It feels really cruxy to me whether you or Ben received any actual evidence of whether Alice or Chloe had lied or misrepresented anything in that 1 week.
Because to me the actual thing I felt from reading the original post’s “Response from Nonlinear” was largely them engaging in some kind of justification or alternative narrative for the overall practices of Nonlinear… but I didn’t care about that, and honestly it felt like it kind of did worse for them because it almost seemed like they were deflecting from the actual claims of abuse.
To me, if you received 0 evidence that there were any inaccuracies in the accusations against Nonlinear in that 1 week, then I think they really dropped the ball in not prioritizing at least something to show that you shouldn’t trust the original sources. Maybe they just thought they had enough time to talk it out, and maybe it really was just like, woah, we need to dig through records from years ago, this is going to take longer than we expected.
But if you did receive some evidence that maybe Alice and Chloe had lied or exaggerated at all… to me that would absolutely justify waiting another week for more evidence, and being much more cautious about everything else you had heard. And if you didn’t, that’s where I personally would be like “You need to show me something that makes me doubt these reports ASAP.”
I get that worries about retaliation can be scary, particularly if the person in question is being described as effectively a ruthless sociopath who will do anything to crush opposition, including hiring stalkers(?!) and such. But in that situation, my take is not “if this happens at least our public post will be out,” it’s “if this happens it’s time to publish and call the police.”
What feels weird to me is the middle-ground area of “These people are dangerous and might retaliate” and “But as long as we post this soon we’re all safe.” It feels like something people facing the mafia might think, like people would break into homes and wipe hard drives or kidnap people before they could publish.
And if that’s the level of Evil that Alice and Chloe described them as… well, at the very least I’m sympathetic to being “manipulated” if that turns out not to be true. But as a “figuring out how to deal with these situations going forward as a community,” I think it makes sense to treat that as “we were emotionally manipulated” and not “we did due diligence,” unless again Nonlinear did nothing to prove any falsehoods in that first week.
My read on this is that a lot of the things in Ben’s post are very between-the-lines rather than outright stated. For example, the financial issues all basically only matter if we take for granted that the employees were tricked or manipulated into accepting lower compensation than they wanted, or were put in financial hardship.
Which is very different from the situation Kat’s post seems to show. Like… I don’t really think any of the financial points made in the first one hold up, and without those, what’s left? A She-Said-She-Said about what they were asked to do and whether they were starved and so on, which NL has receipts for.
[Edit after response below: By “hold up” I meant in the emotional takeaway of “NL was abusive,” to be clear, not on the factual “these bank account numbers changed in these ways.” To me hiring someone who turns out to be financially dependent into a position like this is unwise, not abusive. If someone ends up in the financial red in a situation where they are having their living costs covered and being paid a $1k monthly stipend… I am not rushing to pass judgement on them, I am just noting that this seems like a bad fit for this sort of position, which I think NL has more than acknowledged, and if they misled NL about their financial security, that further alleviates NL of some responsibility]
Ok, so maybe it’s just a shitty job offer despite the apparent perks? Maybe it is for many people. That doesn’t mean adults shouldn’t be trusted to understand what they’re getting into and use their agency to pull the plug. Regrets after the fact are not the same as manipulation or deception on NL’s part.
And this would still be fine if Ben’s post just said “There are EA orgs making job offers that I think put their employees in vulnerable positions, so people should be more careful about accepting them.” I would even agree to that kind of post, especially if it came after talking to NL about its job offers (which they already apparently said at the time that they’ve reconsidered after the experiences they had).
But what it said was “These people are predators who chew up and spit out bright eyed altruists.” And that feels like a very strong judgement to make, and makes me glad that Kat posted the details about the financial stuff even if it wasn’t claimed directly in Ben’s post to be the result of deception. Because if it’s not… why was it brought up at all? Dislike of the job offers feel like a clash of vibes and difference of opinion on best practice, not predatory action.
But what people are left with from Ben’s post is an impression that there was a pattern of abuse and predatory action, and the financial aspect is really important for that. That impression is not solely on Ben’s shoulders; even if Ben’s article is written largely from the perspective of what he believed from what he saw. I think if NL is even half-correct in these rebuttals, Ben was clearly influenced to some degree to reach that conclusion by Chloe and Alice… not even necessarily intentionally, which is why I hesitate to use the word “manipulated,” but just by the nature of how people who feel victimized will naturally selectively tell their side of the story.
This generally applies to the rest of your bullet points, so yeah, I think Ben’s hypothesis that “2 EAs are Secretly Evil” is a pretty good summation of his post’s takeaways, given the assertions he made at the end.