To be fair to Stallman though, he later recanted on those positions. I can't remember the exact post but he said something along the lines of how someone explained to him how much pedophilia harms children and so he has since recanted his position and now believes pedophilia is wrong and harmful.
Also he was making the statements in the context of having read this article from the Guardian which says petty much the same thing:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jan/03/paedophilia-...
From a scientific perspective, the level of harm caused by sex with minors and even the classification of pedophilia is something we are still gathering evidence on. Does that mean it doesn't harm children - absolutely not, of course it's harmful. However, it's still fair to make the point that we don't have a scientific case for it yet.
There's a lot I don't agree with about Stallman, but I do appreciate his contributions to computing and freedom - and I certainly don't approve of this new trend towards social media mob justice.
That injustice of this social media mob justice can be seen in the fact that all Stallman's historical statements from many years, even ones that he has recanted, can be taken out of context and used against him.
Worse, it's completely without reason. I mean there were a group of US prosecutors that characterized Epstein's child victims as prostitutes to justify releasing him so that he could continue raping children. Why are we going after MIT scientists instead of those prosecutors and Epstien's associates. I think the reason is because there was a popular NY Times article that focused on MIT rather than the US prosecution service and Epstein's rich powerful friends like Trump and Clinton. These mob events aren't based on reflection, they're based on whim and whatever the media (consisting of companies some of which are owned by Epstein cohorts) and some random influencers on twitter are saying.
