I don’t understand how people would be at greater risk of retaliation if the post was delayed by a week?
I also want to make sure people realise that there’s a huge difference between “I will stalk you / call your family / get you fired” and “I will sue you” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation [edit: e.g. if Alice had threatened to sue Nonlinear that wouldn’t be considered retaliation, whereas threatening to call their family would be worrying], so I don’t think Emerson’s email is a particularly strong confirmation that the “large and substantial threat of retaliation” is real.
If Ben is worried about losing 40 hours of productive time by responding to Nonlinear’s evidence in private, he doesn’t have to. He could just allow them to put together their side of the story, ready for publishing when he publishes his own post. Similarly, if he’s worried about them manipulating him with their charisma, he could just agree to delay and then stop reading/responding to their messages. This way readers can still read both sides of the story at once, rather than read the most juicy side, tell all their friends the latest gossip, and carry on with their lives as the post drops off the frontpage.
I don’t understand how people would be at greater risk of retaliation if the post was delayed by a week?
It is a lot easier to explain to your employer or your friends or your colleagues what is happening if you can just link them to a public post, if someone is trying to pressure you. That week in which the person you are scared of has access to the post, but the public does not, is a quite vulnerable week, in my experience.
I also want to make sure people realise that there’s a huge difference between “I will stalk you / call your family / get you fired” and “I will sue you” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation, so I don’t think Emerson’s email is a particularly strong confirmation that the “large and substantial threat of retaliation” is real.
I think threatening a libel lawsuit with the intensity that Emerson did strikes me as above “calling my family” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation, especially if you are someone who does not have the means for a legal defense (which would be true of Ben’s sources for this post). Libel suits are really costly, and a quite major escalation.
If Ben is worried about losing 40 hours of productive time by responding to Nonlinear’s evidence in private, he doesn’t have to. He could just allow them to put together their side of the story, ready for publishing when he publishes his own post.
Emerson’s email says explicitly that if the post is published as is, that he would pursue a libel suit. This seems to rule out the option of just delaying and letting them prepare their response, and indeed demands that the original post gets changed.
I think threatening a libel lawsuit with the intensity that Emerson did strikes me as above “calling my family” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation, especially if you are someone who does not have the means for a legal defense
I think there’s different versions of “call your family” that suggests different levels of escalation.
Tell your family compromising facts about you (bad and scary, but probably less scary than having to mount a legal defense)
Threaten your family, implicitly or explicitly (the type of thing that predictably leads people to being terrified)
Thank you for taking the time to clearly and patiently explain these dynamics. They’re not obvious to me, as someone who’s never experienced anything similar.
I don’t understand how people would be at greater risk of retaliation if the post was delayed by a week?
I also want to make sure people realise that there’s a huge difference between “I will stalk you / call your family / get you fired” and “I will sue you” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation [edit: e.g. if Alice had threatened to sue Nonlinear that wouldn’t be considered retaliation, whereas threatening to call their family would be worrying], so I don’t think Emerson’s email is a particularly strong confirmation that the “large and substantial threat of retaliation” is real.
If Ben is worried about losing 40 hours of productive time by responding to Nonlinear’s evidence in private, he doesn’t have to. He could just allow them to put together their side of the story, ready for publishing when he publishes his own post. Similarly, if he’s worried about them manipulating him with their charisma, he could just agree to delay and then stop reading/responding to their messages. This way readers can still read both sides of the story at once, rather than read the most juicy side, tell all their friends the latest gossip, and carry on with their lives as the post drops off the frontpage.
It is a lot easier to explain to your employer or your friends or your colleagues what is happening if you can just link them to a public post, if someone is trying to pressure you. That week in which the person you are scared of has access to the post, but the public does not, is a quite vulnerable week, in my experience.
I think threatening a libel lawsuit with the intensity that Emerson did strikes me as above “calling my family” in terms of what counts as threats/intimidation/retaliation, especially if you are someone who does not have the means for a legal defense (which would be true of Ben’s sources for this post). Libel suits are really costly, and a quite major escalation.
Emerson’s email says explicitly that if the post is published as is, that he would pursue a libel suit. This seems to rule out the option of just delaying and letting them prepare their response, and indeed demands that the original post gets changed.
I think there’s different versions of “call your family” that suggests different levels of escalation.
Tell your family compromising facts about you (bad and scary, but probably less scary than having to mount a legal defense)
Threaten your family, implicitly or explicitly (the type of thing that predictably leads people to being terrified)
Thank you for taking the time to clearly and patiently explain these dynamics. They’re not obvious to me, as someone who’s never experienced anything similar.