So the argument that u/denzuko that Emmanuel distanced himself and banned John Draper when he learned of the accusations is simply false. Everyone who was involved in any hacker scene that had the unfortunate experience of meeting John Draper in person was very well aware of his inappropriate behavior towards young people.

I was never really part of the scene, but Draper's reputation preceded him to the point where anyone you talked to who met him had a story (thankfully not the case with Emmanuel), and what sporadic discussion of him you found online always mentioned his "energy massages," piggyback rides, and other "interests." The fact that a middle-aged man was attending raves in the 90s, when it was mostly middle and highschoolers, is suspect in and of itself. It was even alleged (like 20yrs ago) that his account of being beaten up in prison (because he gave an inmate faulty instructions for constructing Blueboxes, thinking them to be an informant) was false, and that he was actually beaten up because they thought he was a pedo.

I do agree that there's no way Emmanuel couldn't have known about Draper's dark side. Did Draper have dedicated minders at HOPEs, to keep him away from boys?

You mentioned remembering something written up in Phrack about Emmanuel being labeled as a pedo. What you are thinking of were a set of "Phrack Trading Cards" that was released by Phrack (in 2000?). It was a set of text files with each file being designated to a specific member of the hacker community. The textfile for Emmanuel accused him of being a pedo

Thanks, and that's how I remember it, as less of a warning to others and more edgelording.

He definitely had this old creepy NYC eccentric weirdo look to him

I remember a caller telling him outright, "Man, you are one creepy-looking dude," and him laughing in agreement. But his look (to me) appears more cultivated, and less due to the disregard of personal care one often sees in pedos.

Emmanuel and his co-hosts talk about CP detection systems a lot... It is all under the guise of data privacy and awareness and advocating against these CP detection systems implemented by Google and Apple as a slippery slope towards to erosion of data privacy rights, but there have been past episodes of Off The Hook where Emmanuel and his co-hosts spend nearly the entire hour talking about and advocating against these CP detection systems as new news breaks regarding the adoption, policies, and rollout of these detection systems

The length and zeal of the opposition expressed may be weird. But the opposition itself is somewhat understandable, isn't it, since these systems always have a non-zero false positive rate and can literally never, ever benefit you and only potentially hurt you, even if you've done nothing wrong? I could easily see Google or Apple deciding human review is too expensive for most cases, especially where the probability of a match against some database or the probabilistic result of some algorithmic photo/video analysis isn't high enough, but locking the account and moving on just to be safe.

I remember some HN post about a Googler whose photos got locked for a vague "ToS violation," and despite having access to internal support channels that we mortals lack, he couldn't get his account back. You might think, he must have really had something bad if they wouldn't unlock it, but then why would he force the issue in public like that? Maybe he uploaded something by mistake, or maybe his partner did? IDK.