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Lichess will no longer cooperate with the USCF and the Saint Louis Chess Club
- roschdal 3y ago[flagged]
- nickthegreek 3y agoThis is about Freedom of Association, a protected right under the first amendment.
- nonethewiser 3y agoNo one is challenging that.
- nickthegreek 3y agoApologies then, as I interpreted the OP's comment to state that since this man hasn't been convicted in a court of law, Lichess should not behave this way.
- nonethewiser 3y agoThat conclusion doesn’t even follow your interpretation though. He can think Lichess is wrong for disassociating. That doesnt challenge supposed first amendment rights. Keep in mind the lichess dev doesnt have first amendment rights. He’s french.
- bluGill 3y agoDo you really want to belong to an organization that bans based on accusations? That seems like a great way for someone dishonest to avoid playing someone they know they will have a problem beating - just accuse them of sexual harassment and you don't have to worry about it. Things like the above have been done in the past. That is why the courts have complex and slow procedures to solve problems. I hate it as well, but any alternative is at least as bad - though perhaps in a different direction.
- Daishiman 3y agoYes.
- runako 3y ago> Do you really want to belong to an organization that bans based on accusations? Are there non-government civic organizations that require accusations to be completely adjudicated in courts before ejecting a member? I have never heard of even one that would fit this description.
- veave 3y ago>Which laws were broken From what I can see in this post, the laws against defamation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tick_tock_tick 3y agoOne thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate. From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors. If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?
- duxup 3y agoGenerally the existing legal system is a very difficult path. Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough. US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.
- lettergram 3y ago> Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path And for good reason, the current legal system assumes innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt (for criminal cases). Civil cases have a lower burden of proof. These protections are there for a reason. Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. sexual “misconduct” is even more insidious, because most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims AND likely have too low of a burden for a civil or criminal case… In other words, feel free to make claims, but without proof it’s hard to justify ruining someone’s life.
- jasonlotito 3y ago> Everyone has likely been accused of things they didn’t do. To this degree? No. This is not likely. > We shouldn’t assume anyone’s word without a decent amount of certainty. Several claims from individuals with corroborating evidence in this case. > most people making the accusations are doing so long-after the fact, often have outside motivation for making claims Citation needed. I need evidence that most people making accusations are doing so "long after the fact" AND have motives outside the offending incident to do so. On a side note: Codes of Conduct and Guidelines have existed long before the modern era. Private entities are free to handle these however they want, and suggesting they leave everything to the courts is a new and unique perspective that needs more backing to suggest it would be a better system.
- duxup 3y agoI want to address this more generally. I'm not taking issue with any of the claims, I don't know what is true or isn't. The thing I wonder after reading this is how many organizations struggle to deal with these types of situations. Employers, schools, universities, clubs all seem to now have to have a process to address these things. And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way... It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things, nor do they necessarily have people qualified to do so (even Big US Universities for all their resources have demonstrated their own ability to do poorly in every way). We all have ideas about how we think these groups should act after the fact, but how do you really get it right? How does any organization decide "We're going to address these kinds of claims, investigate, and act appropriately?" Where do they even start?
- hgsgm 3y agoConflict is fundamentally intractable. If it were so easy to avoid conflict, we wouldn't need to address it!
- giraffe_lady 3y ago"Conflict is not abuse" yes. But also, abuse is not conflict. Organizations and communities have their own ways of limiting, tempering, and mitigating conflict within them that relates to the domain of the organization. But however effective those methods are, they will be insufficient to handle cases of interpersonal manipulation, abuse, sexual harassment, etc. Because again, those things are not conflict.
- paulddraper 3y agoI mean, we have such organizations...they are called courts.
- glenda 3y agoAnd from what I can see those courts have shown to be pretty ineffective against crimes like sexual assault.
- COGlory 3y agoI'm confused what Lichess wanted here. One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy. This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events. What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have been done. Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the incident with Timur
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoYou absolutely can ban someone because of an allegation. It's a chess club. The worst punishment they can levy is banishment. That doesn't need the kind of "beyond reasonable doubt" certainty that a court throwing you in prison needs.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoEverything is fine till it happens to you. Im sure you've watched House M.D
- moshun 3y agoIf this kind of ban was happening all over the place for similar reasons I’d argue that you have a point. After digging a bit, however, I wasn’t able to find many males banned for harassment or assault on another member. So it seems you’re protesting on the basis of an unlikely hypothetical scenario.
- inemesitaffia 3y agoI don't know about Chess but I've seen cases elsewhere of both men and women. Nothing hypothetical here. Like I said it all makes sense till it happens to you
- altairprime 3y agoThey want each organization to publicly state (“acknowledge”) that they acted and communicated inappropriately in the past regarding these events. In their exact words from the post: > However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.
- veave 3y agoLots of allegations, lots of testimonies, zero police reports, zero convictions.
- kstrauser 3y agoI don’t have to see a conviction to kick someone out of my living room.
- bluGill 3y agoNo, but if are a large organization like USCF you probably want to have a higher bar than just an accusation.
- kstrauser 3y agoSounds like they have multiple allegations from multiple victims across multiple years. That seems like a reasonable cause for USCF to investigate those allegations.
- mkeedlinger 3y agoThis comment [0] doesn't list their sources, but their list of events certainly makes it seem more conclusive than I was initially impressed skimming the post. That seems to be causing some confusion between the "just an accusation" and "it's not just an accusation" people. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080296
- lubesGordi 3y agoWasn't aware Lichess had journalists doing research to write articles and conduct interviews.
- nonethewiser 3y ago[flagged]
- ajkjk 3y agoLichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't. We are lucky to have them in that position.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI agree that they are obviously championing a social justice cause.
- ajkjk 3y agoWeird way to phrase it. Most people, even the ones who rail against social justice, would not categorize "actually doing something about sexual abuse" as a social justice cause -- a phrasing which is obviously intended to politicize it and disable your need to care about it, anyway. Is your preferred alternative "don't do something about sexual abuse"? Good luck with that. Lichess is doing something because (a) they can and (b) the people who could, won't. That's pretty much how progress happens. c.f. every labor movement ever.
- nonethewiser 3y agoBut thats what social justice is. Im not sure why you have a negative connotation with it when you describe it as a positive. > Lichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't.
- ajkjk 3y ago
- nonethewiser 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]