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Even it were a person, people have a right to know. If a car blew up because of a faulty gas tank, is it “respectful” to not name the car company? If a vet ki

Even it were a person, people have a right to know. If a car blew up because of a faulty gas tank, is it “respectful” to not name the car company? If a vet killed your poodle because of negligence, is it “repectful” to not name the vet? Free markets depend on the free flow of information. “Protecting” a company that did something wrong isn’t “respectful,” it’s unethical. Knowing a company (or a person) that messed up when delivering a product or service to the public is important.

floatingatoll 8y ago
If I post on Twitter that my car blew up with a car wreck photo from some random website that I’ve photoshopped slightly to block Tineye, the Internet will set itself aflame trying to figure out what kind of car it is, create a press firestorm around the issue, and tank the company’s stock. Trusting one person enough to go find which company they’re trying not to name only proves that you were able to find which company they were trying to keep you from naming. It doesn’t in any way provide veracity to their story, but if they’ve shorted that company’s stock, it’ll certainly provide them a profit. The issue here is that you don’t “know” anything if you _only_ dig up the company, because you don’t know anything more truthful than you did before someone told you a possibly-untrue thing. Unfortunately, people are prone to hearing “I found a likely suspect company” and respond with “therefore the story is true, burn them to the ground”. Feeding them a name to riot around by naming a probable suspect _without any proof_ does nothing to improve the story, and materially harms suspect companies, their founders, and their employees. I don’t mind if you share a company name when you’ve proven they did this, but if you can’t prove it, don’t just post a random company name on the Internet and say “I think it’s them”. That’s inciting a riot without cause, and why I encouraged otherwise here.

floatingatoll 8y ago

If I post on Twitter that my car blew up with a car wreck photo from some random website that I’ve photoshopped slightly to block Tineye, the Internet will set itself aflame trying to figure out what kind of car it is, create a press firestorm around the issue, and tank the company’s stock. Trusting one person enough to go find which company they’re trying not to name only proves that you were able to find which company they were trying to keep you from naming. It doesn’t in any way provide veracity to their story, but if they’ve shorted that company’s stock, it’ll certainly provide them a profit. The issue here is that you don’t “know” anything if you _only_ dig up the company, because you don’t know anything more truthful than you did before someone told you a possibly-untrue thing. Unfortunately, people are prone to hearing “I found a likely suspect company” and respond with “therefore the story is true, burn them to the ground”. Feeding them a name to riot around by naming a probable suspect _without any proof_ does nothing to improve the story, and materially harms suspect companies, their founders, and their employees. I don’t mind if you share a company name when you’ve proven they did this, but if you can’t prove it, don’t just post a random company name on the Internet and say “I think it’s them”. That’s inciting a riot without cause, and why I encouraged otherwise here.