I agree that private processors are often better for survivors (Though they can be worse). But usually very little changes until someone goes public (at least anonymously). Nothing else remotely reliably creates the momentum to get bad actors out of power. If the people in power weren’t at least complicit we wouldn’t have these endemic problems. Notably this has already played out multiple times with rationalist and Ea paces. Brent was extremely egregious but until public callouts nothing was seriously done about him. In fact community leaders like eliezer praised his ‘apologies’. Sadly this reality can put a burden on survivors. There isn’t really a great approach as far as I can tell.
CEA pays a team but their main allegiance is to the existing power structure so of course they can’t solve the root issues.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done. It’s not easy.
Yeah, they can be. I went through a brutal “restorative justice” process myself (I’m trained in traditional law, and at the time, was personally insulted that a bunch of hacks thought they could replace centuries of legal work/thought), with someone EA-adjacent (though I just confirmed that my rapist has some ties to EA via Google; he’s one of the 14 and not 30) - I said no for weeks, had multiple people push into a process, went along because I wanted to tell my side, was silenced, and the “mediator” texted me to encourage me to kill myself before I left the country. Obviously, I’m not advocating for that.
And also, I had no idea to report this to CH. Nor, given how CH is handling this, would I report this today.
I’m not sure if that is inherent to private responses, though. One could imagine something set up vaguely like the “Facebook Supreme Court” (FSC) with longterm funding and independent/external control by neutrals. I’m not suggesting anything about the FSC model other than its externality and independence, but those features would allow us to have more confidence in the process because we would almost eliminate the concern that the processors have “main allegiance . . . to the existing power structure.” Data could get published, including on actions that were taken in response, and the data quality would probably be better for a wide variety of reasons.
The problem with that is most accusers would want anonymity/privacy. This is why I suggest conveying information about processes through a policy (as I mentioned above, I was assaulted by someone “EA-adjacent”, and had no idea where to report; and a policy is more fair to both the accusers and accusees), working with third parties that survivors can approach and CH can interface with, and disseminating only information intended to keep the community safe is the better approach.
Definitely—I meant anonymized summary data like “there were X individuals reported for sexual assault, Y number of individuals were banned from CEA events as a result of those reports, Z number of individuals were not acted on because CEA determined the individual was not connected to EA in a way that CEA could take any meaningful action.” How much could be said without compromising anonymity/privacy would depend on the specific data, and we should always err on the side of protecting that over publishing information.
That’s one of my big issues with the way things are now: you’re basically suggesting what I’m suggesting—that things not be as arbitrary as they are now.
I agree that private processors are often better for survivors (Though they can be worse). But usually very little changes until someone goes public (at least anonymously). Nothing else remotely reliably creates the momentum to get bad actors out of power. If the people in power weren’t at least complicit we wouldn’t have these endemic problems. Notably this has already played out multiple times with rationalist and Ea paces. Brent was extremely egregious but until public callouts nothing was seriously done about him. In fact community leaders like eliezer praised his ‘apologies’. Sadly this reality can put a burden on survivors. There isn’t really a great approach as far as I can tell.
CEA pays a team but their main allegiance is to the existing power structure so of course they can’t solve the root issues.
Thanks for all the work you’ve done. It’s not easy.
Yeah, they can be. I went through a brutal “restorative justice” process myself (I’m trained in traditional law, and at the time, was personally insulted that a bunch of hacks thought they could replace centuries of legal work/thought), with someone EA-adjacent (though I just confirmed that my rapist has some ties to EA via Google; he’s one of the 14 and not 30) - I said no for weeks, had multiple people push into a process, went along because I wanted to tell my side, was silenced, and the “mediator” texted me to encourage me to kill myself before I left the country. Obviously, I’m not advocating for that.
And also, I had no idea to report this to CH. Nor, given how CH is handling this, would I report this today.
I’m not sure if that is inherent to private responses, though. One could imagine something set up vaguely like the “Facebook Supreme Court” (FSC) with longterm funding and independent/external control by neutrals. I’m not suggesting anything about the FSC model other than its externality and independence, but those features would allow us to have more confidence in the process because we would almost eliminate the concern that the processors have “main allegiance . . . to the existing power structure.” Data could get published, including on actions that were taken in response, and the data quality would probably be better for a wide variety of reasons.
The problem with that is most accusers would want anonymity/privacy. This is why I suggest conveying information about processes through a policy (as I mentioned above, I was assaulted by someone “EA-adjacent”, and had no idea where to report; and a policy is more fair to both the accusers and accusees), working with third parties that survivors can approach and CH can interface with, and disseminating only information intended to keep the community safe is the better approach.
Definitely—I meant anonymized summary data like “there were X individuals reported for sexual assault, Y number of individuals were banned from CEA events as a result of those reports, Z number of individuals were not acted on because CEA determined the individual was not connected to EA in a way that CEA could take any meaningful action.” How much could be said without compromising anonymity/privacy would depend on the specific data, and we should always err on the side of protecting that over publishing information.
That’s one of my big issues with the way things are now: you’re basically suggesting what I’m suggesting—that things not be as arbitrary as they are now.