[mdwelsh]

I’m no fan of the WEI proposal, but the headline here is inaccurate. Rick expressed a belief that criminals were amongst those voicing concern over the proposal, not claiming that all opponents are criminals, as the headline suggests.

[richbell]

That's a distinction without a difference in my mind. Claiming that criminals are against the proposal is "poisoning the well", even if he's not accusing _all critics_ of being criminals.

> my suspicion that there is significant intimidation from criminals who are afraid this feature will disrupt their illegal and/or unethical businesses, and I don't give in to criminals or bullies

[predictabl3]

The notion that this is poisoning the well is also supported by the general pattern: retreating on an idea that others thought was bad, avoiding literally any discussion of the technical/cultural criticism (despite that it apparently still existed legitimately enough to postpone the proposal for now) and 2/3rd or more of the post spent implying that [all|some|who knows] of the opponents were abusive bullies, and that maybe the idea was actually fine. (Setting the stage to absolutely re-introduce with the new framing "inauthentic traffic" in 6 months.)

Note also, avoiding any discussion of the web open or how it entered into the decision to postpone, supposedly. Though, that also wasn't said, just sort of implied with the half-hearted smiley-faced plea for compromising.

I am not emotionally invested because I see this as inevitable and don't care, I'll go live in the woods soon anyway, but this is just icky to read.

[superkuh]

I think what's happening here is that he's just too deep in to google's corporate culture and can't imagine normal people perceiving google as a threat. His first paragraph is basically this,

"Thank you for your comments. We are not going to listen to your comments. We're surprised that not listening to your comments has led to people trying to contact through other means. The only reason I can think of to object to WEI is crime so enough of you are probably criminals that I'm going to mention it in the first paragraph as an accusation."

[Brian_K_White]

If he didn't intend to make specifically that association, then why did he make specifically that statement?

Why not, say, the librarians?

So, he chose to speak about a specific thing, and so it's perfectly fair to critique exactly that specific thing, which he chose to highlight.