22 ms·
Incomplete history of Forbes.com as a platform for scams, grift, bad journalism
- stevespang 5y ago
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoBack in the day, Forbes had standards. To get your startup featured, you had to know a guy! LOL.
- rhizome 5y agoMy early 2000s girlfriend worked for forbes.com and told stories of the shitheads she worked with. I don't doubt you needed to know someone to get your name in the pages, but chances were they'd be clueless braggarts.
- ilamont 5y agoForbes named Holmes the world's youngest self-made woman billionaire--worth $4.5 billion--in 2014, when she was 30 years old. https://www.forbes.com/profile/elizabeth-holmes/?sh=4a110eff47a7 https://www.forbes.com/profile/elizabeth-holmes/?sh=4a110eff...
- friedturkey 5y agoTo be fair to Forbes, the media was all over her as a female Steve Jobs and declaring it the beginning of the girl boss era. A lot of people who criticized her were shut down as being sexist.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago> A lot of people who criticized her were shut down as being sexist. Yep, this, sadly... $current_year, everything is *-ism. But, a good book was written on Holmes and her company: "Bad Blood" - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood (not affiliated, just a fun read)
- shapefrog 5y agoTo be fair to Forbes, it is also how basic maths works. Her share of the company was worth $4.5bn at the time. There are genuine criticisms to be dished out, but reporting the current valuation of a company as the current valuation of the company doesnt really rank up there.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gumby 5y agoI subscribed to Forbes for a few years in the 1980s. Not because it had any decent journalism as far as I could tell but because it just seemed so deranged it was fun to read. The regular columnists were mostly (but not all) a collection of lazy Ayn Rand acolytes (I mean Rand acolytes are nuts, but the ones in Forbes back then didn't even try), a few old fashion racists (Hanke, Brimelow), and the odd thinker with an opinion piece on a topic I'd already read to death somewhere else. The "articles" were mostly reflexive genuflection to people who'd somehow acquired wealth. It's as if the entire operation consisted of people who were simply phoning it in. It astonished me that when they switched to being a blog site it actually appeared that standards had fallen. BTW I dumped Forbes and kept the UK magazine The Spectator. It was and is full of lazy rightwing rubbish too (though of a different strain) but has much more variety (had personal ads for a while) and the level of writing itself was generally quite high, in particular while Boris Johnson was editor (I know, that seems hard to believe). Unfortunately these days I struggle to find a right wing, much less left wing, journal-of-rants that's worth bothering to read.
- ggm 5y agoThis to me exemplifies "read outside the bubble, think critically" -I also read the other point of view. I find it jarring, bizarre, assumptions from topsy-turvy land but this always makes me think "yea, thats what they'd say about you too mate" It is hard to find good, rational, oppositional writing. Its so easy to find pretty ranty, bad oppositional writing. Really? I increasingly think editorial, and somebody supervising the pub/comment is best. I know, I know, its not very "trendy" but man, wading through the dreck of people like me, commenting like me: it's killing it. If you want an example, "comment is free" in the Guardian. Its an insider-bubble. Reddit is just as bad. Heaps of pile-ons. I want to read serious, committed, christian-right points of view who believe charity, modesty and a gun solve all the problems of america, and I don't want to wade through trumpy shit to find it. (contextually it should be clear I am not christian, right, or believe in charity over taxes) Murdoch blew it. The Australian has become delusionally bad. I still think centerist-right papers like the Independent can do ok, I read german news, and RT, and WashPo when I can, and graze links of Drudge. He is as crazy as a loon but he kind-of finds things I can read. Slate is crap. I don't need guides to washing my purple love machine. Politico and TheHill are ok, sometimes but annoying videos. Is TheAtlantic soft-pop right? Feels it.
- arbuge 5y agoIt is hilarious that this is still up on the Forbes website right now (my italics): https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathermorgan/?sh=3f3120737f7d https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathermorgan/?sh=3f3120737f7d "When she's not reverse-engineering black markets to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion."
- version_five 5y agoIn case it helps anyone else, I didn't understand this comment and I looked it up and found the person referenced is one of the couple who have just been charged with (stealing) correction, laundering ~4 Bn in bitcoin (Edited based on information in a reply)
- krallja 5y agoThey’ve been charged with conspiring to launder, not stealing, the $4B+ in bitcoin.
- vmception 5y agoBecause that encrypted zip file was probably received from the hacker Ilya bought it from for a million dollars or so, when this hack was only worth $8mm. Just one of many "probably's".
- seanp2k2 5y agoObviously, they reverse-engineered the stolen Bitcoin black market.
- smsm42 5y agoIt's quite plausible to assume one of them or both did steal it though. It's not very likely that somebody would just give 4bn in bitcoins to a stranger to keep for a while.
- labster 5y ago
- ushakov 5y agofor 5000 Euros, Russian Forbes will add you to one of their lists source: a friend of mine got into 30 under 30 list this way
- ComradePhil 5y agoI know people who are "Forbes contributor" through their PR consultant. They don't write anythything themselves, the PR consultants interview them and write the articles for them. They are not limited to Forbes obviously, everything from local news to CNN journo writing about their company to wikipedia articles and a lot more.
- shapefrog 5y agoI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the bulk of pieces in news papers, magazines etc are not written by the headline author, but by PR agencies on behalf of the person / company that did something amazing.
- oblio 5y agohttp://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html 17 years old but still valid. And will probably remain valid as long as we have journalism.
- montag 5y agoThis guy is my favorite Forbes clickbait artist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/
- lone_haxx0r 5y agoThere's isn't any evidence that there was any sort of "fraud" involved in the Bitfinex hack. It was just a hack.
- president 5y agoForbes has been owned by China since the early 2010s. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/12/14/chinese-ownership-is-raising-questions-about-the-editorial-independence-of-a-major-u-s-magazine/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/1...
- plazmatic 5y ago
- kayxspre 5y agoThis reminds me of Gordon Kelly, a senior contributor, whose every articles that pointed Chrome's weakness would often headlined "Google Just Gave Millions Of Users A Reason To Quit Chrome". Sure enough, the headlines will be edited after awhile, but I consider this kind of original headline a clickbait. I eventually have to delist Forbes from my reading feed. It's that terrible.
- tech234a 5y agoInteresting, I didn’t realize that the headlines were being edited. But yeah the original headline is definitely clickbait.
- tpict 5y agoit was the same author’s “Apple iOS [every version] Has A Nasty Surprise” headlines that made me drop them
- seanp2k2 5y agoClickbait is a charitable interpretation. Perhaps one less so would involve betting on related stock prices before publishing such a headline.
- tzone 5y agoI have been wondering for a while now, how does Forbes still maintain its brand? It has now been at least two decades that it has had close to zero credibility, but somehow in general population it is maintaining its brand as a legit publication
- cobertos 5y agoIgnorance most likely? I've noticed things getting worse, but everything in this article is new information to me. I also didn't know Huffington Post was written by contributors.
- wolverine876 5y agoPeople always have been misled by branding. For example, AT&T today actually has (almost?) nothing to do with the original AT&T; the name was effectively purchased. These days, I find very few people will even engage in evaluating the credibility of what they read - they seem to scorn the issue. Look at all the links to Wikipedia here on HN, for example - something I didn't see until maybe a year or two ago: Wikipedia was always seen as a bit dubious and uncertain. I haven't seen anyone argue otherwise, but again they seem to scorn or resent even raising the question.
- james-redwood 5y agoWikipedia is a gigantic hit and miss. I often loathe to see it linked as gospel truth.
- krageon 5y ago> Wikipedia was always seen as a bit dubious and uncertain Base knowledge has to come from somewhere, so where it would have been an encyclopedia fifteen years ago it is wikipedia now. That's just the times moving on - if you have material concerns with the linked articles you are free to edit them (although it must be said you will have a hard time doing so with rich folks - they have firms to whitewash their pages).
- rafael_c 5y agoIs there any way to omit web sites such as forbes.com, Buzzfeed and Business Insider from my google searches?
- bigcat123 5y ago[dead]
- junon 5y agoAround the time the whole cookie banner thing started, Forbes had this particular one that acted like turning off nonessential cookies was this whole convoluted process that required waiting and processing something. There'd be a progress bar stating "please wait, processing your request". Looking at the JavaScript, it was a setTimeout() for quite a long time. I knew exactly what kind of company Forbes was after that.
- jnsaff2 5y agoIsn’t that what google AMP does as well when you block some of their garbage?
- ffofevdgx 5y agoAnd now you also know what kind of company google is.
- carlmr 5y agoI mean it's a company that looks up to rich people, no matter how they got there. Scamming is legitimate if it makes you rich, right?
- simonblack 5y agoForbes is a company that caters to "wannabee" rich people, rather than the 'real rich'. 'Real Rich' people can usually see past scams and similar bullshit. If they couldn't, they wouldn't remain rich for long. :)
- wolverine876 5y ago> Forbes had this particular one that acted like turning off nonessential cookies was this whole convoluted process that required waiting and processing something. There'd be a progress bar stating "please wait, processing your request". Weather Underground, formerly an indie weather service that IIRC goes back to a telnet interface before the web existed, does something similar. A window from trustarc.com appears showing a progress meter counting up the percentage 'processed', alongside "We are processing your request, this could take up to a few minutes to process." Haha. I flipped 2 bits. Now owned by The Weather Company (who also owns The Weather Channel), who are owned by IBM, who proudly say it uses the IBM Cloud, which apparently needs a few minutes to process this. Shameful deception of end-users. I had used wunderground for my entire life on the Internet until I saw that. The National Weather Service is pretty good - and no dark patterns.
- jsrcout 5y agoIf anyone remembers Daniel Lyons' numerous anti-Linux articles on Forbes [0] from back when Linux was seriously threatened by the SCO lawsuit... I'm still a bit salty about that. The articles were mean-spirited, sarcastic and overblown, well written (if one ignores the numerous factual inaccuracies and ad hominem attacks), and featured attention-getting titles like "Linux's Hit Men" [1]. The sad part is they were quite believable for anyone with no knowledge of the situation. If you followed any of the relevant tech news, not so much. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lyons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lyons > Lyons was a senior editor at Forbes magazine, covering enterprise computing and consumer electronics. He was also the author of the Forbes cover article, "Attack of the Blogs", where he wrote that blogs "are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective," claiming that Groklaw was primarily created "to bash software maker SCO Group in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBM coverage."[11] > Between 2003 and 2007 Lyons covered the SCO cases against IBM and against Linux. He published articles such as "What SCO Wants, SCO Gets," where he stated that "like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up."[12][13][14] [1] https://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html?sh=1f359d186976 https://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html?sh=...
- sireat 5y agoLyons is an interesting case. Good writer by most measures. His later work on Fake Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley was hilarious. I can't grok whether his hatred of Linux was genuine or was it simply motivated by some external motivation from SCO or related organisation. He should have known better.
- krageon 5y ago> Good writer I would posit that when you write hit pieces (either for your own convictions or money), you are not a good writer.
- 5y ago
- bArray 5y agoCoffeezilla 5 minute TL;DR: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2iPY59FTLN8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=2iPY59FTLN8
- sohkamyung 5y agoThe only reason I read Forbes is that some science writers I enjoy are still on it: - Starts With A Bang [ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/ ], a column by Ethan Siegel, who covers cosmology - Grrlscientist [ https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/ ], an evolutionary ecologist who covers fascinating stuff on biology (especially on birds) Otherwise, I may occasionally glance at other Forbes articles.
- SergeAx 5y ago> Forbes, the magazine David Carr once called "a synonym for riches [...]" Well, that particular Forbes contributor turned out to be quite rich, didn't she?
- luciusdomitius 5y agoThere is so much fail missing that it is almost favorable to Forbes. I was really disappointed not to see the OneCoin cover for example. On the other hands it says "incomplete" in the title.
- ergl 5y ago> I was really disappointed not to see the OneCoin cover for example. I don't know if the article was updated, but you can see that covered right at the end.
- luciusdomitius 5y agoTrue, it is there now, but it says the cover is fake. It actually was on the cover of at least the BG and CZ editions of Forbes.
- gw67 5y agoI know there are PR agencies that get paid for a "personal branding promotion" that get you in a top X list of Forbes for some amount of money. The founder of Helbitz, Salvatore Palella, was one of them. He paid an agency and they push Forbes magazine to have its photo in the cover.
- ernirulez 5y agoI remember just a couple of weeks ago a tweet from Forbes Spain saying unemployment in Spain was going down (https://twitter.com/Forbes_es/status/1486640126071480320 https://twitter.com/Forbes_es/status/1486640126071480320). It felt outrageous as Spain currently has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-europe-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-...). We are currently living under a totalitarian government and it saddened me that Forbes was yet another media paid by our totalitarian government covering their shit. I don´t know why, but for some reason Forbes was in my mind as an economic-freedom newspaper like. But as the title says, it´s just another platform for for scams, grift, and bad journalism as the other media payed y the government like El País.
- bakuninsbart 5y agoThe tweet isn't wrong in that Spain's unemployment rate has indeed been lower in the fourth quarter of 2021 than in a long time. [0] I'd be curious to understand why you would call the current spanish government totalitarian, they seem to be overall rather moderate, and won a solid majority in the last parliamentary elections. [0] https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate
- severak_cz 5y agoEspecially considering Spain has some experience with literal dictatorship.
- oblio 5y agoProbably because it's not the specific party they want in power.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- netman21 5y agoOne thing the article does not mention is that the "Forbes Technology Council" designation is pure pay-to-play. Vendors pay about $3,000/year to get that designation for their CEO and the marketing team writes his/her stuff. A quick search on Linkedin for "Forbes Technology Council" gives over 1,000 results. Entrepreneur Magazine has a similar model.