4 ms·

It's great that he retracted his story but the way he did it isn't so great. In particular he's removed his older incorrect stories and replaced them with a red

It's great that he retracted his story but the way he did it isn't so great. In particular he's removed his older incorrect stories and replaced them with a redirect to the retraction. Thankfully the Wayback Machine has archives https://web.archive.org/web/20220223015405/https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/04/ubiquiti-all-but-confirms-breach-response-iniquity/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220223015405/https://krebsonse... https://web.archive.org/web/20220711220855/https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/12/ubiquiti-developer-charged-with-extortion-causing-2020-breach/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220711220855/https://krebsonse...

filmgirlcw 4y ago
Speaking from experience with these things (although in my case, the articles we were forced to remove were absolutely and completely 100% accurate -- but the company that acquired us wanted to settle all outstanding lawsuits and ended up caving so that the transaction could close), this might have been terms of the settlement or whatever it was he came to with Ubiquiti. In our case, because our articles were in fact, factual, we were able to re-iterate and even quote, as part of the legal filings, aspects of the original reporting as part of a story that was in response to the removals themselves, but the content at those original URLs was replaced with a notice that the articles had been removed because of litigation with our former parent company. The fact that he didn't (or hasn't) scrubbed the stories themselves from the Internet Archive is a good sign (I think we had to remove our stories from the Internet Archive, though I do know that individuals did make archives other ways). I'm pretty opposed to suing journalists for the act of doing journalism and even though I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti products, I still don't love this sort of tactic. That said, it does seem clear that these stories were not correct and at the very least, flawed because of the single-source who was not a reliable narrator (and admitted to lying to the press), so in an ideal world, these stories would have been retracted anyway.
- ifsothen 4y ago
  Just because you hang a press pass around your neck doesn't mean you should be allowed to recklessly spread highly damaging lies about people with impunity.
cptskippy 4y ago
What would have been a better way to handle it? From personal experience, I've overlooked header/footer retractions on material before and referenced things only to have the retraction point out to me later. Complete removal of the article isn't ideal, and it's less error prone. I appreciate that the old articles aren't 404'd, they redirect to the retraction so any other sites linking continue to work.
hot_gril 4y ago
Eh, this is what web archives are for. Krebs doesn't want to show wrong info, and he may even be legally obligated not to.
wlonkly 4y ago
Both are also available on archive.today, which I believe is less publisher-friendly for removal requests, should that situation arise. "All but confirms": https://archive.ph/QycQv https://archive.ph/QycQv "Charged with extortion": https://archive.ph/V4dUu https://archive.ph/V4dUu

filmgirlcw 4y ago

Speaking from experience with these things (although in my case, the articles we were forced to remove were absolutely and completely 100% accurate -- but the company that acquired us wanted to settle all outstanding lawsuits and ended up caving so that the transaction could close), this might have been terms of the settlement or whatever it was he came to with Ubiquiti. In our case, because our articles were in fact, factual, we were able to re-iterate and even quote, as part of the legal filings, aspects of the original reporting as part of a story that was in response to the removals themselves, but the content at those original URLs was replaced with a notice that the articles had been removed because of litigation with our former parent company. The fact that he didn't (or hasn't) scrubbed the stories themselves from the Internet Archive is a good sign (I think we had to remove our stories from the Internet Archive, though I do know that individuals did make archives other ways). I'm pretty opposed to suing journalists for the act of doing journalism and even though I'm a big fan of Ubiquiti products, I still don't love this sort of tactic. That said, it does seem clear that these stories were not correct and at the very least, flawed because of the single-source who was not a reliable narrator (and admitted to lying to the press), so in an ideal world, these stories would have been retracted anyway.

ifsothen 4y ago
Just because you hang a press pass around your neck doesn't mean you should be allowed to recklessly spread highly damaging lies about people with impunity.

cptskippy 4y ago

What would have been a better way to handle it? From personal experience, I've overlooked header/footer retractions on material before and referenced things only to have the retraction point out to me later. Complete removal of the article isn't ideal, and it's less error prone. I appreciate that the old articles aren't 404'd, they redirect to the retraction so any other sites linking continue to work.

hot_gril 4y ago

Eh, this is what web archives are for. Krebs doesn't want to show wrong info, and he may even be legally obligated not to.

wlonkly 4y ago

Both are also available on archive.today, which I believe is less publisher-friendly for removal requests, should that situation arise. "All but confirms": https://archive.ph/QycQv https://archive.ph/QycQv "Charged with extortion": https://archive.ph/V4dUu https://archive.ph/V4dUu