[loup-vaillant]

They're playing the status game. "Rewrite history" and "dated allegations" serve mostly to slander whoever made those claims. Then they raise Zuckerberg's status by pointing out his achievements.

They're effectively saying the accusation isn't valid because Zuckerberg is nobility and the accusers are not.

[harperlee]

More like stating implicitly that the claim might be seeking money / attention due to Zuckerberg status.

[flippyhead]

This is called the ad populum fallacy. Trump uses it all the time.

[mygo]

Yep.. some people think he’s dumb but I’m not so sure about that. We think that when someone is full of fallacy that they simply don’t know any better, but what about the alternative? You can use fallacies as an effective tool to further your aims. We are so vulnerable to them that we must be educated about them to be able to fend them off. If the audience isn’t educated on how to identify and fend off the fallacy, it will be effective.

[profalseidol]

Yep, it can win you the Presidency. Also prior to Trump's win, he was a very successful salesman with probably the best in sales talk.

[matte_black]

If it weren’t for Zuckerberg’s status these allegations wouldn’t have bothered coming out.

[sosborn]

While that’s probably true, does that justify his actions?

[loup-vaillant]

No, but this consideration is evidence that the allegations may be false.

[sosborn]

It really isn't though. What happened after this incident has no bearing on what happened before the incident.

Does his status provide a motive for a false accusation? Sure, but that is different from evidence.

[loup-vaillant]

No it isn't different, you failed Bayesian. Evidence is not causality, it can flow backwards in time.

For instance, a mammography doesn't give you cancer. But it can detect one, and thus give you evidence that you had cancer in the first place.

[mygo]

your circular logic translates to “the fact that these allegations even bothered to come out is evidence that they may be false”

[loup-vaillant]

Read more charitably, will you?

Fame doesn't affect all accusations the same way. I believe the probability of false accusations raise faster with fame than the probability of true accusation (which is mostly dependent on actual guilt).

There's even the possibility that the probability of true accusations lowers as fame raises, leaving more room for the false ones.

[mercer]

While I don't necessarily disagree, I do wonder if this is actually true. In my experience lots of people have a weird tendency to bend over backwards to defend the famous (with Chris Brown, Jimmy Saville, and various Hollywood stars as particularly terrible examples). Perhaps Donald Trump too.

[mygo]

I believe the probability of people coming to your defense raises faster with fame.

[whataretensors]

It's an allegation from 2004. There's a massive hit campaign going on with Zuck and facebook, likely because he publicly considered running for president.