> By then, Mr. Epstein was already a convicted sex offender, having pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, but Coinbase took his money all the same
I don’t get why people keep saying things like this.
If a person is convicted of a crime and they are out of jail, it is everyone else’s right to interact with them as if they had done nothing wrong. Isn’t that how the whole system is set up?
I think the reason it feels weird is because his sentence was ridiculously short and should have been much longer. But that is not up to everyone else to compensate for. Can we instead start focusing on how shocking it is that he spent so little time in jail, and then discuss why that happened?
he got a slap on the wrist and did not serve meaningful time.
if I was a shareholder I would not want money flowing to a pedophile and would certainly not want money flowing to them as they continued to molest kids even after their sentence.
I think a person who willingly cavorts with someone who trafficked underage girls is of poor moral character to say the least. (Unless there is evidence of true contrition and reform.)
Yeah I generally agree, my point is that as a society I thought that we used “not being in jail anymore” as a proxy for that.
And, at the time of people dealing with Epstein before the second arrest, I thought he had “only” been convicted of a very reduced charge of something like “soliciting an underage prostitute”, not trafficking at all.
How about the Iran-Contra connections? The crack epidemic ravaging Baltimore in The Wire has everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Ever wonder how he bought that island of his?
If founders (or VC's) feel comfortable working with someone who pled guilty to procuring a child for prostitution, they should go ahead. But they shouldn't then be surprised when people consider them a piece of shit.
I've seen this exact argument made numerous times in defense of some heinous people, or generally against "cancel culture" within tech, in favor of what they consider the political neutrality of "pure meritocracy."
If Jeffrey Epstein were a startup founder or if he had written a really important compiler or something that linked him to tech more directly, more people here would be defending him.
I find it great that we now get to see what kind of men pick winners and loosers and how they operate. The fact that we now see the hypocrisy and moral rot of supposed meritocracy is not a bug.
And no, Epstein did not stopped his abuses after his network got him incredibly sweet deal and prevented further investigation. He did not even operated in secrecy after that.
The article strictly talks about people who were pals with him _after_ his Pedophilia conviction. And please don't do this strawman "evil person eating babies", nobody sane is claiming that.
Just take a look at the photos of his residences, it's filled with big black redaction squares of the "artwork" and photos on his walls and the little bits that can be seen lend a huge credence to his prior conviction.
Absolutely bonkers to say he's a "somewhat flawed person" when there's gigs of PDFs of some of the most heinous things imaginable.
https://archive.is/TJCdB
> By then, Mr. Epstein was already a convicted sex offender, having pleaded guilty to charges of soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008, but Coinbase took his money all the same
I don’t get why people keep saying things like this.
If a person is convicted of a crime and they are out of jail, it is everyone else’s right to interact with them as if they had done nothing wrong. Isn’t that how the whole system is set up?
I think the reason it feels weird is because his sentence was ridiculously short and should have been much longer. But that is not up to everyone else to compensate for. Can we instead start focusing on how shocking it is that he spent so little time in jail, and then discuss why that happened?
what is it youre trying to say? im confused.
he got a slap on the wrist and did not serve meaningful time.
if I was a shareholder I would not want money flowing to a pedophile and would certainly not want money flowing to them as they continued to molest kids even after their sentence.
I think a person who willingly cavorts with someone who trafficked underage girls is of poor moral character to say the least. (Unless there is evidence of true contrition and reform.)
Yeah I generally agree, my point is that as a society I thought that we used “not being in jail anymore” as a proxy for that.
And, at the time of people dealing with Epstein before the second arrest, I thought he had “only” been convicted of a very reduced charge of something like “soliciting an underage prostitute”, not trafficking at all.
The Wire's eternal wisdom "You start to follow the money, you don't know where the fuck it's gonna take you"
How about the Iran-Contra connections? The crack epidemic ravaging Baltimore in The Wire has everything to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Ever wonder how he bought that island of his?
https://forum.agora-dialogue.com/2025/12/19/epstein-israel-a...
https://youtube.com/shorts/Z3gHFmdYZ_E?si=KPtbGy9j_whzKX_n
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/index.html
"Epstein associated with Silicon Valley elite years after his release from prison" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892509
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If founders (or VC's) feel comfortable working with someone who pled guilty to procuring a child for prostitution, they should go ahead. But they shouldn't then be surprised when people consider them a piece of shit.
How many friends do you have that are (convicted) pedophiles?
If you had any, would you tell anyone about them?
If no, why is that?
wild to try to begin a social relationship with the hn community by trying to argue this position.
I've seen this exact argument made numerous times in defense of some heinous people, or generally against "cancel culture" within tech, in favor of what they consider the political neutrality of "pure meritocracy."
If Jeffrey Epstein were a startup founder or if he had written a really important compiler or something that linked him to tech more directly, more people here would be defending him.
>in favor of what they consider the political neutrality of "pure meritocracy."
Meanwhile these people often got where they were explicitly through nepotism
"My father gave me a small loan of a million dollars..." - self-made millionaire and champion of the common man Donald Trump.
I find it great that we now get to see what kind of men pick winners and loosers and how they operate. The fact that we now see the hypocrisy and moral rot of supposed meritocracy is not a bug.
And no, Epstein did not stopped his abuses after his network got him incredibly sweet deal and prevented further investigation. He did not even operated in secrecy after that.
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The article strictly talks about people who were pals with him _after_ his Pedophilia conviction. And please don't do this strawman "evil person eating babies", nobody sane is claiming that.
Just take a look at the photos of his residences, it's filled with big black redaction squares of the "artwork" and photos on his walls and the little bits that can be seen lend a huge credence to his prior conviction.
Absolutely bonkers to say he's a "somewhat flawed person" when there's gigs of PDFs of some of the most heinous things imaginable.
His pedophilia charges are 1000x worse than Roman Polanski who actually (the literal sense of the word) raped a 13 year old.
Whereas Epstein was convicted solicited sex from 16 year old. There's a mountain of a difference between them.
Here are the people who signed petition against Roman's conviction
* Woody Allen
* Wes Anderson
* Jean-Jacques Annaud
* Asia Argento (later expressed regret)
* Darren Aronofsky
* Paul Auster
* Monica Bellucci
* Gael García Bernal
* Adrien Brody
* Penélope Cruz
* Alfonso Cuarón
* Guillermo del Toro
* Jonathan Demme
* Alexandre Desplat
* Xavier Dolan (later expressed regret)
* Stephen Frears
* Harrison Ford
* Terry Gilliam
* Taylor Hackford
* Buck Henry
* Alejandro G. Iñárritu
* Jeremy Irons
* Neil Jordan
* Harmony Korine
* John Landis
* David Lynch (his daughter claimed posthumous regret in 2025)
* Michael Mann
* Sam Mendes
* Mike Nichols
* Alexander Payne
* Natalie Portman (later expressed regret)
* Brett Ratner
* Walter Salles
* Jerry Schatzberg
* Julian Schnabel
* Martin Scorsese
* Steven Soderbergh
* Tilda Swinton
* Kristin Scott Thomas
* Tom Tykwer
* Emma Thompson (later expressed regret)
* Pedro Almodóvar
* Wong Kar-wai
* Salman Rushdie
* Milan Kundera
* Diane von Furstenberg
* Neil Gaiman (signed a related petition)
* Meryl Streep (publicly supported without signing)
* Whoopi Goldberg (publicly supported without signing)
* Debra Winger (publicly supported without signing)
* Harvey Weinstein (publicly defended him)
Why don't we hold these people to the same standards?
Im not a fan of Roman Polanski to put it mildly, but are you trying to claim that supporting a pedophile is as bad as being a pedophile?
Also all those people can fuck themselves. There’s more than enough blame to go around.
do you agree that you have to hold all these people to the same standard?
Yea, so the guy who actually committed pedophilia is being judged harder than someone defending him who hasn’t committed pedophilia.
You for instance seem to be in the same boat as the people in this list, so I won’t judge you as harshly as Epstein.
do you judge the people Epstein was in touch with the same way you judge the people i listed above?
If the were post knowing his crimes then yea, like that UK minister who got sacked.
Why are you carrying so much weight for Epstein and associates?
What if he was both? His villainous nature made him a willing accomplice and aligned him with political monsters.
The "oh this is just repetitive/tiresome/old" energy is an emotional trope that is itself repetitive, tiresome, and old.
Dopamine addicted brain demands the circus bring out a new act! Otherwise it might calm down enough to notice all it's given to eat is bread!
Amazing how the adults are just like kids watching Saturday morning cartoons; aww news interruption! How dare reality intrude on my disassociation!