficker. If RMS had thought about the big picture, he would have known better than to engage on the topic to begin with, especially in that forum.

The FSF is even worse because he's supposed to be in a position of leadership there and represents the organisation. And they shouldn't be put in a position where they have to decide whether to support some controversial statement about age of consent laws just because one of their leaders decided to stick up for one of his friends. It's just not worth it.

> How is it we value free speech, but there are certain discussions you just cannot have, even in a rational and measured way, without risking making yourself completely unemployable. You should be able to have a questionable viewpoint in a discussion, without worrying about the lynch mob ending your career.

Just ask James Damore and his memo on a certain ideological echo chamber. I read his document, and found his view point to be sadly misinformed; yet his right to speech wasn't protected. He was fired.

That was the moment I realized free speech isn't really a thing any more if it touched certain topics. Yes constitutionally we still do, but we can easily lose everything that matters to us even if we win the court battle.

Regarding the United States at least, there are topics that we, as a country, have decided are not up for debate in the workplace. That's a feature not a bug; we've had enough decades of, for example, observation of how covert and overt racism harms people it is directed against that we've made it the sort of thing that companies can be directly liable for if they allow it in their space.

There's a hundred years of history explaining why the balance point between freedom of speech and freedom from fear has been calibrated thusly.

Valuing free speech and valuing what others say are not one in the same.

The consequences here are not out of line, because this wasn't the first time that RMS made his views on statutory rape (he doesn't see the harm in it) clear.

The man has no understanding of the concept of consent, and why a child is unable to grant it. He can have whatever opinions he wants, but as a spokesperson for the FSF, he sure as shit shouldn't be broadcasting that one.

This isn't some rando who works for an organization being punished for airing their opinion. This is someone whose job is public speaking, speaking in a way that actively harms any organization he is associated with.

I generally don't see the hacker community jump to the defense of someone who has so colossally mucked up at his one job, but here we are, turning ourselves in knots in the defense of the right of a public speaker to remain employed when his speech is actively harming his employer.

It should also be noted, without the faintest shred of irony that the man consented to resign. I don't see why everyone is making such a big deal out of it...