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A Well-Known Expert on Student Loans Is Not Real
- whatshisface 9y agoFor anyone who hasn't already read it, this essay by our own Paul Graham describes this process: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- emodendroket 9y agoNot quite the same.
- poof131 9y agoI don’t think that’s the same at all. The submarine article is about helping journalists with stories. This article is about lying to journalists and everyone else by creating a fictitious person, all for their company’s financial benefit. And ironically they tout their intent to “provide transparency”. Too bad they didn’t make him a combat vet, then they could have been prosecuted.[1] Makes me think of a quote I once heard, “Integrity is what we tell other people to have.” [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Valor_Act_of_2013
- kolpa 9y agoLying for financial benefit and to impress investors is covered in this article: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html which harkens back to when AirBnB spammed Craiglist users (violating Craigslist ToS and users' stated contact preferences) with fake inquiries about rental properties.
- chiph 9y agoSubmarine? More like a Battleship.
- whatshisface 9y ago>The submarine article is about helping journalists with stories >I don’t think that’s the same at all. The parallel I see is that in both cases, you're introducing things into the news cycle for your own benefit. In the Submarine article, PG even talks about how shaky statistics were made more credible by insertion into publications (like a PR-driven version of this xkcd[0]). The difference between submarine tactics and what happened here was that the data was outright false instead of merely cherry-picked or optimistic. However, a journalist who is doing their job will catch both: they will not allow information to be presented as having a higher confidence than it actually does, whether that means promoting a number from "made up" to "reported somewhere," or promoting a number from "reported somewhere," to "credibly sourced." So, the similarity that I see in both cases is the willingness of journalists to serve private interests by reporting error bars as less wide as they actually are; so long as they do not mis-report the mean values being focused on. The same? No. Similar? Yes, they both involve exploiting the same bug in the system. [0] https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
- snowwrestler 9y ago> The parallel I see is that in both cases, you're introducing things into the news cycle for your own benefit. That's just PR. I'm tired of PG's submarine essay. Although he's got a cute hook with the concept of "the submarine," what he describes in the article is just bog standard PR. But somehow HN folks (most of whom have no direct experience with PR themselves) have come to believe, based on PG's essay, that anything involving placing a story with a reporter is some special thing called a submarine. Anyway, yes, this fake person is an example of PR, but the reason it's worth writing about is that it's a great example of truly shitty PR. Reporters live to find out The Truth, and they hate to get lied to or fooled. Anyone who put Drew Cloud in their stories is going to be pissed off at LendEDU for a long time. Pissing off reporters and editors is generally considered to be a bad PR strategy.
- mintplant 9y agoThis happened on a smaller scale—and more innocently—in the world of video game journalism, during the golden age of Alternate Reality Games, when "PixelVixen707" was revealed as a fictional character in a promo campaign for a novel. https://kotaku.com/5859814/the-fascinating-tale-of-pixelvixen-707-the-internets-most-famous-imaginary-female-video-game-critic https://kotaku.com/5859814/the-fascinating-tale-of-pixelvixe...
- lloydde 9y agoYour comment triggered me to remember “Robert X. Cringely is the pen name of both technology journalist Mark Stephens and a string of writers for a column in InfoWorld” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely
- paulgb 9y agoOn the topic of media manipulation, this book has changed how I interpret press content more than anything I've read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_Me,_I%27m_Lying
- jseliger 9y agoThe book is excellent and when I first heard about it, I figured the reviews were enough. They were not and it should be widely read: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/05/07/the-death-of-the-novel-and-ryan-holidays-trust-me-im-lying https://jakeseliger.com/2014/05/07/the-death-of-the-novel-an...
- darkkindness 9y agoThanks for the recommendation. I just started reading, and so far it's quite frightening but enlightening. Holiday uses a scary number of examples to show how effective his tactics are. edit: I'm not seeing any deep description of the audience, other than as sheep who provide clicks, which is worrying. Surely knowing the audience is important?
- koolba 9y ago> One in five students use extra money from their student loans to buy digital currencies. Is this for real or just bogus results from an unscientific survey?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sincerely 9y agoAccording to the Chronicle article linked, experts raised concerns about the methodology of that study.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoIf your intention was to pump digital currencies you would probably say something like "everyone else is buying"...
- fastball 9y agoEveryone purchasing with leverage doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
- Meegul 9y agoEven as a current computer science student, nowhere near 1/5th of my peers do this. I can't imagine a non-computer science student would be more likely, as well. That's anecdotal, but 1/5 of students using _student loans_ to buy digital currencies strikes me as completely absurd.
- astura 9y agoTotally bogus, the survey was an online poll conducted by the very website that was reporting it, who has lied about other things as pointed out by the article itself and these comments. https://www.chronicle.com/article/No-Students-Probably-Aren-t/243103?cid=rclink https://www.chronicle.com/article/No-Students-Probably-Aren-... Also this https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/lendedu-ceo-says-survey-spokesman-was-a-fake.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/25/lendedu-ceo-says-survey-spok... >Mark Kantrowitz, a well-known student loan expert, said he suspected there might be a connection between LendEDU and Student Loan Report because both claimed a statistical degree of precision from their surveys he said was inconsistent with their sample sizes.... "It stood out as something both sites do, but no one else does," Kantrowitz said. "The use of two decimal points of precision also suggested that some of their surveys were complete fabrications." I'm not a statistics expert, so could someone tellmy why using two decimal points of precision suggests survey data fabrication.
- lolc 9y agoLet's call it what it is: a fabrication. The people who created Drew Cloud are liars. And they lie for money. In my view this should mark the end of their careers. They should be welcomed to see the error of their ways and try again with better ethics. Unfortunately this is not how it will go. There is great demand for professional liars, and these authors will not have to stop and think over. If you're going to lie, make sure your motives are above personal gain. Well, have I just binned the entire industry of ghostwriters as liars over this minor outrage? Or is it different if the person I'm writing for actually exists? I'll have to mull this over.
- soperj 9y agoThe most famous write in person is also a fabrication: Ann Landers.
- mikeyouse 9y agoA pen name isn't remotely the same as a fabrication like "Mr. Cloud".
- koala_man 9y agoIt was a pen name backed by multiple writers. Why is it different?
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoWas there a commercial conflict of interest between the writing and the writers?
- mikeyouse 9y agoAnd it was always understood to be a pen name. Nobody was under the illusion that there was someone named "Ann Landers" dispensing advice, they even held a contest for the replacement when one of the earlier writers passed away.
- barbegal 9y agoIn 2017 they were claiming to be founded in 2015 [1] and didn't disclose that they were affiliated with financial companies. A few days ago [2] they were claiming to be founded in 2016 and disclosed that they were affiliated with financial companies. The fake expert is not that concerning but providing affiliate links with no disclosure is a real concern and is rife across the internet and growing [3]. Obviously this company came clean once the journalists got onto them. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170610022155/https://studentloans.net/about-contact/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170610022155/https://studentlo... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20180420191847/https://studentloans.net/about-contact/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180420191847/https://studentlo... [3] https://blog.marketing.rakuten.com/hubfs/Networks_Help_Drive_Affiliate_Marketing_Into_The_Mainstream.pdf https://blog.marketing.rakuten.com/hubfs/Networks_Help_Drive...
- woodrowbarlow 9y agodo you find affiliate links more evil than a company being able to significantly manipulate how the media reports on the industry they profit from?
- bhhaskin 9y agoIsn't that just shoddy journalism on the part of media that reported and quoted them? We shouldn't shift the blame from the media companies that reported fake information as fact. We are never going to get rid of fake information. We can only push for journalistic standards to ensure we aren't bringing credibility and legitimacy to a company pumping out this crap.
- blackbagboys 9y agoWe can push for higher journalistic standards and also push to punish crooks who intentionally deceive the public in order to line their pockets, especially when it's at the expense of struggling populations like heavily indebted students.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y ago
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> The self-described journalist who specializes in student-loan debt has been quoted in major news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and CNBC Curious to hear how this got past their vetting processes.
- willstrafach 9y agoSome are found through here and are not vetted much: https://www.helpareporter.com https://www.helpareporter.com
- wangarific 9y agoAs someone who has been quoted by major news outlets in what's likely a similar fashion - adding color to the story rather than reporting news - there is rarely "vetting" and the fact checking that occurs is merely confirming that what the journalist wrote matched what I said. They don't try to find additional sources to corroborate the story. So the fact checking focused on the surveys conducted, the methodology, etc - not whether Drew Cloud was a real person. (Also, I'm a real person so it's possible they do this type of vetting and I never experienced it because... well, I'm real)
- rcarrigan87 9y agoThis has been my experience as well. Most of the writers are either under so much pressure to pump out articles they just simply don't have time to fully vet every source OR they're a contractor and don't care to seriously vet the source.
- tclancy 9y ago1. There's obviously a large difference between the front page of the Post or Globe and some knock-on blog they run in the Home section of the website. 2. Curious to hear how this is even slightly relevant to the issue.
- onetimemanytime 9y agoDamn, Drew Cloud for student loans and James Blockchain for investing were my 2 go-to people. Now what?
- sterlind 9y agoDeepak Lerning?
- adrianratnapala 9y agoThe thing is that in some village in India there is probably some real dude with that very name, and he probably has no idea why some nerds think it is funny.
- sterlind 9y agoOne of my coworkers had the first name of Engineer! An excellent engineer, in both senses.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eugene_chen 9y agoThis fabrication is by the folks behind LendEDU (YC W16).
- kenning 9y agowoof
- ryan-allen 9y agowoof
- kolpa 9y agoDishonesty "when it doesn't matter, in the eye of the investor" is a YC requirement: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html """ Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications. """
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoThere's a big difference between knowing when to break the rules, which Altman and Graham advocate, and being commercially dishonest like LendEDU has been. Even putting aside the ethics, there are industries you fuck around with rules in and then there's consumer lending.
- Avshalom 9y agoThere isn't really, or at least the difference is almost always argued/decided post hoc.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoThe CIA did something similar in the 50's and 60's, with a fictitious economist called Guy Sims Fitch: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/meet-guy-sims-fitch-a-fake-writer-invented-by-the-us-government/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/meet-guy-sims-fitch-a-fak...
- cheeze 9y agoAnd I'm sure they've done it every decade since.
- txsh 9y agoThis is only slightly more nefarious than when these newspapers inventa source.
- shaki-dora 9y agoThat’s conspiracy bullshit. Journalists allow unnamed sources to get the truth out. In doing so, they substitute their own reputation for that of the source. You’d never heard about Watergate or Abu Grhaib without anonymous sources.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y agoThe most surprising thing in the whole article is that one of the people writing as Drew Cloud could really think ‘meant’ is spelt mean’t.
- fipple 9y ago> The most surprising thing in the whole article is that one of the people writing as Drew Cloud could really think ‘meant’ is spelt mean’t. Spelled
- unit91 9y agospelled https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry%27s_law
- Taniwha 9y agoMostly it's only americans who use "spelled", everyone else uses "spelt" https://www.grammarly.com/blog/spelled-spelt/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/spelled-spelt/
- astura 9y agoBoth are correct.
- Steeeve 9y agoLooks like a honeypot to sniff out replicated articles to me.
- surds 9y agoIsn't this like using a 'Persona' for content marketing? I have come across a few affiliate-heavy sites in very competitive niches which had a similar persona behind them... Dig a bit deeper and all the claims to fame, like 'mentioned in Forbes', 'consultant for this', 'expert on that' just disappear. I am not against personas per-se, but that should be evident.
- astura 9y agoI recall seeing a site that was doing an A/B test with their "authors." My friend sent me a link to a story that had the author's byline at the bottom. Not unusual, except on my screen the byline had a picture of a man with a short blurb about "him" and my friends screen the byline had a picture of a woman with a totally different name and different "backstory." I always thought that some scammy websites use pictures of models in place of the actual author but I didn't expect a downright fabrication!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 9y agoIs that what "persona" means now? I am familiar with the term from usability testing/profiling, where it is a tool used internally. Pretty sure the originators of the concept there did not mean the "personas" to be presented as real people to... well, anyone at all. I don't understand them as being meant to be shared with the public at all. I don't think those who developed the concept in the field of "user experience" would take the "innovation" in the term as a compliment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)#Hist...
- superhuzza 9y agoHe's using the classical definition, which is very different from the UX definition. A persona is a character played by an actor. In this case, ghostwriters are playing the part of the expert.
- smallgovt 9y agoThere seem to be two things going on here: - writing behind a pseudonym - spreading misinformation As others have pointed out, the practice of writing behind a pseudonym, in of itself, doesn't seem all that nefarious. Think: ghostwriters or reddit making up a bunch of fake accounts to simulate website activity. The practice of spreading misinformation is bad, but none of the misinformation they spread seems practically damaging. Not sure why, but this seems to be getting a lot more attention than it deserves. Give them a break?
- forapurpose 9y agoThey didn't write under a pseudonym, but perpetrated fraud on other other organizations and on the public by creating a false identity and pretending it was real. Those are completely different acts. smallgovt is a psuedonym; you're not claiming it's a real name of a real person, and making up a fake backstory, and getting quoted in the Washington Post.
- _bxg1 9y agoThe real story here is that respected sources like The Washington Post didn't investigate their sources and spot the fake news before publishing it. Fabrications are a dime a million on the internet, but real journalists are supposed to do enough homework to cut through the crap.
- tom_mellior 9y agoThis was originally posted with the original title: "Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real." And then it was changed to the current, more clickbaity one. Why? (I'm saying "clickbaity" because the fake person's name, which was relevant information, was omitted.)
- fnordsensei 9y agoThere's also a comment thread curiously missing. Are there rules about what warrants the deletion of a thread? I doubt the participants deleted their comments individually.
- tom_mellior 9y agoFor whatever it's worth, my question was a genuine moderation policy question. I wasn't trying to suggest a conspiracy or anything. I don't think there is one.
- rrcaptain 9y agoWell it doesn't help that LendEDU is a YC startup.
- mrleiter 9y agoIf it can be proven that LendEDU or any other student loan company profited from their statements, this is a picture case of wire fraud. 18 U.S.C. §1343 [1] for reference, states that "whoever devised or intended to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations [...]" They did not disclose their connection to LendEDU and if LendEDU profited from their fraudulent pretenses or representations then there you have it. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1343
- shaki-dora 9y agoI’m not sure... Any actor in a commercial technically falls under that definition.
- larkeith 9y agoWould that count as "false or fraudulent pretenses"? It seems like the fact that it's a commercial serves as an indicator that the consumer displayed is a constructed example, rather than an actual person.
- mrleiter 9y agoNo, you see - with an actor in a commercial, the other party clearly knows the affiliation with the company and the statements made are advertisement. Of course if they lie, and not just exaggerate, the company can be sued for other reasons (e.g. unfair competition). With Drew Cloud and The Student Loan Report, they pretended to be a single person who has personal experience with whatever, but definitely no affiliation with LendEDU. So if LendEDU paid them (or gave them any other benefits) to talk positively about them and steer business towards them, it is fraudulent.
- unityByFreedom 9y agoSince this thread defends using a persona, I'd be interested to know how many YC companies use them. Are tech entrepreneurs viewed as inept at communication and thus need a proxy to speak publicly? Why not make such statements through a spokesperson or the CEO?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vignesh_m 9y agoI dont really understand how those stats would help the company. Can anyone enlighten me? I only have a cursory understanding of how student loans work - students buy loans to pay college fees and stuff right.
- jrq 9y agoIs this illegal, to represent opinions through pseudonymity? Can a pseudonym legally advise someone? My opinion is that the pseudonym is a clever way to share things that you don't want directly associated with yourself, or things that are embarrassing, etc. It should be allowed, pseudonyms have been used for thousands of years in literature. If you're not face to face with a legal adviser and able to ask for ID, then you DON'T HAVE a reasonable expectation of authenticity, although I don't know if that factor matters, by the letter of the law. This is thought provoking stuff!
- wastedhours 9y agoNot sure on the illegality from pseudonymity - I'm fairly certainly you have the right to call yourself what you want, and as long as it isn't a contract, can live happily with a made up name (and nothing stopping multiple people having the same pseudonym). Potential issues are more around advertising standards, disclosure etc... Once pitched a similar idea (without the fake persona) in a previous role - we create a separate news source for the industry, and post the occasional "sponsored update" about our company. I scrapped pursuing it as the CEO didn't want the disclosure statement that it was connected to us prominently on every page. No way I was going to do it under the table, for exactly these kind of reasons.
- astura 9y agoThe problem is an undisclosed conflict of interest, not blogging under an assumed name. If a blog about, say, coffee was run by this company under the name "Drew Cloud," nobody would care.
- someguydave 9y agoBitcoin is definitely a scam and us-government-backed finance is awesome in every way.
- a-dub 9y agoShady junk mail for sketchy financial services, reimagined.
- CM30 9y agoDoes this story remind anyone else of David Manning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Manning_(fictitious_writer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Manning_(fictitious_writ... Cause he was a fake 'expert' meant to shill products too. In that case, a fake movie critic created by Sony to sell its worst movies. As it turned out, misleading customers that way was illegal, and hence as mentioned on the wiki page: > On August 3, 2005, Sony made an out-of-court settlement and agreed to refund $5 each to dissatisfied customers who saw Hollow Man, The Animal, The Patriot, A Knight's Tale, or Vertical Limit in American theatres, as a result of Manning's reviews. Wonder if something similar could happen here?
- acobster 9y ago> Matherson said Cloud "was created as a way to connect with our readers...and give us the technical ability to post content to the Wordpress website." Um. What?