Short answer: I think Ben should defer to the community health team as to whether to reveal identities to them or not (I’m guessing they know). And probably the community health team should take their names and add it to their list where orgs can ask CH about any potential hires and learn of red flags in their past. I think Alice should def be included on that list, and Chloe should maybe be included (that’s the part I’d let the CH team decide if it is was bad enough). It’s possible Alice should be revealed publicly, or maybe just revealed to community organizers in their locale and let them make the decision of how they want to handle Alice’s event attendance and use of community resources.
Extra answer: FWIW I already have bad feelings about CEA’s hardcore commitment to anonymity. I do feel EA is too hard on that side, where for example, people accused of things probably won’t even be told the names of their accusers or any potentially-identifying details that make accusations less vague. The only reason NL knew in this situation is because the details make it unavoidable that they’d know. But otherwise the standard across EA is that if you are accused of something via CEA’s community health team, you will never know who makes the critiques, and therefore will never be able to properly rebut them. And if that is how this had gone down, it would have been Kat and Emerson getting their names on CEA’s blacklist. I think this default justice system of this community is messed up, and there should be some exceptions in theory.
That said, I’m not sure this is one of those exceptions. I feel kind of conflicted about revealing their names even in this extreme case, because I have also had a weird employment experience in EA with an atypical structure, after which I felt emotionally wounded, and if someone had come to me and said “We suspect your ex-employer may be unethical and causing repeated serious harms! So I am asking you and others for all the details they can remember that made you feel bad in that situation” there is some likelihood I would share my experiences, rather than say my actual thought-through POV which is “No I actually don’t blame or hold ill will to my ex-employers and I won’t participate in any investigation against them. It was a complex situation and we all made mistakes”. In most cases I would not “sing” per se, but in some universes I surely would. Just because I was asked. Incidentally this parallels how I feel about the women in the sexual misconduct TIME piece too. It’s gotta be hard to not add to a (maybe false but also maybe true) narrative when you are literally asked to and commended for doing so? Most of us trust people who put themselves in that sort of investigator position.
I’m sure many readers who are shocked at Alice or Chloe now would, if asked, start singing if they had been in their position, thinking they are doing something useful as they are being so encouraged, after all, even if at first they felt conflicted. Even if they had felt conflicted about it for a year prior. Even if they were almost over it, and their mental health and humility were improving, wouldn’t being suddenly told “no you really might be a victim, please share, in fact I’m talking to another victim too” sort of.. undo that? Especially if they are working on mental health problems, I imagine it would feel soo temptingly cathartic and be hard to say no to a narrative that just might make you the hero, just might help someone else, for everything else you feel you lost. Does that make it their fault that they bit the bait? Or is it more the “fault” (or simply, “result”) of how the investigation was done?
I do agree that orgs should be able to factor this whole debacle into their decision if they end up about to hire Alice or even Chloe. CEA’s private list should mostly solve that problem. But my opinion on revealing names publicly beyond that hinges a lot on how the investigation kicked off. How much did Ben have to search and push to get them to say all that? What framing did he use? How much were they slandering NL before Ben even reached out, and was it about egregious or very important things? Was NL’s reputation unfairly damaged by Alice or Chloe before this investigation even kicked off? I would like to hear more of his thoughts on that.. with no judgement toward him for the past, because it is so critical that the community come together and discuss honestly and collaboratively what happened here.
Ivy—I really appreciate your long, thoughtful comment here. It’s exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping to spark.
I resonate to many of your conflicted feelings about these ethically complicated situations, given the many ‘stakeholders’ involved, and the many ways we can get our policies wrong in all kinds of ways.
My understanding is that Kat and Emerson did in fact get their names on CEA’s blacklist to some extent.
Here is the bigger problem I see with your proposed solution. If an employer reviewing an application from Alice or Chloe believes their side of this, then the employer would not factor in the fact of their presence on CEA’s blacklist, since the employer, by hypothesis, thinks CEA was mistaken to put them there. If, on the other hand, an employer reviewing an application from Alice or Chloe believes Nonliner’s side of this, then the employer may justifiably look at the fact that CEA erred by having blacklisted Kat and Emerson and choose not to consult CEA in their hiring decisions at all, and therefor not discover that their applicant was Alice or Chloe. Either way, CEA blacklisting Alice and Chloe seems ineffective.
There are some references here to the community health team’s practices that we think aren’t fully accurate. You can see more here about how we typically handle situations where we hear an accusation (or multiple accusations) and don’t have permission to discuss it with the accused.
Sorry, but I have (re)read that link and I don’t see how anything we said was in conflict with each other. Perhaps I didn’t word it well. Or am I misunderstanding you? If you could give some hard numbers like, only X% of complaints end up being handled anonymously, and of those, in Z% the complaints end up being unactionable and we just give a listening ear, and only in Y% do anonymous complaints end up being held against the person and meaningfully effecting their lives, then maybe I can agree I made the extent of the dilemma sound overblown. I’m also aware that other tactics come with their own dilemmas. I just wanted to acknowledge that there is a dilemma and that I am not a “never deanonymize” type of person before I made some other points.
Reading your link I felt it was not in conflict because: In the case where many people give complaints about Steve, not a single person was willing to have their concerns discussed in detail with him (out of fear that details would reveal them I suppose), let alone be deanonymized by name. So it does sound like EAs like to make complaints in (what I’d call) “extreme anonymity” by “default” and tbh that matches my social and cultural model of EAs. And in the next section you say that your policy is to be even more protective of confidentiality than some communities like universities. And you do make some decisions based on those things you might never fully discuss with the other party. You call them “compromises” but some are major reactions which could be EA-career-ending. Actually I find it hard to consider what other worse actions remain other than calling the police, writing a public expose about them, or messaging their employer out of the blue. So I don’t think it is going too far to say that maybe CEA could be too protective of anonymity, as you acknowledge your behavior can, at least sometimes, be abnormal or counter to what people would expect in other institutions.
In my view, it might be one of those cases where general society or others landed on the right institutional practices, but we EAs are naive in our tradeoff considerations by trying to use different systems, or draw the line of deanonymizing at different degrees. I don’t think this is a bold possibility. I expect you disagree with the idea that CH could be too protective of anonymity. Maybe most EAs would. But it’s a natural thing we can look at and not avert our eyes from that possibility. That’s all I wanted to say.
I’d also like to clarify that I was not trying to be harsh on CH and drag you all in with what I wrote. These are hard problems. I was merely trying to write an introduction I felt took seriously and related to the feelings of people who do want Alice and Chloe doxxed, and show how I understand and sympathize with that perspective very much, and then go from there to discuss why I wouldn’t be in favor of doxxing even in this case that so many are shocked by. I am mostly bullish on the CH team which is why in my “short answer” section, I claimed that EAs should mostly defer to the CH team on this issue.
Hm I guess that’s true. I guess I thought it went without saying that it would be when people want anonymity, I didn’t imagine there could be an alternative where CH removes names even if the complainant doesn’t request it. That would indeed be worse and a true “default” and I hope no one took that as what I meant.
But I think CH asks complainants what degree of anonymity and detail-sharing they are comfortable with by default. And I think a lot of people ask them to not give details, and by default CH does defer to that preference to what might be an abnormal extent, such that anonymity may be functionally the default in our culture and their dealings. But yeah I guess I wonder about hard numbers. It is striking to me that not one person was willing to have the details of the incident shared with Steve though
I assumed the mock-incident was just meant to illustrate how it might arise that someone doesn’t get full information, and it’s easier to get that point across if you have it as everyone requesting anonymity.
On the real world point, I do agree that if what happens is something like ‘CEA: do you want anonymity? Complainant: uh sure, might as well’, then that seems suboptimal. Though I’m not sure I could come up with any system that’s better overall.
Fair, that is a mock incident, but I don’t see that aspect as being dramatized or anything. Fwiw I have known multiple people whose experiences basically matched Steve’s.
I just think if we are going to talk about doxxing Alice and Chloe we might want to think what it might look like if they had gone elsewhere, or what it might look like in the future if they unduly report others. And as a community I think it must be reckoned with why some people feel upset right now at the protection that reporters face when accused get so few protections, not even the protection to know details of the claims against them. And a cultural standard where names of people who make provably false accusations are revealed could protect all of us. So I think it is worth reckoning with. Even though I came out supporting non-doxxing in this case
I think it’s important to separate out how CH handled the allegations vs how Ben did. IMO CH’s actions (banning presenting at EAG but not attending, recommending a contract be used) were quite measured, and of a completely different magnitude than making public anonymous allegations. And I think this whole situation would have been significantly improved if Ben had adopted CEA’s policy of not taking further actions if restrictions are requested.
Short answer: I think Ben should defer to the community health team as to whether to reveal identities to them or not (I’m guessing they know). And probably the community health team should take their names and add it to their list where orgs can ask CH about any potential hires and learn of red flags in their past. I think Alice should def be included on that list, and Chloe should maybe be included (that’s the part I’d let the CH team decide if it is was bad enough). It’s possible Alice should be revealed publicly, or maybe just revealed to community organizers in their locale and let them make the decision of how they want to handle Alice’s event attendance and use of community resources.
Extra answer: FWIW I already have bad feelings about CEA’s hardcore commitment to anonymity. I do feel EA is too hard on that side, where for example, people accused of things probably won’t even be told the names of their accusers or any potentially-identifying details that make accusations less vague. The only reason NL knew in this situation is because the details make it unavoidable that they’d know. But otherwise the standard across EA is that if you are accused of something via CEA’s community health team, you will never know who makes the critiques, and therefore will never be able to properly rebut them. And if that is how this had gone down, it would have been Kat and Emerson getting their names on CEA’s blacklist. I think this default justice system of this community is messed up, and there should be some exceptions in theory.
That said, I’m not sure this is one of those exceptions. I feel kind of conflicted about revealing their names even in this extreme case, because I have also had a weird employment experience in EA with an atypical structure, after which I felt emotionally wounded, and if someone had come to me and said “We suspect your ex-employer may be unethical and causing repeated serious harms! So I am asking you and others for all the details they can remember that made you feel bad in that situation” there is some likelihood I would share my experiences, rather than say my actual thought-through POV which is “No I actually don’t blame or hold ill will to my ex-employers and I won’t participate in any investigation against them. It was a complex situation and we all made mistakes”. In most cases I would not “sing” per se, but in some universes I surely would. Just because I was asked. Incidentally this parallels how I feel about the women in the sexual misconduct TIME piece too. It’s gotta be hard to not add to a (maybe false but also maybe true) narrative when you are literally asked to and commended for doing so? Most of us trust people who put themselves in that sort of investigator position.
I’m sure many readers who are shocked at Alice or Chloe now would, if asked, start singing if they had been in their position, thinking they are doing something useful as they are being so encouraged, after all, even if at first they felt conflicted. Even if they had felt conflicted about it for a year prior. Even if they were almost over it, and their mental health and humility were improving, wouldn’t being suddenly told “no you really might be a victim, please share, in fact I’m talking to another victim too” sort of.. undo that? Especially if they are working on mental health problems, I imagine it would feel soo temptingly cathartic and be hard to say no to a narrative that just might make you the hero, just might help someone else, for everything else you feel you lost. Does that make it their fault that they bit the bait? Or is it more the “fault” (or simply, “result”) of how the investigation was done?
I do agree that orgs should be able to factor this whole debacle into their decision if they end up about to hire Alice or even Chloe. CEA’s private list should mostly solve that problem. But my opinion on revealing names publicly beyond that hinges a lot on how the investigation kicked off. How much did Ben have to search and push to get them to say all that? What framing did he use? How much were they slandering NL before Ben even reached out, and was it about egregious or very important things? Was NL’s reputation unfairly damaged by Alice or Chloe before this investigation even kicked off? I would like to hear more of his thoughts on that.. with no judgement toward him for the past, because it is so critical that the community come together and discuss honestly and collaboratively what happened here.
Ivy—I really appreciate your long, thoughtful comment here. It’s exactly the sort of discussion I was hoping to spark.
I resonate to many of your conflicted feelings about these ethically complicated situations, given the many ‘stakeholders’ involved, and the many ways we can get our policies wrong in all kinds of ways.
Thanks for your kind comment :)
My understanding is that Kat and Emerson did in fact get their names on CEA’s blacklist to some extent.
Here is the bigger problem I see with your proposed solution. If an employer reviewing an application from Alice or Chloe believes their side of this, then the employer would not factor in the fact of their presence on CEA’s blacklist, since the employer, by hypothesis, thinks CEA was mistaken to put them there. If, on the other hand, an employer reviewing an application from Alice or Chloe believes Nonliner’s side of this, then the employer may justifiably look at the fact that CEA erred by having blacklisted Kat and Emerson and choose not to consult CEA in their hiring decisions at all, and therefor not discover that their applicant was Alice or Chloe. Either way, CEA blacklisting Alice and Chloe seems ineffective.
There are some references here to the community health team’s practices that we think aren’t fully accurate. You can see more here about how we typically handle situations where we hear an accusation (or multiple accusations) and don’t have permission to discuss it with the accused.
Sorry, but I have (re)read that link and I don’t see how anything we said was in conflict with each other. Perhaps I didn’t word it well. Or am I misunderstanding you? If you could give some hard numbers like, only X% of complaints end up being handled anonymously, and of those, in Z% the complaints end up being unactionable and we just give a listening ear, and only in Y% do anonymous complaints end up being held against the person and meaningfully effecting their lives, then maybe I can agree I made the extent of the dilemma sound overblown. I’m also aware that other tactics come with their own dilemmas. I just wanted to acknowledge that there is a dilemma and that I am not a “never deanonymize” type of person before I made some other points.
Reading your link I felt it was not in conflict because: In the case where many people give complaints about Steve, not a single person was willing to have their concerns discussed in detail with him (out of fear that details would reveal them I suppose), let alone be deanonymized by name. So it does sound like EAs like to make complaints in (what I’d call) “extreme anonymity” by “default” and tbh that matches my social and cultural model of EAs. And in the next section you say that your policy is to be even more protective of confidentiality than some communities like universities. And you do make some decisions based on those things you might never fully discuss with the other party. You call them “compromises” but some are major reactions which could be EA-career-ending. Actually I find it hard to consider what other worse actions remain other than calling the police, writing a public expose about them, or messaging their employer out of the blue. So I don’t think it is going too far to say that maybe CEA could be too protective of anonymity, as you acknowledge your behavior can, at least sometimes, be abnormal or counter to what people would expect in other institutions.
In my view, it might be one of those cases where general society or others landed on the right institutional practices, but we EAs are naive in our tradeoff considerations by trying to use different systems, or draw the line of deanonymizing at different degrees. I don’t think this is a bold possibility. I expect you disagree with the idea that CH could be too protective of anonymity. Maybe most EAs would. But it’s a natural thing we can look at and not avert our eyes from that possibility. That’s all I wanted to say.
I’d also like to clarify that I was not trying to be harsh on CH and drag you all in with what I wrote. These are hard problems. I was merely trying to write an introduction I felt took seriously and related to the feelings of people who do want Alice and Chloe doxxed, and show how I understand and sympathize with that perspective very much, and then go from there to discuss why I wouldn’t be in favor of doxxing even in this case that so many are shocked by. I am mostly bullish on the CH team which is why in my “short answer” section, I claimed that EAs should mostly defer to the CH team on this issue.
You make a lot of fair points here, and we’ve grappled with these questions a lot.
Well the first thing that stands out to me is you don’t specify that the anonymity occurs only if the complainant requests it
Hm I guess that’s true. I guess I thought it went without saying that it would be when people want anonymity, I didn’t imagine there could be an alternative where CH removes names even if the complainant doesn’t request it. That would indeed be worse and a true “default” and I hope no one took that as what I meant.
But I think CH asks complainants what degree of anonymity and detail-sharing they are comfortable with by default. And I think a lot of people ask them to not give details, and by default CH does defer to that preference to what might be an abnormal extent, such that anonymity may be functionally the default in our culture and their dealings. But yeah I guess I wonder about hard numbers. It is striking to me that not one person was willing to have the details of the incident shared with Steve though
I assumed the mock-incident was just meant to illustrate how it might arise that someone doesn’t get full information, and it’s easier to get that point across if you have it as everyone requesting anonymity.
On the real world point, I do agree that if what happens is something like ‘CEA: do you want anonymity? Complainant: uh sure, might as well’, then that seems suboptimal. Though I’m not sure I could come up with any system that’s better overall.
Fair, that is a mock incident, but I don’t see that aspect as being dramatized or anything. Fwiw I have known multiple people whose experiences basically matched Steve’s.
I just think if we are going to talk about doxxing Alice and Chloe we might want to think what it might look like if they had gone elsewhere, or what it might look like in the future if they unduly report others. And as a community I think it must be reckoned with why some people feel upset right now at the protection that reporters face when accused get so few protections, not even the protection to know details of the claims against them. And a cultural standard where names of people who make provably false accusations are revealed could protect all of us. So I think it is worth reckoning with. Even though I came out supporting non-doxxing in this case
I think it’s important to separate out how CH handled the allegations vs how Ben did. IMO CH’s actions (banning presenting at EAG but not attending, recommending a contract be used) were quite measured, and of a completely different magnitude than making public anonymous allegations. And I think this whole situation would have been significantly improved if Ben had adopted CEA’s policy of not taking further actions if restrictions are requested.