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Here's something you should know about whistleblowers in the US. If a whistleblower makes disclosures to the SEC that result in a judgement if the SEC successfu

by jmyeet 4y ago

Here's something you should know about whistleblowers in the US. If a whistleblower makes disclosures to the SEC that result in a judgement if the SEC successfully sues the subject of that disclosure. This can be worth tens of millions of dollars. That doesn't mean their claims are false. But you should always be skeptical. The second issue is the trial resulting from Elon Musk walking away from the Twitter acquisition. That acquisition agreement calls for "specific performance", which means Elon pretty much agreed to buy the company no matter what (he waived due diligence). He is expected to have to pay a fortune if not actually buy the company in his trial next month. So it's at least worth noting that this disclosure happens right at a time when it might help Elon. Maybe unrelated but it's also a hell of a coincidence. Employees that are fired (or are heading in that direction) can make all sorts of claims to deflect away from the fact that they were or soon would be fired, possibly with cause, possibly not. The specific claims seem to be a little vauge like not giving employees tools to combat bots. Like what does that even mean? Twitter may have crappy infra for this but does it rise to the level of negligence or even malfeasance? That's not a slam dunk from what I've seen. Keep an open mind but remain skeptical.

dogecoinbase 4y ago
Additionally, incentives exist for him to report things he himself did while at Twitter, for example: https://twitter.com/igb/status/1562072030010191880 https://twitter.com/igb/status/1562072030010191880 > [Mudge and Sethi] deprioritized Twitter's kernel & OS upgrade and encryption at rest initiatives. (from Ian Brown, who deserves his good reputation as much as anyone I've met)
skrtskrt 4y ago
there's rewards for whistleblowers because often doing so will destroy your career and result in massive legal bills from much more powerful entities suing you. Mudge was already an officer of the company, he had much more guaranteed money to gain from just shutting up and staying there.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  That's a very short-sighted view of a career. In the short term, it is bad for your career, but being a whistleblower who is right can raise your profile significantly and make you much wealthier than if you stay at a company quietly (even if your salary is $X million). In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped. Think about some of the past whistleblowers from these companies: Frances Haugen, Timnit Gebru, etc. These are all people for whom whistleblowing was a good career move.
  - zimpenfish 4y ago
    > In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped. Probably also doesn't hurt that he gets to twist the knife into the company that ousted his friend Jack.
jjulius 4y ago
>That acquisition agreement calls for "specific performance", which means Elon pretty much agreed to buy the company no matter what (he waived due diligence). >So it's at least worth noting that this disclosure happens right at a time when it might help Elon. I am having one hell of a time putting these two together.
JohnFen 4y ago
> If a whistleblower makes disclosures to the SEC that result in a judgement if the SEC successfully sues the subject of that disclosure. This can be worth tens of millions of dollars. I'm not sure what your point here is. That the lawsuit can be worth a lot of money doesn't take away from the fact that the SEC has to prove their case in court. How does the value of the settlement raise any question about the legitimacy of the judgement?
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  People who lose internal political battles at companies have strong incentives to leave and then become whistleblowers. It's not that the disclosures are automatically false, but they are definitely coming from someone with an axe to grind and a strong monetary incentive to find anything possible to complain about.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    Yes, but so what? If the disclosures are false, the "whistleblower" gets no reward. If they are true, who cares what the motive of the whistleblower was?
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      "So what" is that if the disclosures are false, there is no cost other than potential reputation damage if the thing you blow the whistle about is unpopular. For this particular whistleblower on this particular issue (a highly respected and politically well-connected person talking about security and privacy), there is pretty much no chance that it costs him anything. That means that being a whistleblower is strictly positive expected value in this case, which means that there is a heavy incentive to find something to blow the whistle about, no matter how flimsy. Additionally, the whistleblower has a strong incentive to add color about how bad these problems are. People treat whistleblowers as unbiased sources of reliable information, but that could not be further from the truth. If you ask a tobacco salesman if their product has health consequences, they are going to say "no" (unless there is incontrovertible evidence of health consequences) the same way a whistleblower is going to say "this is super bad" about something that happens at a company (unless there is incontrovertible evidence that it was not bad). Understanding the bias of a source is very important.

by jmyeet 4y ago

dogecoinbase 4y ago

Additionally, incentives exist for him to report things he himself did while at Twitter, for example: https://twitter.com/igb/status/1562072030010191880 https://twitter.com/igb/status/1562072030010191880 > [Mudge and Sethi] deprioritized Twitter's kernel & OS upgrade and encryption at rest initiatives. (from Ian Brown, who deserves his good reputation as much as anyone I've met)

skrtskrt 4y ago

there's rewards for whistleblowers because often doing so will destroy your career and result in massive legal bills from much more powerful entities suing you. Mudge was already an officer of the company, he had much more guaranteed money to gain from just shutting up and staying there.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
That's a very short-sighted view of a career. In the short term, it is bad for your career, but being a whistleblower who is right can raise your profile significantly and make you much wealthier than if you stay at a company quietly (even if your salary is $X million). In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped. Think about some of the past whistleblowers from these companies: Frances Haugen, Timnit Gebru, etc. These are all people for whom whistleblowing was a good career move.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > In Mudge's case, he didn't need the money, but the publicity probably helped. Probably also doesn't hurt that he gets to twist the knife into the company that ousted his friend Jack.

jjulius 4y ago

>That acquisition agreement calls for "specific performance", which means Elon pretty much agreed to buy the company no matter what (he waived due diligence). >So it's at least worth noting that this disclosure happens right at a time when it might help Elon. I am having one hell of a time putting these two together.

JohnFen 4y ago

> If a whistleblower makes disclosures to the SEC that result in a judgement if the SEC successfully sues the subject of that disclosure. This can be worth tens of millions of dollars. I'm not sure what your point here is. That the lawsuit can be worth a lot of money doesn't take away from the fact that the SEC has to prove their case in court. How does the value of the settlement raise any question about the legitimacy of the judgement?

pclmulqdq 4y ago
People who lose internal political battles at companies have strong incentives to leave and then become whistleblowers. It's not that the disclosures are automatically false, but they are definitely coming from someone with an axe to grind and a strong monetary incentive to find anything possible to complain about.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  Yes, but so what? If the disclosures are false, the "whistleblower" gets no reward. If they are true, who cares what the motive of the whistleblower was?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    "So what" is that if the disclosures are false, there is no cost other than potential reputation damage if the thing you blow the whistle about is unpopular. For this particular whistleblower on this particular issue (a highly respected and politically well-connected person talking about security and privacy), there is pretty much no chance that it costs him anything. That means that being a whistleblower is strictly positive expected value in this case, which means that there is a heavy incentive to find something to blow the whistle about, no matter how flimsy. Additionally, the whistleblower has a strong incentive to add color about how bad these problems are. People treat whistleblowers as unbiased sources of reliable information, but that could not be further from the truth. If you ask a tobacco salesman if their product has health consequences, they are going to say "no" (unless there is incontrovertible evidence of health consequences) the same way a whistleblower is going to say "this is super bad" about something that happens at a company (unless there is incontrovertible evidence that it was not bad). Understanding the bias of a source is very important.