A defense that the company can offer is 'we intervened to prevent this in the following ways, senior management took this seriously and had a zero tolerance policy, as you can see from the long list of people fired for doing bad things.' That is probably the most common defense for a suit like this. This is the main reason that companies provide annual harassment training, anonymous complaint lines, etc.- it helps to build the case that senior management takes the problem seriously in case a lawsuit like this is filed.

The problem that A-B is going to have is that 'I complained to the CEO personally about Afrasiabi in 2013, and they didn't fire him until 2020' is tough to square with that argument. In order to make that stick you have to actually have consequences for employees who do this sort of thing. And 'we waited until after the investigation into our company had been going on for a year, almost a decade after his first documented complaint' doesn't really fit the facts the company wants. So, can they find enough people who did suffer consequences in 2013, say, to convince a jury? That's probably what the legal argument will come down to (their current tack is probably not the one they will take with a jury, presuming this gets that far).

What if they say "Only a small portion of the females were harassed in our company! They are not broadly and uniformly harassed! How dare you say we have a constant sexual harassment problem!"

I don't think this logic makes sense. For things that shouldn't happen in the first place, just a few cases speak a lot.

Then single out the individuals performing the harassment and bring specific charges.

Like the GP says, this suit is not really talking about a singular crime, it's trying to paint a 10k+ organization spread across the globe as some parody of a frat house gone wrong.

Your point is sarcastic but is exactly the point. If only a small portions of the females were harassed, then specify the nature of the harassment and bring criminal charges against the harassers, don't try and paint a massive multinational with a very very broad brush and use that as some kind of proof.

Your logic is flawed in that you didn't clarify the definition of "small". How small are we talking about? This is a simple statistical question.

Calculate the number of sexual harassment reports of all US companies normalized by employee counts, and check if the number of sexual harassments at Blizzard is statically significantly higher. If so, then it is plain reasonable to suspect Blizzard has certain issues that cause this.

Whether the females are broadly and uniformly harassed is not a good indicator. As long as the rate is significantly higher than other company, it could indicate some problem and is worth investigation, even if the total number of harassment cases are small compared to the total female employees.

> For things that shouldn't happen in the first place, just a few cases speak a lot.

what does this mean? assuming the allegations are true, then yes, these things shouldn't have happened, you won't find anyone who disagrees with that. but what does "just a few cases speak a lot" mean? are we supposed to infer that because these cases are being prosecuted, that there's much more misogynistic evil happening beneath the surface at Activision Blizzard, enough to spread to their entire corporate culture at some deep, primal level? that's quite the supposition! "some bad people, especially those with power over others, did some bad things" is much easier to believe.

Can you list the number of incidents of workplace harassment and groping that you would find appropriate before concluding that maybe there's a bigger problem?

Activision Blizzard is a very large company (10,000+ employees in 196(!!) countries), and this suit claims that a proportionally small number of allegations over the course of many years is indicative of widespread corporate culture. meanwhile, like I said, it pulls in a suicide and dudes drinking and being hungover on the job, as well as pay issues and sexual harassment. notice that I did not claim any allegations were untruthful or lacked merit, merely that the overall picture being painted seems disingenuous. if the suicide connection was less tenuous (or omitted entirely), the drinking/hungover stuff wasn't mentioned, and the suit wasn't trying to paint the whole company's culture in a negative light, I would have no comment except, "cool, assuming these allegations are true, I wish the people filing the suit the best of luck in getting justice." it's the extrapolation of discrete events into a scathing indictment of the corporate culture and the tangential, tenuous things mentioned (as a means of bolstering the idea the the corporate culture is misogynistic) that gives me pause. I don't see a problem with this line of thinking. maybe the corporate culture really is as anti-woman as depicted here—that's for the courts to determine. meanwhile, I find it hard to believe 100% at face value, like many people here and elsewhere on social media are doing.

I don't understand what my sex has to do with this evaluation—you said you hated to "play that card," but you didn't play any card at all, you just pointed out my presumed sex based on my handle, and didn't connect it to anything.

Let me ask you this. What would you rate as sufficient evidence of systemic, deep-seated misogyny in a company? Or is your argument a company with 10000 employees can not display of systemic mysogyny, because there are just too many people? Is the argument then that a company of that size can not have any systemic behaviour or failures?

If that is not your argument, then I don't sure what you are trying to say. You specifically mentioned that the number of cases brought forward made you sceptical. So would have less cases of harassment been better evidence of systemic mysogyny? If not how many cases are needed to be sufficient?

> " it's the extrapolation of discrete events into a scathing indictment

How much evidence must we have, to make such an indictment?

Your position is basically unfalsifiable. It feels as if no matter how many people come forward, no matter how many women identify these issues, that you will just hand wave it all away.

When person after person after person comes forward, eventually that makes a pattern.

> that's for the courts to determine

No. It is also for all of us to determine. Everyone can look at the evidence, and decide for themselves if that is the kind of company that they want to answer recruiter calls from, or work for.

If you have some actual evidence to the contrary, that proves anything of value, then feel free to show it.

But don't just be a devils advocate, and ignore literally everything, that anyone ever brings up.

Eventually, if you see enough evidence, that proves a pattern.

please point out where I dismissed any allegations, and please keep your personal ad hominem attacks to a minimum

> why are people taking such strong issue with this position

Because you don't actually make any arguments at all, and provide no evidence to your position.

All you are doing is playing devil's advocate, and saying "I don't believe the narrative!", without actually providing any evidence of your own as to why it is wrong.

If you worked at blizzard at the past, or know people who have, and you know from talking to them, that they have different experiences, then that would be a different story.

But you don't have that. You aren't actually backing up any position at all, and you are just casting doubt, like a bad faith actor, without actually defending or justifying anything that you are saying, beyond "I don't believe the narrative!".

> what motives am I supposed to actually have

The motive would be the same motive that the "well acttualllyyy", devil's advocates have. You get to try to look smart, by going against the grain, and find irrelevant flaws in people's arguments, without actually backing anything up yourself, or subjecting your own argument to the same type of hyper, useless, deconstruction.

Happens all the time on hacker news.

You literally answer your own bafflement in what you typed. You said it’s a flimsy case for any systemic issues, indicating you believe this to be a collection of one-offs rather than systemic ones if you then believe the individual cases.

yes, so again:

> what motives am I supposed to have been pretending to have, and what motives am I supposed to actually have?

still baffled!

I’m saying your top level statement quoted below is harmful regardless of your motives because it works to minimize and excuse the impact and veracity of the accusations (which you yourself are not disputing individually). What your motives are for doing so is besides the point.

Your personal bar of it being “as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically” is irrelevant to just about anyone’s people’s definition of systemic harm, to the point that it’s very hard to take your argument as being in good faith.

> it's kind of off-putting how many different grievances are bundled together here—many different accusations about a wide variety of topics intended to paint a very broadly negative view of the company culture, everywhere from management to lower-level (male) employees. while I don't doubt that many of the grievances are true and merited, I have a hard time believing things could be as broadly, uniformly terrible for all women in the company specifically as the overall picture depicted here