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A comment on The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman. Parent comment

Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by Railsify on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @04:26PM (#20999693)
The fact that he thought it smart to step forward illustrates that he is not so smart when it comes to these types of social issues. Someone as high profile as him commenting on a friend's situation only brings more attention to his friend. It's likely that without the comments of RMS his friend would have received far less publicity.
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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by partialrecall on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @04:28PM (#20999715)
Has his late friend actually received increased publicity from this? Most of the stories and social media commentary I've seen don't mention Minksy at all, instead claiming that Stallman defended Epstein.
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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by salawat on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @05:01PM (#21000042)
His entire interjection was around trying to corral wild accusation inflation with regard to his late friend.

Here are the emails. Read em.

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

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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by partialrecall on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @05:06PM (#21000087)
His late friend being Minksy, not Epstein. Which makes the headlines about him defending Epstein... puzzling.
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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by Railsify on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @11:12PM (#21002121)
What is puzzling about the media lying to you, either directly or indirectly? Do you really think professional journalists and editors did not know those headlines would be confusing, they have intentionally conflated him speaking in support of a personal friend and defending the ring leader who he never met, that is intentional on the part of those publications, they know what they are doing. The implication of the headline being Stallman supports Minksy, Minsky was allegedly associated with Epstein so RMS defends Epstein, I'm not sure if that is considered a strawman or an abuse of modus ponens but I'm sure there is some term for that sort of misleading statement.
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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by partialrecall on Tuesday September 17, 2019 @11:25PM (#21002166)
In truth, I am not as puzzled as I claimed. However I've found that on HN there is a pathological obsession with giving people and organizations the benefit of the doubt, even when they don't deserve it. Consequently I sometimes understatement matters dramatically instead of saying what I really think.
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Re:The media's hit piece on Richard Stallman by salawat on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @07:57AM (#21004352)
Eh. I don't think it's necessarily so much giving people the benefit of a doubt rather than being extremely sensitive to the niggling details, and being dead set in the route of "if you're going to ruin another person's life/reputation over it, it had better damn well be consistent in the face of even modest levels of scrutiny".

It's fine to haul injustice into the light of day to be dealt with. It isn't okay to maliciously interpret/misrepresent things because you think someone is weird, or they make you uncomfortable, or because you're getting carried away with the political cause of the week.

>GP: abuse of modus ponens Abuse of Transitivity would be closer to the mark I think.

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