I personally only slightly increase the probability of something being true when multiple accusers come forward. I still want to see proof.

What if a bunch of your ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends got together and decided to ruin your life with accusations?

This just pretty much does not happen without reason, and I think it is safe to say that if it did, you are probably a terrible person.

Eventually I learned that she claimed I was touching her daughter and was cheating on her with her coworker (whom I had never even met). I tried to defend myself but it was too late.

Today she has been married and divorced twice, and I have zero contact with any of those involved. I only know her status because Facebook doesn't stop sending me update email despite deactivating that account years ago.

Point is, the whisper network is powerful, and doesn't give a shit about reality.

It's a shame your ex made up lies about you, that probably happens a lot.

It is worth pointing out that you are trying to make a point with this story, and you are the only one telling it, and I'm supposed to take you on your word that this actually happened..

Yet here we have multiple adult grown adult women, unrelated to each other yet similar (minorities, poor, vulnerable), trying to make their point with 3x the "backing", and so many want to call them liars immediately.

It's funny in a sad way.

oh c'mon, it's insanely naive, let's dont try to push narration that those things do not happen

Edit: since I wasn't clear, I am looking for examples of when this has happened to you, or your friend, or anyone that you have heard of...

Edit 2: also by "pretty much" does not happen, I don't mean never happens. But I think the rate at which it happens is probably a rounding error, and I think a lot of people would rather just say "oh well they could be lying" before even bothering to read what they have to say.

Projared was fortunate enough to posses the mental fortitude and evidence needed to clear his name. Others in a similar position might not be as lucky.

These are grown intelligent women with no connection.

I'm not saying it's impossible they are lying, just improbable.

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2018/10/15/A...

I'm sorry, I do not see the same likelihood of collusion in this case of intelligent women who had no relation to each other. I am not saying it is impossible, but I have a hard time seeing it.

That's not a safe assumption at all.

Innocent until proven guilty and all that jazz, but there will be assumptions nonetheless..

I would love to know what these women stand to gain by humiliating themselves if it is all made up.

narcissism, absolution of responsibility, validation, attention

TL;DR guy was falsely accused of rape and then harassed for a year regarding the incident with the help of university professors at Columbia.

I don't know about "a bunch of your ex-girlfriends" but never say never...

Or you associate with or are attracted to terrible people

This just pretty much does not happen without reason, and I think it is safe to say that if it did, you are probably a terrible person.

Cops work together, therefor they collude...

If you are in high school, and all the girls are teenagers and are in school together, they also may collude..

I'm sorry, I do not see the same likelihood of collusion in this case of intelligent women who had no relation to each other.

Also, it seems fairly presumptive to assume that ex-partners are intelligent. And to assume that intelligent people don't do crazy things(see: Lisa Nowak)

Or maybe it's all a grand conspiracy, in which case let's follow the money and see that it leads... nowhere.

A coordinated release in my opinion reinforces the statement.

"If a bunch of your ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends got together to assassinate your character..." you are probably attracted to extremely destructive relationships. You might be confusing drama with passion.

Edit: as I see some people have trouble connecting the dots.

You should strive for evidence and truth.

I hear your sort of response a lot, but it's mostly from people who won't change their mind no matter what (and will continue to move the goalposts as more evidence comes to light), or set the bar so high that it's basically impossible to provide the proof they want.

This isn't proof, it is evidence, but I think that would help a bit. Even if party A and party B disagree about something that happened, if party A says stop contacting me, and party B continues to do so, that is wrong enough in itself.

Given his situation (see my other comment[1] on why) she could have made his situation much (I repeat MUCH MUCH) worse than what she did. I wouldn't want to know the amount of abuse she now gets because of it and in the months (if not years to come).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26962280

no, have you?

I do know people in the system so I'm quite familiar with how they work (and what is lore from the US and Hollywood that people assume vs how it works). Germany isn't some Banana Republic, so she actually gets a professional (even she shows up without a lawyer) walking her through these things.

> It can be incredibly dehumanizing

so you do have personal experience with it how this works in Germany? Do tell me, is it more dehumanizing than going on social media and knowing that you will be hunted by misogynists for the next couple of years so you won't ever get closure and need to hope that the mood of the mob doesn't go against you one day (because you have no legal ground to stand on)? I hardly think so.

This lady seems to have her head screwed on. Her post doesn't seem to me like she's trying to cause a witch hunt and it seems like she's sharing her story in a logical and sensible manner.

I'll gladly read the post from another woman defending John Pretty, but I doubt that's going to be forthcoming.

I don't agree.

She did not set her boundaries. She did not effectively communicate boundaries. She did not enforce boundaries.

When she doesn't get the outcome she wants, she turns to blame rather than introspection.

It's even more important when one person is in a position of power and when there's an inherent element of trust (teacher, mentor, etc.) because it's going to be much more complicated for a person to set appropriate boundaries and feel like they can say no to them.

This is someone they looked up to and respected!

This is clear cut victim blaming.

Accacin suggests that sharing a plausible story is proof of wrongdoing. I don't think so. I'm ignorant. Accacin is ignorant. Everybody on this thread is ignorant of the facts.

I'm saying that Jon Pretty shouldn't have his livelihood and career destroyed by ignorant people and an accuser who admits to having her own set of issues.

I'm merely saying that I believe what she's saying, and as I've not got the power to arrest, it's perfectly okay for me not to require more proof than a general feeling of her honesty.

[0] https://twitter.com/propensive/status/1387168037908910085/ph...

Especially for men.

Email threads were started where one person collected everyone's recollection of the events, who was there, and what happened. Every response lined up perfectly with each other. I don't think anyone explicitly coordinated their accusations, but knowing there were multiple other accusers certainly made the accusers feel more comfortable and correct in their accusations.

I was presented with the evidence, literal written testimony of 11 people who I considered my friends at the time. I was given an ultimatum to admit it or be kicked out of the group. I said I wouldn't admit it. I started looking at each person's recollection.

You know what actually happened, that all 11 people missed? There were actually 13 people in the group that day. The 13th person, that absolutely everyone forgot about, was a person who didn't normally attend the group. He is 6'10" and 350 lbs. Hard to miss. But everyone forgot about him. I called him up, put him on speaker phone in front of everyone, and asked him "Did you eat <food item> last time we hung out?" His response "yes". I then asked him "Did you throw the wrapper on the ground?" His response "yes".

I asked my friends if that settled the matter, and everyone still believed that I was the litterer. So I stopped hanging out with them.

Nobody was vindictive at the start. But they were all so confident of their own recollections that they became vindictive when I said that they weren't remembering things correctly.

There's power in number, but not in this particular case and context.

Thanks for sharing your story.

I could maybe, maybe believe a well-known political figure might be the target of that kind of coordinated attack. But basically a thousandth of a percent of the population has even heard of Jon Pretty. What benefit exists for the group of accusers? An extra spot for a presentation at a Scala conference?

People make this claim like it's common sense but I so rarely see even anecdotes backing it up. (Let alone data)

I've seen a variant of it once. This is my anecdote for false coordinated character assassination. There's a community called Get Off My Internet, which I believe is mostly women, who will do coordinated character assassinations, usually of other women. I've run into them by employing people they target. What happens is a lot of them post in a message board about how their target is a pedophile and fraud and embezzler. Then a few others will email me, the employer, helpfully noting how they've respected me for years, want to protect me and just happened to google my new employee. It's bullshit and so, so gross.

But... there's also this other pattern where victims of real abusers will form a whisper network ahead of time. As I understand it, the whisper network is partly for safety and partly for sanity. The sanity is "am I overreacting to an honest mistake?" Seeing it as a pattern makes it more clear that it's intentional. And then for safety, there's a lot of perceived and probably real reputational downside to speaking up. And since it's hard to prove a lot of the accusations, having multiple reports makes the case more compelling, i.e. safer from a reputation standpoint.

So that's why a report like this might feel coordinated. Of course it is. It's just too hard to make this sort of report without talking to people first and then by talking to people you end up discovering a lot of other victims.

I was close to one of these whisper networks, that Lightspeed VC. I'd heard from one victim two years beforehand. She didn't want to say anything because all she really wanted was to avoid him and complete her next fundraise. She took that company public. A lot of this "women are making this stuff up" fear is based on the idea that they get something out of it. This founder was afraid of the opposite, that doing something would botch her raise.

I'm close to another emerging whisper network right now and it's the same thing. "Is this safe? Will people believe me? He's done it to other people and will probably doing it to more people right now. But if I speak up will I put my career and business in jeopardy?"

Sure, in some theoretical perfect world it would be great to have a legal system that could easily and fairly render verdicts. But since we don't have this, what other choice do victims have than to band together to at least warn other people away from dangerous people?

I’ll give these victims the benefit of the doubt.

This is horrifying if it did happen but I don't know Yifan and I don't know Jon Pretty nor the trustworthiness of either.

It's disturbing to see HN readers jump to conclusions so quickly without proper evidence. If we continue to reduce our capacity for assessment of a situation to individual anecdotal accounts what kind of world will we live in 5 years from now?

Sharing these things often feels like (and IS) the _only_ thing a victim can do to maintain even a shred of their personhood or agency. If we take that away, we are telling victims of horrific abuse to pick up the pieces of their lives alone, and quietly. That is not how one heals, and it will exacerbate a chilling system of victim shaming that leads to untold anguish.

In a court of law it is certainly more straight forward and less risky than on social media: go to the police, make a statement and get a lawyer, then get those people who sent out tweets in support and also came out with similar stories or to coroborate go on record. In this specific case the damage she could (and still can) do to him and get real justice is pretty massive.

If all of your exes and close associates hate you enough to coordinate a life ruining operation, then it's quite probable that you were abusive in some capacity.

> Sometimes character assassination is coordinated.

Yes, you are right. But look at the other side too. How else do a group of people with no proof retaliate against an abuser but through character assassination ?

meanwhile you're probably just normal person

How did "somebody" manage to do that?

Every case is different and should be judged on the merit of testimony of those involved and actual evidence.

Due process and presumption of innocence are good things.

Always believing accusers isn't a good principle. It enables and emboldens abusers not acting in good faith, especially people with narcissistic and borderline personality disorders

I re-read the article to try to figure out what this "specific case" actually might be.

Two people engaged in a consensual physical relations. She was not happy with the outcome.

At the time, she "did not blame him for what happened, and didn't think those behaviors were problematic at the time. ... I maintained friendship with him for a few months after May, because I was convinced that it was all consensual."

So, only months/years later does she decide she's a victim.

She absolves herself of all responsibility ("There was nothing [I did] to cause this"). Yet, she brought wine to dinner with her mentor, drinks until she's hammered while her partner does not drink (Who does that? Other than alcoholics?). Somehow, every decision she makes is his fault.

90% of the article is about her feelings and his responsibility for them. She feels entitled that he show her "remorse, sympathy, and guilt."

She repeatedly accuses him of gaslighting, when it seems more accurate to say they had different recollections or expectations.

She quotes “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing.” implying he is evil and she is an avenging vigilante.

"I am not trying to convince anyone of anything." This is disingenuous. I think this her way of saying "This is my story, therefore I do not need to provide proof of anything."

"by speaking up, I can take my stolen power back." It's not obvious how her "power" was stolen. Maybe what she really means is, "I feel powerful by destroying his career."

Mature adults learn from uncomfortable experiences and move on. Emotional infants wallow in life-long self-pity and construct elaborate fantasies to support their victimhood.

--

     Any woman.
     Can take down any man.
     At any time.
     With a word.

     - An Empowered Feminist

You really came out of the woodwork to defend this guy and shame the accuser. Zero posts in months then a flurry here. Gross.

It seems like you are resorting to an ad hominem attack to discredit an opinion you don't like.

You are using cancel-culture tactics to defend cancel-culture itself.

An unsubstantiated accusation should not result in someone's life being ruined.

Edit: This is an honest question by the way. Thanks to those who did provide some examples.

I do not think that's applicable here. I think this woman was coerced into nonconsensual sex.

"Mean Girls" (five high school girls make up sexual assault allegations that they later admit were "because we didn't like him", school then did nothing to punish the girls): https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2018/10/15/A...

In the same hypothetical where character assassinations can be organized and bring someone down with false accusations, the same can be true of defending someone as well. Multiple people coordinating by speaking in defense of someone against accusations are just as possible.

I'd even speculate and say there's more instances of coordinated defense happening more often than false accusations, as powerful people being protected from accusations is what started MeToo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_rape_con...