When someone in the media publishes something, they will say how they know said fact, and will ask the subject of an article for a comment/response. Sometimes the subject will not respond to the request for comment, and when this happens some readers might wait for a response before deciding if they believe the article. Sometimes the subject will respond, and when they do not explicitly deny the allegations, most readers will accept what is published as fact, even if they personally do not know enough information themselves to come to this same conclusion, or even if there is not enough public information to prove this in court. Sometimes the subject will outright deny the allegation, at which point readers will have to use the available facts to evaluate if they believe what is being said or not, and sometimes the writer may publish additional evidence if sufficient number of readers do not believe them.
Most usually present the source of information, and if the source is "anonymous" and that "anonymous" person is stating information they heard from another "anonymous" person, I believe readers would behave differently than the way you describe.
Regardless,
this is not the mainstream media and I would expect most readers here would not behave like this.
I believe this would be someone who is described as "someone familiar with the matter".
I would also point out that on many occasions lauda has responded to threads complaining about his negative ratings saying that he does not want to reveal his mythology, even when those being accused fairly clearly deny the accusation; Lauda's responses to these types of threads generally consists of what I think is reasonable to say is trolling.
In this case (I believe, and would argue that) lauda has not even denied the subject allegations, so as you put it, my case is flimsy, (maybe you consider my case to have a 1% chance of being true), however Lauda's case is non-existent (so I argue), so it would be 1% chance of being true, verses 0% for his side.
Another point I would make is if this was a separate issue, perhaps another reputable person is being accused by a person with little reputation of scamming via a deal done on say Skype, posts skype chat logs (which can easily be faked, as you point out) to backup his claim, most frequently, many people would say they will wait for [reputable person] to respond before coming to a judgment, and after a certain time without a response, more and more people will come to the conclusion that [reputable person] is a scammer.
IMO, based on Lauda's responses to this thread, one can reasonably assume Lauda is denying that they take pills:
I'd like to know what pills I'm taking as well.
I believe this says "I don't take pills" and is an explicit denial...
I think you are wrong. I don't agree this is a denial, however if you were to give (probably too much of) a benefit of the doubt, this is another of Lauda's non-denial denials, similar to his response to allegations that Lauda sold accounts in the past, when he
said "I have not...purchased any accounts
to my knowledge" -- he is giving himself an out in case someone presents additional evidence against him.
So what is the "out" with this thread?
I think it is probably save to believe that accepting Lauda having a pill/drug addiction would make lauda look bad, and many would probably question his judgment and would question if they can trust him with their money -- this is not a desirable outcome for lauda. We have one post (the post you quoted previously), in which I believe Lauda was asking to see the evidence against him, however you believe this is a denial on the part of lauda -- we can agree to disagree on this. There is a
second post, in which Lauda makes it more clear that he is not going to respond to my claim. Then we have a
third post which implies the 1st post is a denial, however it very clearly leaves open the possibility that it is not.
As it stands now, Lauda has the best of both worlds. As it stands now, if someone brings up a concern about a potential pill addiction, Lauda, or (more likely), a 3rd party and/or a sockpuppet can point to the 3rd post saying that Lauda denied having a pill addiction and if questioned, can say the 2nd post was him trolling. On the other hand, if down the line, additional evidence is presented that Lauda has a pill addiction, then he can at least say that he did not lie about the situation (he might even through in there that he is trying to get help/better/ect.), would point to the 2nd post to say that he did not address my claims, and if questioned about the 3rd post, say that the post did not say he was confirming he denied the pill addiction in the 1st post, and would say the 3rd party and/or sockpuppet who backed lauda (in pointing to the 3rd post as evidence that lauda was denying the addiction) did not speak for lauda.
I think having the ability to give two different answers is inherently dishonest.
Better yet, maybe I have a source who told me Lauda denied the pill addiction explicitly in a PM.
Using the word "maybe" is very different from outright saying that you have this information.
I would also point out that denying this via a 3rd party, in private is yet another way (actually multiple ways) for lauda to get "out" of being exposed as lying to discredit allegations against him if additional evidence is presented against him.
Are you not essentially doing the same thing here?
No. I am saying that someone told me a fact that they know because someone else (actually other people) gave this person information. You can choose to take my own reputation, your believe as to my judgment, and the fact that I am not presenting information (currently) to form your own conclusion -- you would probably also consider any evidence that would refute my claims, including a denial by the accused.
I cannot make the same evaluation with you statement because of the "maybe" clause. Your statement could be untrue, but that would not make you a liar because you clearly said that it might not be true. I consider you to be an honest person, but I don't think you have received that PM, I think you are trying to make a point, but I think your point is invalid. If you do have a PM from a
3rd party, I would ask how confident you are that this person actually can speak for Lauda; as previously mentioned, if this turns out to not be true, lauda could simply say that his sockpuppet (or other third party) does not speak for him.
