> I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts.
I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company.
Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one of their social media friends.
The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process, but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
> I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.
I feel that this is due to the weird place victimization occupies in our culture combined with how anti-social social media is.
It's extremely easy to issue accusations and threats and have them be read by literally millions of people. You would never dare vocalize these same threats and and accusations publically - and even if you did, in the pre-internet days, it would reach far far fewer people.
At some point we to start thinking about strengthening our libel laws to act as a deterrent to this type of online behaviors. It's depressing to consider MORE litigation as the solution here, but I don't think we can depend on the good nature of people and rationality to ultimately prevail.
This nearly always advantages businesses and the wealthy, especially in false or ambiguous situations, and whistleblowers of all kinds. Litigation is incredibly expensive and slow. Do people really want to spend a house worth and several years on this kind of fight?
(This is why the US felt it necessary to pass laws against UK libel judgements being enforced, it was infringing on US standards of free speech)
>If you can back up what you’re saying, libel isn’t a concern.
This is not true. The unfortunate reality is that facts _don't_ matter in the realm of public opinion. They never have.
BUT, you're going to say, "I'm talking about libel, which is litigated in the court of law, not public opinion."
If that is indeed your response, I would suggest you might better familiarize yourself with the actual happenings in civil court cases. They can absolutely be just as insane, and they can absolutely act with the same lack of justice we see in other places.
I really wish most people had the type of integrity you're describing, but the uncomfortable reality is that they do not. People are going to believe the thing that makes them feel better, not the thing that is true.
There are several people who have severely traumatized me by actions they took to harm my body, violate my sexual consent, and/or manipulate my life so that I was under their power in ways I didn’t agree to.
I couldn’t imagine convincing a jury of any of these. If you make saying they happened a criminal exposure for me, I can’t warn others of the danger those people put me in, or even process my pain and grief, without fear of losing a court battle I have no chance of winning.
I’m sensitive to the damage false claims can do, but I think it’s unreasonable to say that people should be liable in a court of law to prove things that are private and unprovable. And it has a chilling effect, where people who’ve experienced similar trauma will be discouraged from sharing their experience because the risk is too high.
It’s already dangerous to accuse anyone with any kind of public presence of anything, people will defend them to the point of harassment, stalking and violence, out of pure loyalty.
Adding legal repercussions for stating that a thing happened where no one could produce conclusive evidence to confirm or deny it just means more people suffer privately without even the recourse of telling anyone what happened.
NAL, but I don't think talking to your friends and acquaintances privately rises to the level of libel or slander, or at least it would be very difficult to prove if it did.
What is the alternative that you would like to see? Should we be able to destroy any person we want simply by making an accusation without evidence? Should we throw out presumption of innocence and fair trials and just chuck people in jail the moment someone accuses someone of a crime?
If someone is making a public accusation with the intent of destroying someone's livelihood and reputation, I don't think it is too much to ask that we have some way of verifying that the accusation is true.
> NAL, but I don't think talking to your friends and acquaintances privately rises to the level of libel or slander, or at least it would be very difficult to prove if it did.
The suggestion was to “strengthen libel laws”, presumably to reverse this.
> What is the alternative that you would like to see? Should we be able to destroy any person we want simply by making an accusation without evidence? Should we throw out presumption of innocence and fair trials and just chuck people in jail the moment someone accuses someone of a crime?
I’m actually more or less comfortable with the existing US laws. Accusing someone publicly of harming them in an unprovable way is relatively protected speech. I’m opposed to changing that to penalize people who were hurt by someone, want to disclose the fact that it happened, and couldn’t possibly survive a trial they never initiated.
> If someone is making a public accusation with the intent of destroying someone's livelihood and reputation, I don't think it is too much to ask that we have some way of verifying that the accusation is true.
Ok, I did not interpret strengthen libel laws to mean extending them to private conversations. Instead, I was thinking of something to deter Internet pile-ons like the article discussed.
Where is that line? I keep most of my Internet life relatively private. But this means I’m already hesitant to use the platforms I do have to describe things people did to harm me. I’m the one who’d be piled on if it got an audience. Adding the potential for expensive lawsuits just means I’ll be more hesitant to warn anyone that someone did something harmful, to me or to anyone else I believe. Why do I have to keep these conversations private?
We have laws because there are dishonest people. You might as well ask why do we have laws against stealing? I'm an honest person and if I go take something from someone's house without asking, I'll just bring it right back with no harm done. Some people aren't honest, though.
I... don’t understand what you’re trying to convince me of here? Are you trying to morally equate me hypothetically naming people who’ve abused me to stealing from them, if I couldn’t defend a non-legal claim of what happened in court? I sincerely do not understand what you’re saying should change.
I understand that you are telling the truth. Do you understand that sometimes people do not tell the truth?
The question is what level of consequence are you saying we should inflict on people before some kind of evidence beyond an accusation is required?
If it's "I tell my friends about what happened, and then they turn down opportunities to work with that person". I don't think anyone would or could sue for libel about that. I am not proposing that they be able to. I apologize if I gave the impression that that is what I was proposing.
If it's "I make an accusation, and that person should then be unemployed and destitute and indelibly branded a sexual predator for the rest of their life" then maybe somewhere in between those two extremes, there is a point where some evidence is required, and the level of harm being done to the accused requires some stronger justification. Maybe current libel laws do not accurately delineate that point because of the advent of the Internet and the possibility for a person to experience widespread harassment based on a few claims going viral. Is that reasonable?
No, I don’t think that’s reasonable. In the spirit of “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”, I don’t think adding more legal liability serves anyone. Moreover, it serves even less people who already have few resources to redress wrongs.
It’s not like this concept of “mob ruined my life” is some new concept, it’s something victims of abuse experience or withhold their stories to avoid, and have forever.
Remember when this claim was made about a now sitting SCOTUS justice? His life had been ruined? Not at all. But at least one of his accusers was so afraid for her life that she went into hiding. Imagine how much more dangerous it would be for her if she were legally penalized for “ruining his life”, which she didn’t do, but absolutely became a part of the anti-cancel-culture script. Imagine how that could be abused by someone in such a high place of power.
People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so. If it’s in the court of public opinion, the truth comes out. We know this because the few cases where people lie are always repeated by people motivated to penalize truth telling.
I’m afraid to name people who’ve hurt me here, people no one on HN knows, because I fear retribution. Adding the possibility that I might be tangled up in years of legal battles I can’t afford simply for saying what happened is utterly terrifying to me. And that’s coming from a place of relative privilege where I don’t expect half the danger other accusers might expect.
No. There should not be legal penalties for describing abuse without legal proof.
So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation?
> People who’ve been hurt by others don’t need to be legally scrutinized for saying so.
The point is that not every person who makes an accusation is someone who has been hurt by others. If there is no scrutiny allowed, how are we supposed to tell which is which? You're looking at this from the perspective of the person making the accusation, where you can know with certainty that is true. Someone on the outside doesn't have that ability.
> So is there any point at which you would say it matters whether an accusation is true or not? Is it only if there’s a criminal investigation?
It always matters whether an accusation is true. Penalizing accusers doesn’t produce fewer false accusations. It discourages true accusations.
> You're looking at this from the perspective of the person making the accusation, where you can know with certainty that is true. Someone on the outside doesn't have that ability.
You’ve completely misunderstood my perspective. I’m looking at it from the perspective of the person afraid to make an accusation.
Nobody is saying we should penalize people for making accusations. Being asked to substantiate your claims is not a penalty. It should be understood that people will ask that when you make a public claim, especially if you are asking for something to happen as a result of that claim.
I'm not sure what we gain by encouraging people to make unprovable accusations. From the outside perspective, people will be predisposed to believe one way or another, and in the absence of any evidence they'll just go to their predispositions and a lot of irrelevant argument will take place back and forth with no possible resolution, because there is no real evidence. Why is this helpful or desirable?
> Penalizing accusers doesn’t produce fewer false accusations. It discourages true accusations.
Why would the rate of true accusations go down while the rate of false accusations remain the same? My intuition is that they'd both go down, with false accusations decreasing more than true accusations.
This is absurd. The “mob” that “ruined” his life did no such thing. Multiple accusers had credible accounts, media did scrutinize their accounts and determined that one wasn’t credible while others were. He wasn’t “cancelled”, he has a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the most powerful country in all human history. This “mob” theory is ridiculous. Yet one of his accusers was so afraid for her life she went into hiding. This is exactly why I’m opposed to penalizing accusers.
This is a very challenging interaction. I will try to keep a very even tone in this message.
The parent's last paragraph seems to set up a strawman, an extreme that seems to me to covered by current libel laws. (Is it not? Explain if I'm wrong.)
It is _possible_ that current libel laws don't "accurately delineate that point", but I am looking for a stronger argument in favor of change.
Based on the posts here, I think that the role and power of "viral"-ity is not well understood. In uncertain situations I would like to seek a clearer understanding instead of simply turning to legislative solutions - surely the question that will come up is "where is the line" and if we can't say we're not ready for a law.
@eyelidlessness Thank you for a very measured set of responses; they are beyond my skill or patience.
Thank you for this. I think you’ve expressed a lot of what I didn’t have emotional space to say, with at least as much skill and patience. I appreciate you joining in
I think there is a distinction between "say" and "publish". NAL but libel deals with published falsehoods, these are not private conversations or communications. Communicating a message to millions on twitter or saying it on TV is different from talking to friends and family.
> what I can say about people who’ve sexually assaulted me
Remember you can still relatively freely say/publish your opinion; tell a million people they are a monster, creep, treated you poorly etc. But publicly accusing someone of a specific crime or sexual-impropriety is a serious allegation, and to me it seems ok that the accused has a way to legally challenge it and require proof.
So if I were to name the people who have sexually assaulted me, here in a comment—which I’ve already said I’m terrified to do even though they don’t have an audience here to my knowledge—but if I did so, just said so to an audience, I should be legally liable to prove it? Because I didn’t keep it private?
I think the accused should have the right to legally challenge a public defamatory statement. In this case... it probably wouldn't be a very strong case, just from a quick google search, my guess is they would struggle with 1 & 4 below. For 1) In civil, this is probably preponderance of evidence (>50% true) vs beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal. For 4) Theoretically this has no impact, you are just screaming into the void and they don't even know about it. But it could cause real damage, this is a highly trafficked site, maybe they loose their job or their spouse sees this and divorces them etc.
"To prove prima facie defamation, a plaintiff must show four things:
1) a false statement purporting to be fact;
2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person;
> If you can't prove it didn't happen, denying the accusation is libel. Fair is fair.
Yes, Bill Cosby was sued this way. He was accused publicly, he denied the accusations & they sued him for defamation. Everything depends though, it can be harder to show a denial caused damages or is not an opinion ie; I disagree with the characterization of events.
> Maybe the real problem is firing someone from their job due to non credible accusations
Shouldn't an accusation have real potential consequences, like employment termination? In that case sue the accuser for libel.
Truth is not an absolute defense for other legal cases in the US. The legal system is statistically successful at getting innocent people to take plea deals and legally does not require the penalties for a losing party.
I think we need to move away from the American Rule for litigation fees to the English Rule. So we incentive people for telling the truth when pursuing legal action.
> If you can back up what you’re saying, libel isn’t a concern
How are you going to pay to back this up in court? Evidencing these things is tricky. As you've spotted, it doesn't matter whether what you say is true, only whether you can back it up. Oh, and you may need to lodge a bond with court in case you lose. Best re-mortgage your house.
The UK has extremely strong libel law and yet people libel each other all the time, because cases cost in excess of £100,000.
Oh, and declaring private eyewitness testimony to be worthless makes it entirely impossible to criminally prosecute rape and sexual assault.
Except Libel isn't on the same criminal level as rape and sexual assault. Libel is a mostly civil affair and should be dealt with as a civil offense, not criminal, and since its mostly civil, it can have a higher requirement of proof, as weird as it sounds.
With the intent of siccing a mob of people on someone to harass them online? No, never. In the article, the problem is not that the women discussed the fact that they had received harassing emails, but that they attributed those emails to a particular person without any proof that that is true.
"I received an anonymous harassing email" - true statement, not libel
"I received an anonymous harassing email and it was definitely from this guy" - if you can't prove it, could be libel.
Whistleblowers have plenty of protections and can be exempted. Libel can be stated such that they only apply to private matters between individuals, where accusations that do not reach the felony level - which is exactly what is going on here. I have no doubt we could protect all interests, while limiting the power of the wealthy and powerful.
Whistleblowers have functionally no protections, I don't know how anyone could have knowledge of whistleblower cases and claim otherwise.
Any attorney will tell you - if you are going to blow the whistle on some entity that is powerful, you will lose your job, your home, your ability to work in your field, and your life will be in legal hell for decades.
> At some point we to start thinking about strengthening our libel laws to act as a deterrent to this type of online behaviors.
I am unconvinced that there is anything that could be done to strengthen libel laws that would have this effect short of also shutting down essential freedom of expression, given that Western regimes with stronger libel laws are not free of it, and our libel laws tend to go pretty much right up to the limit federal courts have found the First Amendment to impose on them.
It's tricky because these accusations resonate because they remind us of things that really happen. (and in fact, lies can be formulated for maximum impact when truthtelling is usually more nuanced)
Because powerful people have strong lawyers, the tools that the falsely accused can use to clear their name can be used, to more effect, by the guilty.
There are no easy solutions here. The past looked calm only because people often had no recourse unless a newspaper took up their cause.
> You would never dare vocalize these same threats and and accusations publically - and even if you did, in the pre-internet days, it would reach far far fewer people.
It would reach far less people, yes, but we used to burn witches, too, so it seems that internet mobs are just a modern manifestation of that.
“It is absolutely essential that we believe Jussie Smollett. If we don’t, other people who haven’t been attacked might not have the courage to come forward.”
"I'm passing this quote around, not attributing it to being satire, and then when that's pointed out saying it's exaggerated and it works because it accurately represents people's beliefs, even though I said it was exaggerated."
I see this so often with fake news. People spread it because they want to believe it because it confirms their worldview. So when you point out the story is fake, they insist that it might as well be true.
The article itself sums it up as: "Believe victims. Don’t let this story plant doubt in your mind when it’s possible that unconscious bias already lives there."
You must not apply critical thought to accusations, because, of course, you are racist/sexist/whatever and cannot be trusted to think critically.
There's a similar tendency I've noticed with these, where people who have met or interacted with the person pile on with vague statements. This is a popular one: "I met him once and knew something was off! He had a creepy vibe".
I'm sure it reflects their interaction in some cases, but it's so common with these witch hunts (including the one in question here), there may be more to it. Motivated reasoning or something?
Some of the more specific ones could be ex-post re-rationalizing. Like when someone discovers their neighbor was a crook, suddenly his or her demeanor in retrospect was suspicious, or had wide eyes or had eyes close together, said hi but said it fast, or never said hi, or something whatever it is that sets them apart from non crooks.
Social media companies seem to optimize for virality. In such circumstances there are users who will learn to wield such capabilities to suit their goals
That's the thing, the "internet mobs" are literally the result of "engagement" they optimize for so they have no incentive to stop it and all the more incentive to facilitate and perpetuate it actually.
> I've struggled to understand why so many people have piled on to these absurd accusations without facts.
I watched a similar situation play out in real time. A friend had to fire an employee who wasn't submitting work or even responding to communications. The employe retaliated by using their moderately large social media presence to disparage my friend and her company.
Strangely enough, other people with zero experience in the matter were piling on to support the claims. It seemed they felt obligated to amplify and lend credence to the allegations of one of their social media friends.
The experience was extremely stressful for my friend, but ultimately the former employee cooled off and deleted many of the posts. It's hard to tell how much damage was done in the process, but I was stunned at how someone with zero evidence and an obvious axe to grind could rally such disdain for someone else with little more than a few unsubstantiated social media posts.