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>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated n

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated networks of influence,” used in part for “reputation management” — and I believe they enlisted one to defame me online. The "I believe" is the operative phrase in this allegation. It's not implausible, however. Comments everywhere on topics where powerful agents have interests (i.e. everything) seem to be subject to a great deal of astroturfing. The existence of groups that do this is not disputed. The trend seems to be getting a lot more pronounced lately, just by my personal observation.

camus2 9y ago
> The "I believe" is the operative phrase in this allegation. I doesn't make it a fact. It makes the author look like they are paranoid, and it has absolutely no bearing in the verdict of their case. But it says a lot about their personality. One cannot use that type of argument and be expected to be taken seriously, unless one actually bring evidence that a particular firm engaged in harassment, which is a serious accusation since I'm pretty sure it's illegal.
Natsu 9y ago
Well, I mean, that's kind of the question, isn't it? She's sharing a lot of personal anecdotes after losing on her claims about those in court. I do not know what happened or what people actually said, but I won't take the illogical step of inferring things about this case from the outcome of other cases or vice versa and I disliked the fact that this is a lot of scandalous, unverifiable anecdotes that she was not able to credibly establish in a court of law. Harassment is real. I'm a victim of it myself and the guy who put his hands down my pants was fired for that, though I wasn't really working in tech at the time. I managed both to confront him and to prove it. Her claims, however, failed to be proven in court and therefore I do not find her credible, nor can I without new, verifiable evidence. I know too well how high a bar that is, but I wouldn't see it set any lower, not even in my case.
- pervycreeper 9y ago
  No judgement from me on the ultimate truth or falsity of her claim. My only point is that the idea that a PR firm would engage in astroturfing has enough plausibility not to be dismissed as a conspiracy theory out of hand, since such things do actually happen. Other contextual factors certainly do bear on the overall credibility of the claim, but taken in isolation, it is not an absurdity, as the parent comment seems to suggest.
  - Natsu 9y ago
    It's a bit ambiguous as to how to read that. I'm going to assume that you mean that you're setting a non-zero prior probability, which is reasonable enough. However, that's currently multiplied by zero evidence as far as I've seen. Otherwise confirmation bias will simply take over and lead us astray. I mean, it's not exactly falsifiable. I could just as well say that most of the people I disagree with are actually just Perl scripts, not real people.

camus2 9y ago

> The "I believe" is the operative phrase in this allegation. I doesn't make it a fact. It makes the author look like they are paranoid, and it has absolutely no bearing in the verdict of their case. But it says a lot about their personality. One cannot use that type of argument and be expected to be taken seriously, unless one actually bring evidence that a particular firm engaged in harassment, which is a serious accusation since I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

Natsu 9y ago

Well, I mean, that's kind of the question, isn't it? She's sharing a lot of personal anecdotes after losing on her claims about those in court. I do not know what happened or what people actually said, but I won't take the illogical step of inferring things about this case from the outcome of other cases or vice versa and I disliked the fact that this is a lot of scandalous, unverifiable anecdotes that she was not able to credibly establish in a court of law. Harassment is real. I'm a victim of it myself and the guy who put his hands down my pants was fired for that, though I wasn't really working in tech at the time. I managed both to confront him and to prove it. Her claims, however, failed to be proven in court and therefore I do not find her credible, nor can I without new, verifiable evidence. I know too well how high a bar that is, but I wouldn't see it set any lower, not even in my case.

pervycreeper 9y ago
No judgement from me on the ultimate truth or falsity of her claim. My only point is that the idea that a PR firm would engage in astroturfing has enough plausibility not to be dismissed as a conspiracy theory out of hand, since such things do actually happen. Other contextual factors certainly do bear on the overall credibility of the claim, but taken in isolation, it is not an absurdity, as the parent comment seems to suggest.
- Natsu 9y ago
  It's a bit ambiguous as to how to read that. I'm going to assume that you mean that you're setting a non-zero prior probability, which is reasonable enough. However, that's currently multiplied by zero evidence as far as I've seen. Otherwise confirmation bias will simply take over and lead us astray. I mean, it's not exactly falsifiable. I could just as well say that most of the people I disagree with are actually just Perl scripts, not real people.

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-­management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated n

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-­management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated n

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated n

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated n