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> Why though? One reason being that then you have a strong financial incentive to "whistleblow" on things that are less clear-cut, making it likely that (a) yo

> Why though? One reason being that then you have a strong financial incentive to "whistleblow" on things that are less clear-cut, making it likely that (a) you'll eventually harm innocent people in the process, and (b) you'll inject too much noise/unnecessary work into the system. As a rough analogy, imagine someone calling to report an impaired driver they encountered by pure happenstance, vs. someone who made it their personal full-time career to just go around on roads finding people he can report. I'm not sure if you see a difference but I certainly do.

viscanti 5y ago
Was he harming innocent people? Was he injecting too much noise/unnecessary work into the system? I don't see how him doing it as more of a freelance thing rather than an undercover position guarantees a different outcome. It seems like we have to look at the actual outcome and we can't paint with such broad strokes about how one model or the other is better.
- dataflow 5y ago
  > Was he harming innocent people? Was he injecting too much noise/unnecessary work into the system? It doesn't matter because we don't base societal incentives on 1 guy.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    What you're saying seems to be based on nothing.
    - dataflow 5y ago
      Yeah, it's not like financial social incentives have any history of inflicting collateral damage or anything of that sort. I'm just imagining things.
darawk 5y ago
> One reason being that then you have a strong financial incentive to "whistleblow" on things that are less clear-cut, making it likely that (a) you'll eventually harm innocent people in the process, and (b) you'll inject too much noise/unnecessary work into the system. It's not like a whistle blowing claim just results in enforcement action without investigation. The claim gets investigated by the relevant agency first, and then if and only if it is found to be justified is an enforcement action taken. That enforcement action can then be challenged in the courts, too, if the entity in question perceives the agency to be in the wrong. I don't think there's much risk of whistle blowers significantly harming innocent companies here.
- dataflow 5y ago
  Do you see any difference with the impaired driving analogy? Or with someone spending 40h/week just walking around calling the cops every time they see some dude do something that looks appears illegal to them? If we don't even agree on those it's going to be too much effort to argue...
passivate 5y ago
Yeah, that is a great point. Often, we don't consider the unintended consequences of policies.
robertlagrant 5y ago
Exactly. Or imagine people spending their time finding security flaws and collecting bug bounties as a career instead of just reporting security issues whenever they occasionally happened upon them.

viscanti 5y ago

Was he harming innocent people? Was he injecting too much noise/unnecessary work into the system? I don't see how him doing it as more of a freelance thing rather than an undercover position guarantees a different outcome. It seems like we have to look at the actual outcome and we can't paint with such broad strokes about how one model or the other is better.

dataflow 5y ago
> Was he harming innocent people? Was he injecting too much noise/unnecessary work into the system? It doesn't matter because we don't base societal incentives on 1 guy.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  What you're saying seems to be based on nothing.
  - dataflow 5y ago
    Yeah, it's not like financial social incentives have any history of inflicting collateral damage or anything of that sort. I'm just imagining things.

darawk 5y ago

> One reason being that then you have a strong financial incentive to "whistleblow" on things that are less clear-cut, making it likely that (a) you'll eventually harm innocent people in the process, and (b) you'll inject too much noise/unnecessary work into the system. It's not like a whistle blowing claim just results in enforcement action without investigation. The claim gets investigated by the relevant agency first, and then if and only if it is found to be justified is an enforcement action taken. That enforcement action can then be challenged in the courts, too, if the entity in question perceives the agency to be in the wrong. I don't think there's much risk of whistle blowers significantly harming innocent companies here.

dataflow 5y ago
Do you see any difference with the impaired driving analogy? Or with someone spending 40h/week just walking around calling the cops every time they see some dude do something that looks appears illegal to them? If we don't even agree on those it's going to be too much effort to argue...

passivate 5y ago

Yeah, that is a great point. Often, we don't consider the unintended consequences of policies.

robertlagrant 5y ago

Exactly. Or imagine people spending their time finding security flaws and collecting bug bounties as a career instead of just reporting security issues whenever they occasionally happened upon them.