If financial concerns are the key mover, sure (although I don’t think it takes an 8-figure lawsuit to sue Gawker, just to ruin them). Gwern’s comment seemed to be outlining much more of an ethical principle: thou shalt not threaten defamation lawsuits even when you have suffered actual damages from actual defamation.
Lawsuits are an asymmetric weapon. Rich people can easily afford them (even if they know they would lose). If their use is unchecked, it would mean that no one would dare to criticize rich people (except for other rich people, but those may not care about specific wrongs that do not concern them).
There is always a chance to lose a lawsuit even if you were right; for example, you may fail to prove it. You would probably also lose a lawsuit if, let’s say, 80% of your accusations are right, but the remaining 20% are wrong. (In which case, the community would still benefit from exposing the actor.) And even if you win the lawsuit… “the process is the punishment”, it cost you lots of money and time.
I think that an absolute ban on lawsuits would probably be excessive, but given the asymmetry of power and the devastating impact, what rule would you propose to make the situation balanced?
*
Yes, there is also an opposite concern… people writing shit online can damage someone’s reputation and business. If those people are more popular on LW, or if they do not have a business that could be damaged in turn, this is also an asymmetric weapon.
I guess the only thing I can say here is that if someone writes an article on LW about you, you can also respond by writing an article on LW; either immediately, or later, or both. Critics are not censored here, you are not required to spend money to defend yourself, the time spent can be reduced to… quoting a list of accusations, adding “this is false” under each of them, and at the end saying “hey, I can prove all of this to be false, but it will take me some time and work… in the meanwhile, shouldn’t the burden of the proof be on the accuser?”, or something like that.
It seems to me that Nonlinear handled this situation sub-optimally precisely because they were already considering the possibility of legal escalation. Which means they also wanted their response to be 100% bulletproof. Which is why it took so much time for them to prepare it. If you read their response as it is now, you could probably extract their main arguments into five or seven bullet points… and those could have been posted immediately as a comment under the original article, with “the proofs will be provided soon, it takes some time to collect the screenshots and ask involved third parties for consent”. Of course, in situations of stress people often do things they later with they did differently. But the threat of lawsuits just further escalated the situation.
(Not sure if my memory serves me well, but I think the original objections were mostly about whether vegan food was or wasn’t available. If instead I saw a list saying “actually, the salaries were much higher, approximately X but please wait until we find the exact numbers… they was a boyfriend invited to spend a few weeks with us, so definitely no social isolation… and the ‘illegal drugs’ was actually Adderall” etc., that would have changed my mind more effectively. When instead I saw a threat of lawsuit and nitpicking about vegan food, I assumed that the rest of the accusations was mostly true.)
I agree NL chose a bad strategy, but I also think you mischaracterize it? Instead of making a long list of claims they were asserting were false (without documentation) they picked one relatively serious accusation and responded to it in detail with screenshots.
I supposed one’s perspective depends on how you see the relative seriousness of accusations. From my perspective, to be isolated from friends and family is a huge red flag, but not being given vegan food is… an asshole move, certainly, but… as I am not a vegan myself, I see it as nothing too serious, also because it was only one day.
It’s like, if someone accused me of “arson, murder, and jaywalking”, and I focused my entire defense on why what I did does not qualify as jaywalking… even if I made my case successfully, it would probably seem quite weird. (But if instead I said that the supposedly murdered person is actually alive, just give me some time to call them...)
I think the accusation around food was much more serious than Jaywalking. Ben’s post had:
She was sick with covid in a foreign country, with only the three Nonlinear cofounders around, but nobody in the house was willing to go out and get her vegan food, so she barely ate for 2 days. Alice eventually gave in and ate non-vegan food in the house
I understood this to be claiming, some explicitly and some implicitly, that:
Alice was dependent on NL for food because she had covid.
NL would not provide her with food compatible with her dietary restrictions.
After two days she had eaten whatever small amount food was available that met her dietary restrictions, NL was still not providing her with acceptable food, so she decided to compromise her ethics in the name of not starving.
Now, the full picture ended up being pretty different from this (and also very messy and still disputed) but I don’t think it’s surprising that as stated many people took this as a serious accusation, and I don’t think it was trivial or otherwise a bad choice for NL to rebut.
(Repeating, though, that I don’t think chosing to spend their time rebutting a single claim in detail was a good strategy, and instead would have rather seen them say which claims they objected to up front. And I’m frustrated with myself that I didn’t suggest this at the time.)
I also think this accusation was relatively serious to me.
I do not think it was among the very most serious accusations in the post, but I think it was a valid one to reply to. I also found the response that Kat wrote pretty compelling, and think it meaningfully affected my interpretation of the situation (I still assign some probability that Ben or Alice will have some good explanation of the situation that flips my understanding of the facts around, which has happened a few times in this whole situation, but I think that relies on trust in those parties that I don’t think should be shared by others on this forum, and I think given the evidence provided, I think it’s very reasonable for an observer to consider that accusation confidently false and relatively serious)
(2) I think something odd about the comments claiming that this post is full of misinformation, is that they don’t correct any of the misinformation. Like, I get that assembling receipts, evidence etc can take a while, and writing a full rebuttal of this would take a while. But if there are false claims in the post, pick one and say why it’s false.
Seconding this.
I would be pretty interested to read a comment from nonlinear folks listing out everything that they believe to be false in the narrative as stated, even if they can’t substantiate their counter-claims yet.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems like it should take less than an hour to read the post, make a note of every claim that’s not true, and then post that list of false claims, even if it would take many days to collect all the evidence that shows those points are false.
I imagine that would be helpful for you, because readers are much more likely to reserve judgement if you listed which specific things are false.
Personally, I could look over that list and say “oh yeah, number 8 [or whatever] is cruxy for me. If that turns out not to be true, I think that substantially changes my sense of the situation.”, and I would feel actively interested in what evidence you provide regarding that point later. And it would let you know which points to prioritize refuting, because you would know which things are cruxy for people reading.
In contrast, a generalized bid to reserve judgement because “many of the important claims were false or extremely misleading”...well, it just seems less credible, and so leaves me less willing to actually reserve judgement.
Indeed, deferring on producing such a list of claims-you-think-are-false suggests the possibility that you’re trying to “get your story straight.” ie that you’re taking the time now to hurriedly go through and check which facts you and others will be able to prove or disprove, so that you know which things you can safely lie or exagerate about, or what narrative paints you in the best light while still being consistent with the legible facts.
“We chose this example not because it’s the most important (although it certainly paints us in a very negative and misleading light) but simply because it was the fastest claim to explain where we had extremely clear evidence without having to add a lot of context, explanation, find more evidence, etc.
We have job contracts, interview recordings, receipts, chat histories, and more, which we are working full-time on preparing.
This claim was a few sentences in Ben’s article but took us hours to refute because we had to track down all of the conversations, make them readable, add context, anonymize people, check our facts, and write up an explanation that was rigorous and clear. Ben’s article is over 10,000 words and we’re working as fast as we can to respond to every point he made.
Again, we are not asking for the community to believe us unconditionally. We want to show everybody all of the evidence and also take responsibility for the mistakes we made.”
As for the “isolated” claim, we showed that this did not happen. Alice lived/worked apart from us for 50% of the time. Chloe’s boyfriend was invited to travel with us 40% of the time. We encouraged them to have regular calls with friends and family when they weren’t visiting. We have the invite policy where it says they’re encouraged to invite friends and family (and they followed up on this, like with Chloe’s boyfriend).
If financial concerns are the key mover, sure (although I don’t think it takes an 8-figure lawsuit to sue Gawker, just to ruin them). Gwern’s comment seemed to be outlining much more of an ethical principle: thou shalt not threaten defamation lawsuits even when you have suffered actual damages from actual defamation.
Lawsuits are an asymmetric weapon. Rich people can easily afford them (even if they know they would lose). If their use is unchecked, it would mean that no one would dare to criticize rich people (except for other rich people, but those may not care about specific wrongs that do not concern them).
There is always a chance to lose a lawsuit even if you were right; for example, you may fail to prove it. You would probably also lose a lawsuit if, let’s say, 80% of your accusations are right, but the remaining 20% are wrong. (In which case, the community would still benefit from exposing the actor.) And even if you win the lawsuit… “the process is the punishment”, it cost you lots of money and time.
I think that an absolute ban on lawsuits would probably be excessive, but given the asymmetry of power and the devastating impact, what rule would you propose to make the situation balanced?
*
Yes, there is also an opposite concern… people writing shit online can damage someone’s reputation and business. If those people are more popular on LW, or if they do not have a business that could be damaged in turn, this is also an asymmetric weapon.
I guess the only thing I can say here is that if someone writes an article on LW about you, you can also respond by writing an article on LW; either immediately, or later, or both. Critics are not censored here, you are not required to spend money to defend yourself, the time spent can be reduced to… quoting a list of accusations, adding “this is false” under each of them, and at the end saying “hey, I can prove all of this to be false, but it will take me some time and work… in the meanwhile, shouldn’t the burden of the proof be on the accuser?”, or something like that.
It seems to me that Nonlinear handled this situation sub-optimally precisely because they were already considering the possibility of legal escalation. Which means they also wanted their response to be 100% bulletproof. Which is why it took so much time for them to prepare it. If you read their response as it is now, you could probably extract their main arguments into five or seven bullet points… and those could have been posted immediately as a comment under the original article, with “the proofs will be provided soon, it takes some time to collect the screenshots and ask involved third parties for consent”. Of course, in situations of stress people often do things they later with they did differently. But the threat of lawsuits just further escalated the situation.
(Not sure if my memory serves me well, but I think the original objections were mostly about whether vegan food was or wasn’t available. If instead I saw a list saying “actually, the salaries were much higher, approximately X but please wait until we find the exact numbers… they was a boyfriend invited to spend a few weeks with us, so definitely no social isolation… and the ‘illegal drugs’ was actually Adderall” etc., that would have changed my mind more effectively. When instead I saw a threat of lawsuit and nitpicking about vegan food, I assumed that the rest of the accusations was mostly true.)
I agree NL chose a bad strategy, but I also think you mischaracterize it? Instead of making a long list of claims they were asserting were false (without documentation) they picked one relatively serious accusation and responded to it in detail with screenshots.
I supposed one’s perspective depends on how you see the relative seriousness of accusations. From my perspective, to be isolated from friends and family is a huge red flag, but not being given vegan food is… an asshole move, certainly, but… as I am not a vegan myself, I see it as nothing too serious, also because it was only one day.
It’s like, if someone accused me of “arson, murder, and jaywalking”, and I focused my entire defense on why what I did does not qualify as jaywalking… even if I made my case successfully, it would probably seem quite weird. (But if instead I said that the supposedly murdered person is actually alive, just give me some time to call them...)
I think the accusation around food was much more serious than Jaywalking. Ben’s post had:
I understood this to be claiming, some explicitly and some implicitly, that:
Alice was dependent on NL for food because she had covid.
NL would not provide her with food compatible with her dietary restrictions.
After two days she had eaten whatever small amount food was available that met her dietary restrictions, NL was still not providing her with acceptable food, so she decided to compromise her ethics in the name of not starving.
Now, the full picture ended up being pretty different from this (and also very messy and still disputed) but I don’t think it’s surprising that as stated many people took this as a serious accusation, and I don’t think it was trivial or otherwise a bad choice for NL to rebut.
(Repeating, though, that I don’t think chosing to spend their time rebutting a single claim in detail was a good strategy, and instead would have rather seen them say which claims they objected to up front. And I’m frustrated with myself that I didn’t suggest this at the time.)
I also think this accusation was relatively serious to me.
I do not think it was among the very most serious accusations in the post, but I think it was a valid one to reply to. I also found the response that Kat wrote pretty compelling, and think it meaningfully affected my interpretation of the situation (I still assign some probability that Ben or Alice will have some good explanation of the situation that flips my understanding of the facts around, which has happened a few times in this whole situation, but I think that relies on trust in those parties that I don’t think should be shared by others on this forum, and I think given the evidence provided, I think it’s very reasonable for an observer to consider that accusation confidently false and relatively serious)
Many people did push for this at the time:
And:
Agreed! What I was trying to say is that I additionally feel badly for not having called for this.
I had thought people did push them for this?
We said this in our post about the vegan food:
“We chose this example not because it’s the most important (although it certainly paints us in a very negative and misleading light) but simply because it was the fastest claim to explain where we had extremely clear evidence without having to add a lot of context, explanation, find more evidence, etc.
We have job contracts, interview recordings, receipts, chat histories, and more, which we are working full-time on preparing.
This claim was a few sentences in Ben’s article but took us hours to refute because we had to track down all of the conversations, make them readable, add context, anonymize people, check our facts, and write up an explanation that was rigorous and clear. Ben’s article is over 10,000 words and we’re working as fast as we can to respond to every point he made.
Again, we are not asking for the community to believe us unconditionally. We want to show everybody all of the evidence and also take responsibility for the mistakes we made.”
As for the “isolated” claim, we showed that this did not happen. Alice lived/worked apart from us for 50% of the time. Chloe’s boyfriend was invited to travel with us 40% of the time. We encouraged them to have regular calls with friends and family when they weren’t visiting. We have the invite policy where it says they’re encouraged to invite friends and family (and they followed up on this, like with Chloe’s boyfriend).