You don’t think there’s a problem with the worlds richest man, with a following of millions, calling some effectively random British guy in Thailand a pedophile?

You think that was a fair exchange? That these insults were equivalent?

That guy’s life was put in jeopardy. Calling him pedo guy was exactly the kind of behaviour I’m calling out.

> You don’t think there’s a problem with the worlds richest man, with a following of millions, calling some effectively random British guy in Thailand a pedophile?

I think it's a dick move for sure. However if we follow your line of reasoning, we end up on a world where everyone is free to insult people more powerful than them with no repercussions.

This sounds like a recipe for creating a lot of bullies. Bullies tend to continue their behavior and continue to escalate as long as they feel like they're the most powerful person in the room. It's generally only when they pick on someone bigger than them (metaphorically) and get rightly smacked down do they learn the error of those ways. Note that this is a generalization: don't take that to mean that a smackdown is the only way they learn, or that they are guaranteed to learn from it!

I'm more of the opinion that if you're going to hurl insults/fists, you deserve whatever happens when someone fights back. It's not like smaller/weaker/less privileged targets are going to have much ability to fight back, so it seems important that the ones who have the ability to retaliate are able to do so, in order to keep bullies in check.

> That guy’s life was put in jeopardy. Calling him pedo guy was exactly the kind of behaviour I’m calling out.

I find this very hard to believe. This sounds more like the kind of thing someone says when pursuing a lawsuit, because they (strategically) have to.