Quick thing to re-emphasize. It was not saying we’d sue if they posted. It was saying if they posted without giving us a week to send them the evidence that we thought would largely update the post they wrote.
Ben’s post has already been changed in many ways based on our conversation and the information we showed him on the call. It seems like basic truth-seeking behavior to hear the other side and see counter-evidence.
He sent us the draft on a day he knew we were traveling and had sketchy internet, and that one of our members was sick. He’d had months and hundreds of hours to gather evidence for and write a >10k word post and he gave us a day to respond on a day he knew we were unable to respond well.
We were traveling that entire day (which he knew) and when we asked why there was a rush, couldn’t he wait a week for more information that might sizeably update him, he said he couldn’t wait and wouldn’t tell us why.
We were not asking him not to post. We were asking him to see our evidence before posting.
I think this is a really important distinction.
We were not suppressing evidence, but trying to share it.
And they were refusing to look at it and did not care at all about the effects this would have on our ability to do good in the future. And also despite the fact that after they posted and paid the ex-employees (before they saw our evidence), this would make it psychologically impossible for them to update.
“Alice worked there from November 2021 to June 2022” became “Alice travelled with Nonlinear from November 2021 to June 2022 and started working for the org from around February”
“using Lightcone funds” became “using personal funds”
Your claim
Importantly, his original post (he’s quietly redacted a lot of points since publishing) had a lot of falsehoods that he knew were not true. He has since removed some of them after the fact, but those have still been causing us damage.
seems false. Possibly I made a mistake, or Ben made edits and you saw them and then Ben reverted them—if so, I encourage you/anyone to point to another specific edit, possibly on other archive.org versions.
Update: Kat guesses she was thinking of changes from a near-final draft rather than changes from the first published version.
Those do seem like significant differences, and at least the 1st one is something that the Nonlinear team were asking to be corrected as very relevant to the sick Alice situation. It is an update for me that they were correct.
The email is contradictory as to whether the desire to sue is based on the content of the post or the duration before posting, with I belief the former appearing first in the email.
The line I’m referring to is “if published as is we intend to pursue legal action”. That is consistent with being fine with him publishing at all, but not consistent with being fine if he decides to not change anything in the post after getting all the facts in a week.
Combining this line with the ones you mentioned gives the impression that the message you’re trying to convey is ‘what Ben has written is false and libellous, we have asked him to wait a week so he can correct his post before publishing, after getting all the facts. If he doesn’t do boththese things, we intend to sue’, and I think it’s reasonable for anyone to have interpreted it this way, even if that’s not what you intended.
Quick thing to re-emphasize. It was not saying we’d sue if they posted. It was saying if they posted without giving us a week to send them the evidence that we thought would largely update the post they wrote.
Ben’s post has already been changed in many ways based on our conversation and the information we showed him on the call. It seems like basic truth-seeking behavior to hear the other side and see counter-evidence.
He sent us the draft on a day he knew we were traveling and had sketchy internet, and that one of our members was sick. He’d had months and hundreds of hours to gather evidence for and write a >10k word post and he gave us a day to respond on a day he knew we were unable to respond well.
We were traveling that entire day (which he knew) and when we asked why there was a rush, couldn’t he wait a week for more information that might sizeably update him, he said he couldn’t wait and wouldn’t tell us why.
We were not asking him not to post. We were asking him to see our evidence before posting.
I think this is a really important distinction.
We were not suppressing evidence, but trying to share it.
And they were refusing to look at it and did not care at all about the effects this would have on our ability to do good in the future. And also despite the fact that after they posted and paid the ex-employees (before they saw our evidence), this would make it psychologically impossible for them to update.
I used a diff checker to find the differences between the current post and the original post. There seem to be two:
“Alice worked there from November 2021 to June 2022” became “Alice travelled with Nonlinear from November 2021 to June 2022 and started working for the org from around February”
“using Lightcone funds” became “using personal funds”
Your claim
seems false. Possibly I made a mistake, or Ben made edits and you saw them and then Ben reverted them—if so, I encourage you/anyone to point to another specific edit, possibly on other archive.org versions.
Update: Kat guesses she was thinking of changes from a near-final draft rather than changes from the first published version.
Those do seem like significant differences, and at least the 1st one is something that the Nonlinear team were asking to be corrected as very relevant to the sick Alice situation. It is an update for me that they were correct.
The email is contradictory as to whether the desire to sue is based on the content of the post or the duration before posting, with I belief the former appearing first in the email.
We tried to make it crystal clear that it was about seeing the evidence first, rather than posting at all.
Here’s the full email.
“Importantly, we are not asking Ben to not publish, just to give until the end of next week to gather and share the evidence we have.”
The line I’m referring to is “if published as is we intend to pursue legal action”. That is consistent with being fine with him publishing at all, but not consistent with being fine if he decides to not change anything in the post after getting all the facts in a week.
Combining this line with the ones you mentioned gives the impression that the message you’re trying to convey is ‘what Ben has written is false and libellous, we have asked him to wait a week so he can correct his post before publishing, after getting all the facts. If he doesn’t do both these things, we intend to sue’, and I think it’s reasonable for anyone to have interpreted it this way, even if that’s not what you intended.