alt Hacker NewsThe point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
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Mostly this
> They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
This is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists.
They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.
The process is the punishment.
Much like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_...
YC and its founders worship him like a hero.
>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand.
i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.