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What due process does someone deserve before termination, and are you claiming Stallman didn't get it?

You assemble the evidence before as impartial a committee as you can, and you let them make the decision. I think in this case Stallman is an offensive personality who says offensive things on company time using company equipment. That's going to be a no-brainer.

That said, I have a nagging worry from watching some videos of his behavior that he is mentally ill and there might be a backlash from that.

But why we can't allow a process like that to transpire before passing judgment is beyond me. Why wishing such an impartial judgment upon him is downvote worthy is really worrisome to me. That's not what western democracies are about as I understood them up to now.

I Just do not believe we should make career-ending decisions like this based on the rage of a mob on social media, that's literally a Black Mirror episode (and a really bad episode of The Orville as well). I believe their role is to raise awareness of situations like to the point where the above should transpire. Does holding that viewpoint now make me subject to "cancellation" as well?

> Does holding that viewpoint now make me subject to "cancellation" as well?

No. But I do think you're not really looking at this situation objectively. Here's what you've said:

1. It's clear that an objective board should have fired RMS

2. We shouldn't make these decisions based on mobs

Additionally, we know he was fired. With that information, you can't make any conclusions. How and why are you so certain that some board didn't weigh the evidence and pass objective judgement? The problem with this fear of "cancel culture" (which as others have mentioned is really just "holding powerful people accountable when they do bad things culture"), is that so far I haven't seen any evidence that the bad things people fear have happened. RMS did a bad thing. He faced consequences for a thing that even you agree was a bad thing. Your only concern is that it is possible, not even certain, that the method by which he faced consequences for an action that we both agree was bad and deserved consequences might have not have been up to a standard that few employees anywhere get.

I want to stress that last bit: very few employees are afforded the privilege of an impartial committee to decide whether or not they should be fired in any circumstances. You're arguing that RMS should get a stronger protection than your average employee (either that or that workers should, in general, have much, much stronger protections than we currently give them).

tl;dr:

> I believe their role is to raise awareness of situations like to the point where the above should transpire.

To me, this looks like exactly what happened. Why are you complaining?

I think your understanding of the tech industry is rather unlike mine. I have been a manager previously and there is quite a bit of documentation and process involved in terminating anyone, so much so that a lot of really bad apples can jump teams without getting terminated if they time it well.

Even when they're caught, they get put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) which is shorthand for giving them 60 days to find a new job or to turn their life around internally. Usually, it leads to the former, sometimes the latter. I've seen both.

It's an imperfect and biased process. But the attempt is usually made because HR fears unjustified termination lawsuits despite the "at will" employee status of just about everyone.

Unless they've tried to hack the company's servers for private data, I've never seen anyone fired on the spot without the above process unfolding. Maybe your experience differs?

PS I also think Charles Manson and The Unabomber were unambiguously guilty. That doesn't change my opinion that they deserved the trial they got.

PPS If as amyjess seemingly suggests that female professors at MIT repeatedly filed complaints against him and nothing happened, well then carry on Twitter mob, good job, seriously.

> I think your understanding of the tech industry is rather unlike mine.

RMS isn't an employee of the Tech industry. He's a university something (visiting professor, I think, but not a tenured or official faculty position). Members of the tech industry are also unusually privileged in this regard. Ask a line cook or an employee at a department store if they're given a PIP if they are underperforming. And again, by all accounts, it is possible, and even likely, that there was such a process spurred on by the twitter mob. So its not clear to me what your complaint is. To address it, let me be more explicit: What would you like MIT to have done differently in this situation?

As I see it, they have a few options. They could of course not fire stallman. We agree this is unacceptable. Objectively he deserves to be fired. They could have already fired him, this is perhaps the best solution but requires time travel or foresight MIT lacks. I guess this suggests MIT hasn't yet developed that technology or skill. They could wait to fire him, which costs them PR, and potentially causes others to resign, for no gain (they're going to fire him). Or they could do what they did: fire him now. Again I wonder: what are you complaining about?

> PS I also think Charles Manson and The Unabomber were unambiguously guilty. That doesn't change my opinion that they deserved the trial they got.

You're conflating being fired from a job and being imprisoned, or in Manson's case, sentenced to die. Those two things aren't remotely comparable.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/04/former-photog...

You might want to look into the story of Harris Fogel. He was a tenured professor who was unceremoniously terminated for seemingly correctable or even unintentional behavior. He's suing.

Stallman OTOH didn't even have tenure. The bigger story for me is if repeated complaints of sexual harassment (leg grabbing etc) went nowhere until now. That's unacceptable and I suddenly side with the Twitter mob in that case because if so he's had his due process already. And in that case, not only is he an ass, but he probably drove a lot of women out of the field and that can't be undone.

bandrami 2464 days ago

> there is quite a bit of documentation and process involved in terminating anyone

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

No. They say, "Ralph, pack your stuff. You're gone." Hell, I've been laid off via a Jabber message.

> The problem with this fear of "cancel culture" (which as others have mentioned is really just "holding powerful people accountable when they do bad things culture")

That's, perhaps unintentional, misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what people worried about it mean by it. The problem with "cancel culture" is the propensity to "shoot first, ask questions later", the doling out of punishment grossly unproportional to the crime. Like in this case - ruining one's entire career for the crime of being pedantic and tactless on a semi-public mailing list[0]. Or, in another, overhearing a joke in a private conversation between two people and making a social media mess that resulted in termination of the joker.

The problem with "cancel culture" isn't the part where it aims to hold people accountable for their behavior. The problem is with the mechanism, which involves setting off a chain reaction. There's the wronged or felt-offended party and initial outrage, which gets amplified as the stories get reshared and republished, usually accruing misrepresentations and outright lies in the process, until the reaction fizzles out in a day or three, and punishment happens. You'll note here that the final impact is not correlated with the scale of the initial wrongdoing, but with how many people get outraged how fast, and how far they reshare, all of which is moderated by how misleading can the story be made and by what else is currently on the news.

I think it isn't fair to dismiss concerns of people worried that "holding people into account" - not just powerful ones, but regular ones too - increasingly often involves attempts at setting off a social equivalent of an ad-hoc, hastly-made fission bomb.

[0] - Yes, there's apparently patterns of worse behavior going back many years. But pulling the trigger in the middle of one of the bigger scandals in our industry, that's awfully convenient and points towards the actual reason not being related to past behavior.

> the doling out of punishment grossly unproportional to the crime. Like in this case - ruining one's entire career for the crime of being pedantic and tactless on a semi-public mailing list

The person I was discussing with agrees that Stallman's actions and history, combined, merited his resignation or removal. Yet they used the phrase "cancel culture" anyway.

Please don't blame anyone but Stallman for ruining his career. His history of pedophilia-apology, his history of acting badly, possibly to the level of harassment, around women at MIT, and recently his need to "well-acktually" statutory rape ruined his career.

> You'll note here that the final impact is not correlated with the scale of the initial wrongdoing, but with how many people get outraged how fast, and how far they reshare, all of which is moderated by how misleading can the story be made and by what else is currently on the news.

No, I don't note that. Pressure was put on MIT leadership by women at MIT, women who had historically been ignored when they raised similar issues about the same person in the past. As MIT said, this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

> that's awfully convenient and points towards the actual reason not being related to past behavior.

No it doesn't. It points to the trigger not being past behavior, with which I fully agree. It says nothing about the scale of the reaction by MIT or the FSF. Those were without a doubt informed by a pattern of behavior.

> Yet they used the phrase "cancel culture" anyway.

Perhaps because his resignation/removal didn't happen as a direct result of the combined history of transgressions, but only after someone took a fresh, minor offense and blew it out of proportion, so that it ended up in mass media. There's a difference between resigning (or being forced to) because of a pattern of bad behavior, and that plus having your name in the Forbes under a headline that contains a lie.

> Those were without a doubt informed by a pattern of behavior.

If this issue didn't blow up across the whole Internet, do you think they'd terminate him now?

bandrami 2464 days ago

> shoot first, ask questions later

Oh my God, no. Stallman has been a problem for years. Shooting first and asking questions later is the exact opposite of the problem.

widowlark 2464 days ago

There has never been 'due process' when it comes to a private companies decisions regarding hiring or firing. Should we trust the government to make that decision for a private organization?

That's one of the purposes of HR. Watch any corporate harassment training video if you don't believe me.

TLDR: the accusation of harassment is 100% determined by the accuser. The determination of whether harassment occurred OTOH is decided by HR after judging the merits (or lack thereof) of the case.

I see no reason why MIT shouldn't have proceeded similarly. And while you might argue that's not 100% impartial, that's a lot better than a Twitter mob (to me at least).

Given the piles of video and text of Stallman being Stallman, and the "Hot Ladies" bit on his office door, do you really think they would have high-fived his conduct and told him to carry on? I'm cynical, but I'm not that cynical.

Or let's put this another way. The Unabomber and Charles Manson got their due process. Are you saying Stallman is worse than both of them? So I'm guessing you guys downvoting me no longer believe in our legal system? That'll end well I'm sure.

https://twitter.com/corbett/status/994012399656042496

amyjess 2464 days ago

His sexually-inappropriate behavior towards women has been well-known for years. MIT has chosen to not do anything about it. The truth is that if HR thinks they can sweep something under the table to protect their superstars, they will.

https://twitter.com/starsandrobots/status/994267277460619265

https://twitter.com/wiredferret/status/1173042834179534849

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/d5dxf3/stal...

When it's this widely known that he likes to creep on women, the only thing that makes sense is that HR has had plugs in their ears the whole time.

That business card is wildly inappropriate I agree and I love the bit about the plants. Is there a story I'm missing here where complaints were filed and nothing was done? That would change my viewpoint 180 degrees here if so. Because that means the guy's behavior was repeatedly and officially pointed out to him and he IDGAFed the advice. It also seems like an even bigger story than Stallman himself on par with GOOG's behavior the past 5 years.

PS The Kelsey Merkley talk is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y0FuH5FNCo

Do you think it's fair to be fired, should someone spin a social media storm against you? Do you think this dynamic becoming increasingly frequent is healthy for society?

That depends. If there are valid reasons for me to be fired, (as there were in this case), yes. Irrespective of any social media storm, I'd fire an employee who defended paedophilia or excused rape, statutory or otherwise.

As a business owner, if I felt that an employees continued employment was a net negative for my profitability, I'd be forced to let them go. Perhaps I could keep them for a while, but that's the case.

Yes, I think powerful people facing consequences for doing and saying absolutely abysmal things is a net good for society. Going from no, to some, in egregious cases, accountability is great. RMS shouldn't get a pass for this. Especially not since he's done the same thing before. Especially since now it's concrete and deals with real people and not just abstract ideas.

The threat of an abstract "you could get fired too for saying a truly terrible thing" falls flat because, well, I don't make a habit of doing that. You'd have better luck claiming that I benefit from people making statements that could get them mobbed. But that too is unconvincing: people who I benefit from sharing their views are pushed out anyway via structural dynamics, often due to the things powerful people who don't face consequences do and say.

And then of course, it's not like my life, or his would be ruined. Damore is, as I understand it, gainfully employed and mostly out of the public eye.

I'll ask my questions again since you didn't answer: what due process does one deserve before being fired? What of that did Stallman not receive?

> Irrespective of any social media storm, I'd fire an employee who defended paedophilia or excused rape, statutory or otherwise.

That's fair. However in this case, his "eccentric" views were widely known for years in the FS/OS community. It took a media shitstorm to turn that into a firing offence, which tells you it's not about the content of the views.

> As a business owner, if I felt that an employees continued employment was a net negative for my profitability, I'd be forced to let them go.

That's fair too, and similar argument can be made for a non-profit. At best all I could accuse the various organizations that disassociated with RMS is that they lack backbone and yield to pressure, or try to capitalize on the outrage, but that's not a problem.

Market entities do what they do. But they wouldn't have to, if the story wasn't spun. It's not the e-mails themselves that ended his career, it's how they were fed to the media and then blew up there - especially as this story shows how the reporting doesn't even have to be truthful; lying in a headline and not linking to primary source is standard journalism nowadays.

> The threat of an abstract "you could get fired too for saying a truly terrible thing" falls flat because, well, I don't make a habit of doing that. You'd have better luck claiming that I benefit from people making statements that could get them mobbed. But that too is unconvincing: people who I benefit from sharing their views are pushed out anyway via structural dynamics, often due to the things powerful people who don't face consequences do and say.

Today me, tomorrow you. Each of us has said something that could be misconstrued into a fireable offence, and the problem is that structural dynamics and mob sentiments change; if you accept people being labeled as undesirable for just expressing an atypical opinion and attempts at removing such undesirables from the society, don't be surprised if five years from now it happens to someone you like.

> And then of course, it's not like my life, or his would be ruined. Damore is, as I understand it, gainfully employed and mostly out of the public eye.

Damore is young, and its firing was on such weak grounds that there was a lot of people who wouldn't mind him on board once publicity died down. (At least that was just after the firing; I haven't followed his life since, but I hear that he ended up radicalizing; wonder if the mob ended up being the cause.) RMS is AFAIK 66, and haven't worked in software in 40 years. His job was essentially being an icon of the movement, and now that this was destroyed, he's essentially unemployable. At best, he'll retire.

> I'll ask my questions again since you didn't answer: what due process does one deserve before being fired? What of that did Stallman not receive?

I purposefully didn't use the words "due process". Anyway, I'll answer with a counterquestion: what protections do people deserve from being killed in a flood or an avalanche? Floods and avalanches kill people, that's what they do. And yet protections are instituted so that innocent people don't find themselves unexpectedly in harm's way. Similarly, companies fire people who become a net loss to them, but in recent years, there's been an uptick of cases where someone's private or semi-public conversations have been misconstrued and blogged or Tweeted about with the express purpose of causing a public outrage and ruin the career of that someone. Maybe we need to talk about protections from such events, and even focus on the people who push others under the train because they find their opinions offensive.

bandrami 2464 days ago

So, you're saying anybody should be able to avoid being fired simply by whipping up a social media storm against themselves? I can see a lot of possible abuses here.

A social media storm around you rarely works to your advantage. Sure, if you're lucky enough (spinning up a drama isn't a sure-fire thing), you may avoid getting fired until the ruckus dies down and reporters move to a different story (i.e. couple of days, maybe weeks), but your life at work becomes a living hell as you're now a persona non grata and good luck finding another job, where sane employers would prefer to avoid someone with history of spinning public outrage against companies for leverage.

To continue with military analogies, social media storms are like gas weapons. They're effective if launched at a distant enemy (though if you're not careful, the wind may carry it back towards you), and not something a force would use around itself when engaged in combat.

widowlark 2464 days ago

Are you really comparing the murder of aristocrats to someone getting fired for defending a pedophile?

Do you really find murder to be equivalent to this?