I wonder how people here would react if this article were about another social movement that had some enemies. For instance, I’m guessing there are lots of people in the press who despise the Latter Day Saint movement (LDS or Mormonism), for instance for its political stances against same-sex marriage. Would people going to bring this sort of skepticism to an article about sexual abuse within the LDS movement? Or any other controversial social movement?
Also, many of the alleged wrongdoers referenced in this article are somewhat to quite identifiable with some degree of effort (please don’t post names though!). They are likely private figures who could sue under ordinary libel standards if the statements were libelous, so it is reasonable to assume Time did its due dilligence on this one.
[Note: I am not a LDS person, pro-LDS, or anywhere adjacent to being LDS. That was just the first example that popped into my head of a group much of the media would dislike.]
I’d absolutely bring the same kind of skepticism. I would refuse to read a TIME expose of supposed abuses within LDS, because I would expect it to take way too much work to figure out what kind of remote reality would lie behind the epstemic abuses that I’d expect TIME (or the New York Times or whoever) would devise. If I thought I needed to know about it, I would poke around online until I found an essay written by somebody who sounded careful and evenhanded and didn’t use language like journalists use, and there would then be a possibility that I was reading something with a near enough relation to reality that I could end up closer to the truth after having tried to do my own mental corrections.
I want to be very clear that this is not my condescending advice to Other People who I think are stupider than I am. I think that I am not able to read coverage in the New York Times and successfully update in a more truthward direction, after compensating for what I think their biasing procedures are. I think I just can’t figure out the truth from that. I don’t think I’m that smart. I avoid clicking through, and if it’s an important matter I try to find a writeup elsewhere instead.
Would you trust a report from (say) the LDS church about the prevalence or non-prevalence of abuse in its ranks? [Continuing with example, not trying to say anything about the LDS church here.]
Organizations and movements certainly have an incentive to spin, minimize, and distort in their favor. And it’s arguably easier to distort on the defensive side.
The epistemic challenge is that, unless abuse allegations result in judicial proceedings or some other public airing of evidence, we cannot realistically evaluate the underlying evidence directly. So if journalists aren’t reliable on these matters, and organizations/movements aren’t reliable, where does that leave us? If one is being highly skeptical, there are few if any individuals who would have the resources and inclination to accurately probe into a question like this without some sort of stake in the question. If you’re deep inside the movement/organization, you may be able to figure out the answer for yourself—but if you’re that deep in, outsiders could reasonably conclude that you weren’t an unbiased reporter and discount your conclusions on that basis.
I mean, sometimes we just dont have very good information about a topic we’d like to know about.
Perhaps we need to accept that a garbage information source can be worse than nothing, even though it is the only source we have—I suspect there is not really any way for me to know if there is a serious sex abuse problem in the LDS.
Maybe adversarial attacks are useful though: if there was a really bad issue in the bay area EA scene, the TIME article ought to have found juicier stories than what I’ve seen.
Thanks, Tim. Your second paragraph is basically what I was trying to get at with my response—often, we are faced with the choice of using potentially biased information sources and de-biasing them as best we can, or just throwing our hands up in the air and admitting we can’t obtain any reliable information.
I’d suggest the latter approach is actually bad for EA: if saw some sources claim that EA is a dangerous place for people like me, saw some sources claim it isn’t, and concluded I couldn’t obtain reliable information because all the information was infected by bias—I would stay far away from EA. Ditto in the LDS hypothetical—I would not let my child attend an LDS camp if I didn’t feel confident it was safe. (I wouldn’t allow my child to attend such a camp in any event because my beliefs do not line up with LDS theology, but you get the point.)
To your second point: I think that kind of reasoning often has validity, but there are several reasons to exercise caution in deploying it here. First, finding survivors is not easy; most survivors don’t exactly talk about their experience in a way that is easy for a reporter to find. Second, many survivors do not want to talk to the media (which is fine). Finally, media organizations have seen their budgets eviscerated in the Internet age, so the depth of investigative reporting they can afford for an article like this has gone down significantly.
My overall impression is generally consistent with what the article says: “The hard question for the Effective Altruism community is whether the case of the EA house in San Francisco is an isolated incident, with failures specific to the area and those involved, or whether it is an exemplar of a larger problem for the movement.” I think the article tells us at least that we need surveys, better reporting mechanisms, and the like to develop a more accurate picture of the scope of the problem.
Sure, I think we agree, with the caveat that if the media says anything whatsoever is dangerous, without showing the statistics to establish that it is scarier than driving to work every day, I automatically disbelieve them.
It’s highly unlikely anyone could sue for libel in the United States. The Time doing even a little bit of fact checking would allow them to say they were not negligent and avoid liability. Which leaves you suing the individuals who spoke to the Time. Which will likely require getting the Time to reveal their sources which would be quite hard.
In addition, the vast majority of the claims in the article are not “factual” in a legal sense. People are reporting their impressions, opinions, etc… For instance, if you had dinner with someone and you say that they were “grooming” you, that’s protected opinion even if it’s an absurd description of what happened.
Then you would have to show that you suffered harm from the libel. Which will be pretty hard given the anonymity in the article.
Finally, the people you’re suing probably don’t have a lot of assets. After paying for their court fees and representation, you’ll be lucky if you get anything. You probably won’t even get enough to cover your own legal expenses. But you will draw attention to yourself and the statements in question so your reputation will likely suffer.
There are definite statements of fact, and identifiable people, in that article. Three have been identified already.
Opinion isn’t quite as clear cut as you imply—opinions that imply knowledge of undisclosed false facts can be defamatory. Here, the reason for the opinion was stated (a particular advocacy for age-gap relationships) so I agree “grooming” is likely protected opinion here.
Most of those figures are private, so the standard is mere negligence (but for Owen, likely actual malice).
I don’t see how Time could protect source identity from disclosure in a libel suit by a private individual. Without putting in evidence about their contacts with the person, they’d be hard pressed not to lose on negligence.
Some courts have allowed anonymity in cased like this, at least early on. Opinions differ, but if I were the judge, I’d allow it at early stages in the litigation here.
An opponent’s lack of money can go both ways—it can make litigation unattractive, but plaintiffs can often use the financial ruin that even “winning” would cause a poor defendant to get concessions.
It’s highly unlikely anyone could sue for libel in the United States.
This is incorrect. Firstly, you probably meant “successfully sue for libel”—anyone can sue for libel, in principle. Secondly, in the United States, people who are considered “public figures” have to prove actual malice, which means that establishing negligence had occurred would be insufficient to establish libel had occurred; however, this is not the case for people who are not public figures. In most cases, they only have to show negligence had occurred.
Then you would have to show that you suffered harm from the libel.
From what I have seen on social media from time to time, the world is suffering from an epidemic of entire political and social movements, such as Effective Altruism, being libelled periodically, with no real consequences. I am not saying this particular article is an example of that, I don’t know, but it could be in principle. If that sort of behaviour (again, I’m not speaking about the Time article) isn’t considered libel by the law, amounting to billions of dollars in damages from libelling thousands of individuals simultaneously, it ought to be, because it’s greviously immoral and sociopathic. Just my opinion, but fiercely-held.
Large group libel isn’t a thing. You can sometimes sue if the group is small enough—lying about someone with characteristic X could lead to a libel suit if the description would only match like a dozen identifiable people (e.g., someone who lives in that house).
I wonder how people here would react if this article were about another social movement that had some enemies. For instance, I’m guessing there are lots of people in the press who despise the Latter Day Saint movement (LDS or Mormonism), for instance for its political stances against same-sex marriage. Would people going to bring this sort of skepticism to an article about sexual abuse within the LDS movement? Or any other controversial social movement?
Also, many of the alleged wrongdoers referenced in this article are somewhat to quite identifiable with some degree of effort (please don’t post names though!). They are likely private figures who could sue under ordinary libel standards if the statements were libelous, so it is reasonable to assume Time did its due dilligence on this one.
[Note: I am not a LDS person, pro-LDS, or anywhere adjacent to being LDS. That was just the first example that popped into my head of a group much of the media would dislike.]
I’d absolutely bring the same kind of skepticism. I would refuse to read a TIME expose of supposed abuses within LDS, because I would expect it to take way too much work to figure out what kind of remote reality would lie behind the epstemic abuses that I’d expect TIME (or the New York Times or whoever) would devise. If I thought I needed to know about it, I would poke around online until I found an essay written by somebody who sounded careful and evenhanded and didn’t use language like journalists use, and there would then be a possibility that I was reading something with a near enough relation to reality that I could end up closer to the truth after having tried to do my own mental corrections.
I want to be very clear that this is not my condescending advice to Other People who I think are stupider than I am. I think that I am not able to read coverage in the New York Times and successfully update in a more truthward direction, after compensating for what I think their biasing procedures are. I think I just can’t figure out the truth from that. I don’t think I’m that smart. I avoid clicking through, and if it’s an important matter I try to find a writeup elsewhere instead.
Would you trust a report from (say) the LDS church about the prevalence or non-prevalence of abuse in its ranks? [Continuing with example, not trying to say anything about the LDS church here.]
Organizations and movements certainly have an incentive to spin, minimize, and distort in their favor. And it’s arguably easier to distort on the defensive side.
The epistemic challenge is that, unless abuse allegations result in judicial proceedings or some other public airing of evidence, we cannot realistically evaluate the underlying evidence directly. So if journalists aren’t reliable on these matters, and organizations/movements aren’t reliable, where does that leave us? If one is being highly skeptical, there are few if any individuals who would have the resources and inclination to accurately probe into a question like this without some sort of stake in the question. If you’re deep inside the movement/organization, you may be able to figure out the answer for yourself—but if you’re that deep in, outsiders could reasonably conclude that you weren’t an unbiased reporter and discount your conclusions on that basis.
I mean, sometimes we just dont have very good information about a topic we’d like to know about.
Perhaps we need to accept that a garbage information source can be worse than nothing, even though it is the only source we have—I suspect there is not really any way for me to know if there is a serious sex abuse problem in the LDS.
Maybe adversarial attacks are useful though: if there was a really bad issue in the bay area EA scene, the TIME article ought to have found juicier stories than what I’ve seen.
Thanks, Tim. Your second paragraph is basically what I was trying to get at with my response—often, we are faced with the choice of using potentially biased information sources and de-biasing them as best we can, or just throwing our hands up in the air and admitting we can’t obtain any reliable information.
I’d suggest the latter approach is actually bad for EA: if saw some sources claim that EA is a dangerous place for people like me, saw some sources claim it isn’t, and concluded I couldn’t obtain reliable information because all the information was infected by bias—I would stay far away from EA. Ditto in the LDS hypothetical—I would not let my child attend an LDS camp if I didn’t feel confident it was safe. (I wouldn’t allow my child to attend such a camp in any event because my beliefs do not line up with LDS theology, but you get the point.)
To your second point: I think that kind of reasoning often has validity, but there are several reasons to exercise caution in deploying it here. First, finding survivors is not easy; most survivors don’t exactly talk about their experience in a way that is easy for a reporter to find. Second, many survivors do not want to talk to the media (which is fine). Finally, media organizations have seen their budgets eviscerated in the Internet age, so the depth of investigative reporting they can afford for an article like this has gone down significantly.
My overall impression is generally consistent with what the article says: “The hard question for the Effective Altruism community is whether the case of the EA house in San Francisco is an isolated incident, with failures specific to the area and those involved, or whether it is an exemplar of a larger problem for the movement.” I think the article tells us at least that we need surveys, better reporting mechanisms, and the like to develop a more accurate picture of the scope of the problem.
Sure, I think we agree, with the caveat that if the media says anything whatsoever is dangerous, without showing the statistics to establish that it is scarier than driving to work every day, I automatically disbelieve them.
It’s highly unlikely anyone could sue for libel in the United States. The Time doing even a little bit of fact checking would allow them to say they were not negligent and avoid liability. Which leaves you suing the individuals who spoke to the Time. Which will likely require getting the Time to reveal their sources which would be quite hard.
In addition, the vast majority of the claims in the article are not “factual” in a legal sense. People are reporting their impressions, opinions, etc… For instance, if you had dinner with someone and you say that they were “grooming” you, that’s protected opinion even if it’s an absurd description of what happened.
Then you would have to show that you suffered harm from the libel. Which will be pretty hard given the anonymity in the article.
Finally, the people you’re suing probably don’t have a lot of assets. After paying for their court fees and representation, you’ll be lucky if you get anything. You probably won’t even get enough to cover your own legal expenses. But you will draw attention to yourself and the statements in question so your reputation will likely suffer.
(US perspective here)
There are definite statements of fact, and identifiable people, in that article. Three have been identified already.
Opinion isn’t quite as clear cut as you imply—opinions that imply knowledge of undisclosed false facts can be defamatory. Here, the reason for the opinion was stated (a particular advocacy for age-gap relationships) so I agree “grooming” is likely protected opinion here.
Most of those figures are private, so the standard is mere negligence (but for Owen, likely actual malice).
I don’t see how Time could protect source identity from disclosure in a libel suit by a private individual. Without putting in evidence about their contacts with the person, they’d be hard pressed not to lose on negligence.
Some courts have allowed anonymity in cased like this, at least early on. Opinions differ, but if I were the judge, I’d allow it at early stages in the litigation here.
An opponent’s lack of money can go both ways—it can make litigation unattractive, but plaintiffs can often use the financial ruin that even “winning” would cause a poor defendant to get concessions.
This is incorrect. Firstly, you probably meant “successfully sue for libel”—anyone can sue for libel, in principle. Secondly, in the United States, people who are considered “public figures” have to prove actual malice, which means that establishing negligence had occurred would be insufficient to establish libel had occurred; however, this is not the case for people who are not public figures. In most cases, they only have to show negligence had occurred.
From what I have seen on social media from time to time, the world is suffering from an epidemic of entire political and social movements, such as Effective Altruism, being libelled periodically, with no real consequences. I am not saying this particular article is an example of that, I don’t know, but it could be in principle. If that sort of behaviour (again, I’m not speaking about the Time article) isn’t considered libel by the law, amounting to billions of dollars in damages from libelling thousands of individuals simultaneously, it ought to be, because it’s greviously immoral and sociopathic. Just my opinion, but fiercely-held.
Large group libel isn’t a thing. You can sometimes sue if the group is small enough—lying about someone with characteristic X could lead to a libel suit if the description would only match like a dozen identifiable people (e.g., someone who lives in that house).