The author of the tweet pointed out that lied, and subsequently attacked others while playing the victim - which are sociopathic tendencies. If what he says it true, he could reasonably claim to have compelling evidence to prove his point.

But this is irrelevant. Calling someone a sociopath regardless of whether or not you have evidence isn't harassment. You realize that harassment is a crime, right? It's honestly quite astounding that you believe restrictions on speech are this tight. Being offended or insulted does not make speech harassment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that banning speech on the basis of offensiveness is not allowed [1]. Speech protections go even further than that - even burning a cross and calling for "revengeance" against minorities is protected [2]. No, Balaji's Tweets aren't harassment. They aren't even near it.

Harassment laws almost always revolve around non-consensual speech (e.g. someone following you or otherwise forcing you to be exposed to their speech), or a captive audience (a boss saying something to an employee. The employee is a captive audience, they can't avoid their boss without losing their job). Harassment is about keeping people from having to listen to speech that they do not consent to receiving. Harassment laws are not about preventing people from saying offensive things about other people. Taylor isn't a captive audience - if she does not consent to seeing Balaji's Tweets she can easily block him.

And on a side note: using your own expansive definition of harassment, aren't you now harassing Balaji by calling him a sociopath or saying he has "sociopathic tendencies"? If not why is it okay for your to call someone a sociopath, but harassment for him to call Taylor a sociopath?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

> But this is irrelevant. Calling someone a sociopath regardless of whether or not you have evidence isn't harassment. You realize that harassment is a crime, right? It's honestly quite astounding that you believe restrictions on speech are this tight.

I have never argued for any restrictions on free speech and yet you continue to say that I have. Why is this confusing for you? I have continued to present evidence for why I think what I think and yet all I hear back is my definitions are wrong and pedantic. What in your opinion is not pedantic and correct? Can you provide the definitions so we can have a fruitful argument instead of going around in circles about what words means and how they can be associated with actions that can cause harm.

I also never called anyone a sociopath. I presented evidence for what I consider to be harassment and sociopathic actions. Here is my exact quote

> Calling someone a sociopath is indeed harassment if you have no compelling evidence to prove your point. Because if you claim someone is a sociopath without providing compelling evidence then you're arguing in bad faith which is a characteristic of sociopathic people.

I don't know who Balaji is or what he does. I'm just inferring his characteristics from his obsession with Taylor and his constant combative language about the free press and journalists (specifically targeting Taylor with his tweets and calls to action to harass her along with calling her a sociopath without compelling evidence). Balaji is using exactly the same tactics Trump uses to discredit his detractors.

I will again re-iterate what I said. This is getting tiresome. If you have an actual argument against anything that I have said then my email is in my profile. I will no longer respond to more replies to my posts in this thread.

> I have never argued for any restrictions on free speech and yet you continue to say that I have. Why is this confusing for you?

You have repeatedly said that Balaji's actions are harassment. Again, harassment is illegal. Why is this confusing for you? When you say that somebody is harassing someone, you're saying that their actions are illegal and it's the government's responsibility to put a stop to it. For the third time harassment is illegal.

Do you believe Balaji's Tweet are illegal? If not then you agree with me: he is not harassing people. Is he being a jackass? Sure. Is this harassment? No.

> I'm just inferring his characteristics from his obsession with Taylor and his constant combative language about free press and journalists.

Right. And Balaji is inferring Taylor's status as a sociopath given her actions. But apparently this isn't harassment when you do it, but it is harassment when other people do the same.

> Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral reasonableness. In the legal sense, these are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening. They evolve from discriminatory grounds, and have an effect of nullifying or impairing a person from benefiting their rights. When these behaviors become repetitive, they are defined as bullying. The continuity or repetitiveness and the aspect of distressing, alarming or threatening may distinguish it from insult.

That's the definition of harassment from wikipedia and it characterizes the actions from many people in the tech community. I showed an example of such from Balaji against Taylor. In fact, he goes further into bullying territory because his actions are repetitive and consistently of sinister nature of painting the free press in broad and negative brushstrokes. He's not just bullying and harassing a specific member of the free press but he does so more generally and demeans the entire profession. That's what I call harassment. I don't care about legality. I care about decent behavior. And Balaji is not acting as a decent person so I'm using his actions as evidence of what I mean by harassment and indecent.

Again, the fact that someone calling out a journalist for publishing falsehoods and calling them a sociopath for doing so (lying is a sociopathic tendency) is harassment in your eyes is astounding. It's good that we cleared up that you aren't referring to actual harassment here - only your alternative definition of harassment - but it's still surprising to see just easily people are throwing that term around. The next time I hear someone talk about experiencing harassment in their field I need to be mindful that there's a good chance that the're using the term harassment in the same vein as you.

And again, you've still neglected to establish any sort of link between Baiaji and Scott's post. Baiaji didn't even mention Metz or the editor of the technology section. He didn't post about the New York Times' threat to dox Scott until after he posted about Taylor. So establishing any sort of causal link bewteen Scott's post and Baiaji's behavior.

To top it all off, I can't help but appreciate the fact that you're replicating the same behavior for which you are criticizing Baiaji here:

> In fact, he goes further into bullying territory because his actions are repetitive and consistently of sinister nature of painting the free press in broad and negative brushstrokes. He's not just bullying and harassing a specific member of the free press but he does so more generally and demeans the entire profession.

Yet in your post you characterize many people in the tech industry as harassers:

> That's the definition of harassment from wikipedia and it characterizes the actions from many people in the tech community.

So it's bullying when Baiaji paints a group of people in broad and negative brushstrokes. Yet you feel it's appropriate to write that the definition of harassment characterizes the actions of many people in tech.

Are you done mis-characterizating everything I say? If not, please quote everything else I've said and characterize them however you want so I can point to actual examples of how you willfully keep mis-interpreting whatever I'm saying.

I've repeatedly told you to write an argument in a longer format if you have any actual points to make but you continue responding to the thread even when I've repeatedly said I'm no longer interested in this discussion because it is tiresome to go around in circles.

There's nothing I'd put in an email that I can't put in a comment here. The only reason why you'd want me to respond via email is so that your responses wouldn't be public for other people to see. If you want a longer format, I'm willing to break this whole conversation down step by step.

* Originally you claimed that Scott was being uncivil by directing people to share their feedback on the situation with the New York Times designated feedback contact. Despite the fact that the explicitly directed potential commenters to be civil.

* I asked how this could possibly be uncivil when Scott explicitly tells commenters to be civil, to which you responded that you "have already said several times what was uncivil about it" (you haven't, or maybe it was in the posts that you edited to '-'). You also linked to this twitter post [1] as "actual evidence on twitter of actual coordination among its members for a harassment campaign" despite there being nothing at all indicating the existence of a harassment campaign.

* You then wrote that a civil phrasing would have been for Scott to say that his deletion of the blog was voluntary. I point out that this isn't a rephrasing of the original message, it's a completely different message and one that doesn't capture the fact that the deletion of the blog wasn't voluntary.

* You then claim that it was voluntary, because Scott could have just lived with the negative consequences of leaving it up. I then point out that doing something out of fear of consequences is what it means for something to be involuntary. You also then link to this twitter post [2] as evidence of "one of the members of the tech community actively harassing a reporter". But this tweet doesn't even mention Cade Metz or Pui-Wing Tam. And it doesn't even mention Scott until after the supposedly harassing tweets are made.

How is explicitly telling a community to be civil indicative of incivility? Nothing in your first twitter link even so much as mentions harassment yet you claim it's "actual evidence on twitter of actual coordination among its members for a harassment campaign". How do you convince yourself that taking action under the threat of doxxing and negative impact on your career and patients is voluntary? How is Balaji's tweets supposed to support the claim that Scott is being uncivil - especially when he only mentions Scott after the "harassing" tweets?

Each of your comments gets further from the original claim, and more and more outlandish.

1 https://mobile.twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/128066344682499...

2. https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=from%3Abalajis%20Taylor&...

> The only reason why you'd want me to respond via email is so that your responses wouldn't be public for other people to see. If you want a longer format, I'm willing to break this whole conversation down step by step.

I have no fear of public scrutiny. My actions have clearly demonstrated that because I have engaged everyone that has contacted me in good faith but I have not received the same treatment so I'm getting tired of re-iterating my points. If you think it's a trick then you can contact me on keybase and I will happily sign any statement that you want attributed to me and that I think is a fair assessment. If you don't think cryptographic proof is sufficient then we have nothing to argue about.

I stand by all my original claims. If you have specific arguments then quote me, and state your argument. I'm not looking for out of context quotes and mis-characterizations. If you want to continue arguing then provide actual quotes, state what you think I said and why, and make a counter-point for why you think my claim is incorrect with compelling evidence. You can contact me on keybase and cross-post our conversation on whatever public forum you want.

Great, you can start by addressing the points raised in the previous comment. They did indeed include specific arguments with quotes from you.

Which one. Quote it and send it on keybase and I will address it when I have time. You can then copy and paste it wherever you want with cryptographic proof that I said it.