Since Frances is not commenting more:
This rhetorical strategy is analogous to a prosecutor showing smiling photos of a couple on vacation to argue that he couldn’t have possibly murdered her, or showing flirty texts between a man and woman to argue that he couldn’t have raped her, etc. This is a bad rhetorical strategy when prosecutors use it—and it’s a bad rhetorical strategy here—because it perpetuates misinformation about what abusive relationships look like; namely, that they are uniformly bad, with no happy moments or mitigating qualities.
As anyone who has been in an abusive relationship will tell you, this is rarely what abuse looks like. And you insinuating that Chloe and Alice are lying because there were happy-appearing moments is exactly the kind of thing that makes many victims afraid to come forward.
To be clear: I do not think these photos provide any evidence against the allegations in Ben’s post because no one is contesting that the group hung out in tropical locations. Additionally, having hung out in tropical locations is entirely compatible with the allegations made in the initial post. Ironically, this rhetorical strategy—the photos, the assertion that this was a “dream job”—strikes me as eerily similar to the job ad linked in Ben’s original post (https://web.archive.org/web/20211022160447/https://www.nonlinear.org/operations.html). Probably this did seem like a dream job, which is presumably why Chloe and Alice accepted it. And what’s at issue now is their claim that it wasn’t, a point that these photos do nothing to refute.
This situation reminded me of this post, EA’s weirdness makes it unusually susceptible to bad behavior. Regardless of whether you believe Chloe and Alice’s allegations (which I do), it’s hard to imagine that most of these disputes would have arisen under more normal professional conditions (e.g., ones in which employees and employers don’t live together, travel the world together, and become romantically entangled). A lot of the things that (no one is disputing) happened here are professionally weird; for example, these anecdotes from Ben’s summary of Nonlinear’s response (also the linked job ad):
“Our intention wasn’t just to have employees, but also to have members of our family unit who we traveled with and worked closely together with in having a strong positive impact in the world, and were very personally close with.”
“We wanted to give these employees a pretty standard amount of compensation, but also mostly not worry about negotiating minor financial details as we traveled the world. So we covered basic rent/groceries/travel for these people.”
“The formal employee drove without a license for 1-2 months in Puerto Rico. We taught her to drive, which she was excited about. You might think this is a substantial legal risk, but basically it isn’t”
“The semi-employee was also asked to bring some productivity-related and recreational drugs over the border for us. In general we didn’t push hard on this.”
I am reminded again that, while many professional norms are stupid, a lot of them exist for good reasons. Further, I think it’s often pretty easy to disentangle the stupid professional norms from the reasonable professional norms by just thinking: “Are there good reasons this norm exists?” (E.g., “Is there a reason employees and employers shouldn’t live together?” Yes: the power dynamics inherent to the employer/employee dynamic are at odds with healthy roommate dynamics, in which people generally shouldn’t have lots of power over one another. “Is there a reason I should have to wear high heels to work in an office?” …. no.) Trying to make employees part of your family unit, not negotiating financial details with your employees, covering your employees’ rent and groceries, and being in any way involved in your employees breaking the law are all behaviors that are at odds with standard professional practices, and there are very obviously good reasons for this.