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Considering the Epstein connections, why is it a shock that it is still happening? People in that position often feel they can do anything they want, including sexual assault. The fact so few end up being investigated is disgusting.
These kinds of things constantly come out. In the 1990s, (when I was a teenager,) and these scandals happened, everyone thought "never again, it's better now."
Then the me-too moment happened and everyone remembered the 1990s as a time where all kinds of nasty behavior was tolerated.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that a lot of the people involved were too young and/or not paying attention during the me-too movement.
Can we ever figure out how to break the cycle?
Maybe the answer is communism (trigger warning for the snowflakes). With a more equal distribution of wealth, there wouldn't be the rich and resourceful being able to build a fortress (with bought politicians, bought police, expensive lawyers) that would allow abuse against the less resourceful...
I was a bit older in the 90's.
Clarence Thomas had been appointed to the Supreme Court after a lengthy investigation into sexual harassment claims by Anita Hill. At the time, SNL seemed to think that the main problem was his lack of game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shkJfRpktGc
A few years later we found out that Clinton had been getting BJs from his interns. This time the Republicans wanted to make a big deal about it so Moveon.org was born. It started as a petition asking Congress to literally "move on" from the Clinton scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoveOn#Opposing_Clinton's_impe...
Neither Anita Hill nor Monica Lewinsky seem to consider either of those investigations remotely successful.
I think the U.S. needs to finally adopt the ERA into its constitution. Many people don’t realize that women still don’t have equal protection under the constitution in the U.S. It’s absurd in my opinion.
I feel like Joseph McCarthy’s list of <over 200 communists in the Department of State, or whatever> is particularly noteworthy. He couldn’t have contrived that list without Roy Cohn, and Cohn is one of the founding fathers of today’s ruling party. The legislative and executive branches legitimized giving attention to dudes with a secret list.
Sad that they feel this is necessary.
Also feels like something that could be life ruining if someone innocent finds themselves on the list by mistake/fluke. This is presumably crowdsourced which is not bulletproof
Interesting that every instance of sexual assault is preemptively doubted by default, whereas that's not a primary part of the conversation for accusations of other crimes like arson, theft, embezzlement, etc. False accusations of any crime could hurt the accused, that's more or less an unavoidable tautology of the legal system. There's just one kind of crime where public conversation obsesses about that, though.
Are you aware of privately-circulated lists of embezzlement accusations? I believe the reaction would be similar.
That's because that's the narrative people push out to their followers. It allows them to continue to abuse women and take advantage of men with their countless grift. So there is a strong incentive to push that narrative. It's helpful to remember that these people think women are lesser and objects, not people.
because it's not as common as people being cancelled over this stuff. your life isn't ruined instantly if you get accused of theft
Yes, all false accusations are bad.
But sexual assault is the one area that is almost always taking two parties at their word, and very very frequently, the only court is the court of public opinion. That makes it rife for abuse in both directions - people doing it believing they'll get away with it because it comes down to their word vs. someone else's if it ever even comes out, since so few people go to the police, and people know they can lob an accusation out there and do a lot of damage without having to prove anything.
I think the former happens far far more than the latter, but I'm also not going to wonder why people discuss the latter - it's real, and it happens. People discuss getting attacked by sharks whenever sharks come up, too, even though that's almost certainly not going to be something they need to worry about, either.
This sort of list is exactly the sort of place where those false accusations can be really easily inserted with minimal vetting. I'd also bet it is an almost entirely accurate list.
All these things can be true at once.
These things can all be true, sure. What’s also true is what the GP points out: the only time the preemptive doubt rolls out is for accusations of sexual impropriety, which can’t be disentangled from the fact that most accusations against the powerful of sexual impropriety come from women.
And given how abysmally low the rate of false allegations is maybe we should all do a bit better and stop running interference for our oligarch class, especially since sexual impropriety seems to be how they operate in a lot of domains, not just with adult women.
Sure. But there's a variety of tones discussing this - there are some that are quite expressly political in nature of a certain bent, and those I would be skeptical of. There's more than one comment in here that gives me the ick. But that's not everyone, and lumping them in together isn't productive.
How low do you think the rate is? Because its' hard to pin down, but ~10% seems to be a pretty defensible number based on the data we do have. That's definitely a minority, but 10% is enough that I am going to consider it every time. If 1 out of 10 times I lit my stove it would explode if not examined, I am still checking my stove every single time I use it.
I don't disagree that we have a lot of sick fuck oligarchs. I don't disagree that sexual assault is one of the things the ultra rich and powerful turn to for a variety of reasons.
But a rational position is a rational position. I'm not going to abandon it because some people will misuse it to cast aspersions on people. I don't think women are inherently more moral than men, and we have many many many examples of men using deception to harm others for their own advantage. I don't think women are incapable of doing the same.
I would also never suggest that the default is to assume every accusation is a lie. My general assumption is that any given accusation is probably true, but that if you're going to have an opinion on which way the outcome is, it's best to have as informed of an opinion as you can, rather than just assuming anything one way or the other. And in a court of law, presumed innocent, because that's a whole different thing than public opinion.
i don’t like the common programmer behavior of doubting things we don’t want to face while requesting speculation on easily available data
making a list like this is hard in ways that most of us will never understand
if you aren’t a victim then you’re the guy who loudly doubts victim self defense
I mean you’ll never fully remove politics from the powerful conceptually, it’s just not possible, they’re too close to the levers of power. That said I think it’s a cop out of sorts to say because people “have political opinions” about the subject of an SA accusation that that would necessarily bias judgement. The real problem is the lack of investigative resources for these accusations, which itself leads to lists like these being published: when people can’t seek justice from the justice system they will do so in other ways.
We’ve had the Epstein lists for how long now? And how many on it have seen justice?
I mean, I'd argue that one party pretty expressly wants to protect the interests of these people. Largely the one that has been sitting on the Epstein lists despite campaigning on releasing them. Meanwhile, I can go read hundreds of pages of investigation on Clinton getting a blowjob. And yeah, he's a scumbag for that too, obvious power imbalance, etc., but it's pretty telling what gets released and what doesn't. I'd also argue there's one side that just generally gives less of a fuck about the rights of women.
But yes, if we could actually make going to the police an effective, safe, and as painless as can be process for the victims, it would solve a whole whole lot of this, and we really could go 'well why are you putting it on a list instead of going to the police and getting the scumbag put behind bars,' whereas there's a billion and a half legitimate reasons someone might not want to go to the police today.
Legal Eagle made a good video talking about how there's a bit more to it than that, it was about the Platner and Salwell allegiations: <https://nebula.tv/videos/legaleagle-she-said-is-evidence>.
We have this concept in the western world of being presumed innocent until proven guilty. Something like a sexual assault accusation is typically taken extremely seriously (As it should), but this can lead it to being weaponized. Maybe a manager who is a rival for a position you covet, well a sexual assault accusation may make them conveniently go away.
It's not. It's 100% NOT taken seriously. If it is taken seriously, you are lucky.
But your comment is absolutely so wrong, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt you are completely and utterly ignorant of this topic.
Do you mean it should be guilty unless proven otherwise?
While we can easily find a ton of documented cases of sexual assault, cases of false accusations seem relatively sparse.
Sucks to be one of the 'relatively sparse' cases then.
Lots of cases are ultimately thrown out due to lack of evidence. Even Kevin Spacey was acquitted.
Absolutely; though in context of the article, names aren't being named and nobody's being accused. It's literally a private-ish list of "stay away from/be careful around these people".
i think that people should reflect extremely carefully on whether they want to be the person following this line of logic publicly
I wouldn't say "every instance" is is preemptively doubted, but there is a wikipedia page on false accusations for a reason. With most studies indicating double digit % of false accusations. (and some numbers far higher than I would have guessed [0])
I'd say a better phrasing is that innocent until proven guilty applies - just like with other crimes. Crowd sourced lists aren't that so treating them with some caution is warranted.
I can see how even an unreliable list may be of use practically to women though even if process wise it is quite dubious.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Estim...
Your source doesn't really say what you're stating though. The ranges seem to be 4-13%, with the majority closer to 8. The one that was highest for the US (10%) was a self-reporting survey that asked people if they had been falsely accused -- surely not the most reliable method.
Because this is the sort of thing that in most cases can’t be substantiated by hard evidence. Whereas all of the rest of the examples you have generally can be. Would you support punishment of anyone as an arsonist only on the basis of a claim that they committed arson and #believeallwomen?
Shouldn't it be a good thing that we are presuming someone innocent rather than guilty?
Interestingly I have seen the opposite where if a guy is accused, it is automatically assumed he is guilty. Especially with sports players, which lead to the Duke Lacrosse false accusations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_rape_hoax
This is assume SHE is guilty of a massive lie. The assumption is that she is trying to baselessly destroy him. Otherwise said, the benefit of the doubt is not symmetrical.
I've never heard of anybody's life being ruined over an accusation of arson that was dropped for lack of evidence (or even later proven to be false). As long as the consequences of the accusation are greater, the scrutiny will be, too.
It's just an unbiased recognition of the system of SA.
Both men and women can have incentive to act amorally, and the context of the situation is often the best we have to weigh those incentives and feel out what really happened and the scope of the impact from it.
This is complicated by the fact that SA is largely subjective, and what some people get lifelong trauma from is another Friday night for others. So both the act and the outcome are subjective.
Those other crimes are pretty binary, where you did or you didn't do it. SA is different because often guilt is a confluence of many factors rather than a single verifiable action, and those factors are mostly subjective self-reported ones that can have incentivized bias (something the legal system works hard to weed out in other cases).
There will of course be a secret mirror blacklist: anyone who does report sexual assault to the authorities will find it much harder to get a job and impossible to access the inner circle.
(Famously, Weinstein did this to actresses)
Epstein sponsored lawsuits against women who accused others of sexual assaults.
And also based on the emails, because convinced made Epstein more respected in his circles.
Not as likely as you think. The reason a list like this feels necessary to many (presumably mostly) women is that in SV culture there's a presumption that these sorts of claims are almost always baseless. That these women engaged in consensual activities and either regretted it after the fact or were trying to make a buck.
Women get bitten by the vagueness of their own rules, since they want to keep all options open.
If it was a strict 'no workplace dating ever' it would have been easier for everyone.
Life-ruining? No, not at all. Not even close.
Indeed. Some privileged people confuse being denied opportunity (rightfully) with a life being "ruined". It's a telling behavior rooted in entitlement.
Those poors have to deal with this often, which is considered a "them" problem. Be it because of credit score, carried debt, criminal record, or loss of license, etc, as I have seen and experienced.
Maybe Robert Scoble should tweet about how unfair life is, put forward an absurd definition of sexual harassment, accuses women of reporting it to fit in with the cool crowd, attack his own accusers, and plug his latest business venture again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230597
Then all the other sexual assaulters can leap to his defense and circle the wagons around him again!
This is so cool cuz vigilantism never has any drawbacks! /s
I'm sure everyone would rather the legal recourse to be successful at yielding justice for victim of sexual assault.
Putting names on the list and releasing it publicly like this can have very serious consequences.
"Media Men Lawsuit Ends in Settlement"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/06/style/media-men-list-sett...
I can't quite tell from the linked article - are the accusers themselves anonymous here? I'm not sure there's anybody to actually pursue.
Ok can we see the list? And then prosecute the people? Or it’s a secret for some reason?
The reference is the NYPost. Information is not its forte.
Yeah, that's how this stuff should work. Accusations published then publicly crucify the "guilty". Who cares if any of this is accurate, right?
“Some predators want the shiniest star, the harder you are to take down, the more powerful they feel. It’s a conquest,” they said.
That applies to many areas, also censorship and cancellation targets. The Python Steering Council focused on successively harder targets in order to keep power, gratify their psychopathic instincts and keep their corporate jobs (which backfired fortunately).
Yeah dude sexual assault is exactly like Python governance
I am continuously left speechless by the takes on this platform. It's hard to imagine for me at times that there are people in the same sphere as me who think the way they present on here.
I think the question is: Does this list work better in secret, where the perpetrators don't know they're on the list; or does it work better in public, where the general public learns that these kinds of problems continue to happen?
The temptation will be to pressure people on a secret list with public disclosure. And there’s a grey zone, too. Imagine a messy divorce, in which one person’s name is conveniently found on a list that’s time stamped during some period of contented infidelity. I think that’s how these are supposed to work.
Is the system so broken that it is denying proper investigation to the victims? if not, i think this list will just waste a lot of time, energy and reputation.
This is a good thread to watch for people saying things like "but what about false accusations?" or the like.
Every single one of them is essentially making it clear they are 100% not safe people to be around. Literally putting themselves on their own list.
Just read the article. Why are adults living in frat houses? Is this a thing now?
Because rent is expensive and options are limited, we've promoted the sigma grindset culture to an insane degree, and people like to cluster together socially, especially when doing something that scares them, like trying to launch a startup. Save on money, be around people experiencing the same things you are, potentially be able to collaborate if you end up working on the same thing, etc.
... but yes it's still weird from an objective standpoint and only makes sense when you insert yourself into the bizzaro world bubble of SV.
We have a geriartic toddler in control of the world's largest military, voted in by other people driven by their (to reduce it to 2 words) immature anger... biological age isn't mental age.
As an aside, this is the first I heard about [tech houses](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/technology/agi-house-ai-c...). So far, they don't. . . sound great.
There was an article posted about this earlier today but then the OP was quickly deleted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831269
Sorry for writing from a throwaway account because there's still a lot of stigma to this, while I think it's a pretty average experience.
I had sex therapy to be able to understand where my fantasy ends, and where the real world starts, and how people in the real world aren't there to play the roles my fantasies give them.
It sounds obvious when I say it like this but there are many men like me, who didn't grow up emotionally, and having difficulty accepting the agency of others. Women had to be interested in me so that I could feel validated. I also had never stopped and asked myself "does she really want this or am I trying to manipulate her?".
You also see the same pattern with men who think it's their right to find a female partner and they feel wronged by the society when this doesn't automatically happen.
Try getting some help, fellow men. It takes a lot of weight from your shoulders and you become much less likely to end up getting on such lists.
This is terrifying but I am glad people like this are self aware enough to get help. Kudos.. I think?
Thanks for sharing. And well done admitting you need help and getting it.
are we talking about weird fantasies / bdsm or just "having a partner" here
WTF, I find it hard to believe that during a sexual assault, the perpetrator doesn't know what they are doing. WTF is this?
How about a borderline personality disorder false accusations list?
Surprised nobody else brings this up, but then again I lived to 49 before I figured out what BPD was.
Grain of salt, folks. Wait for something other than the NYPost.
This is incredibly obvious and believable. The reason why American elites, particularly the SV executive class, went so hard for Trump is because he gives them complete lack of accountability. Whether it is sexual predation, financial regulation, crypto regulation, anti-gambling, it is all the same. Anybody putting any kind of rules in place for them is an affront to their 'freedom'.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/st-paul-mayor-called-mi...