6 ms·

I'm writing this as a throwaway because this feels like mob and pitchforks. I'm a regular here and have no ties to Uber except using it. This whole story feels

• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• metaphorm 12y ago
  a journalist's job often involves being "rude". some journalists specialize in "rude" reporting. scrutinizing powerful and wealthy people is one of the legitimate roles of a journalist, even when it comes across as "rude". powerful and wealthy people NEED to be scrutinized. when we do, we often discover that they are sociopathic scum like several of the executives at Uber have turned out to be.
  • tmarthal 12y ago
    This is almost akin to a celebrity getting upset and punching a paparazzi. It happens due to stupidity, human emotion and rash behavior. Is it right? No, but it does shed light on some issues. Reporters and journalists can and do scrutinize people. However, what has become of journalism is that for sites like Pando Daily/Tech Crunch/? etc. they are gossip magazines about Silicon Valley business people and software developers. Not only are they talking about the companies, they are talking about the personal lives of the people that make up the companies. Given the work/life balance of most startups and successful companies, it is tough to judge the differentiation between a tech company's executives. There are reasonable legal precedents being set for common tort law with celebrities, however when do the executives of a company become a 'Public Figure' and lose their right to privacy? Why is it okay to follow someone and publish everything they say and do? The same thing, of course, can be said for journalists. The lines are being blurred all around.
    • metaphorm 12y ago
      these aren't blurry lines. if Emil Michael feels like a journalist stepped over a line in reporting then he should have filed a civil suit. that's not what he suggested. he suggested utilizing millions of dollars of the resources of a billion dollar company to engage a campaign of systematic intimidation and harassment against journalists he didn't like.
      • philwelch 12y ago
        Because this is what journalists do.
        • AnimalMuppet 12y ago
          Ah, yes. Two wrongs make a right. Of course they do. Is that really your position? Or do you want somebody in the room to be a responsible grownup? (Of course, preferably both sides would be grownups, but one side crawling into the gutter does not excuse the other side for also doing so.)
          • philwelch 12y ago
            I agree. But does it justify idly suggesting, in frustration, that one do so?
  • philwelch 12y ago
    There's scrutiny, and then there's repeatedly provoking people until they react. Has it occurred to you that "journalists" can be powerful and wealthy too, and just as sociopathic?
    • metaphorm 12y ago
      they sure can. we should have journalists who cover other journalists too.
  • baxterross 12y ago
    So, journalists get a pass when they 'investigate' someone, but the people they're investigating can't do a 'counter-investigation'? Are journalists some kind of special beings?
    • andrewdupont 12y ago
      You're equating the two kinds of investigating. The "counter-investigation" you're talking about is retaliatory — write something we don't like and we'll punish you with details about your personal life. Journalists are not special beings, but it is typically presumed that they report in good faith, and without ulterior motives. I know that isn't always true, but it's true often enough that I think the burden of proof would be on the people being investigated to prove that the journalist's intent was malicious.
      • imgabe 12y ago
        How would they prove the journalist's intent was malicious without conducting an investigation of their own?
• DontBeADick 12y ago
  Not to mention the fact that Asparagirl has intentionally interpreted his comments in the most sensational way possible, even going so far as to fabricate threats. "Look into your personal lives, your families" somehow magically became: > threatening to reveal details of the location of their children There's clearly a great deal of stupidity on both sides here.
  • ceph_ 12y ago
    Are you saying that wasn't a threat? Also, if you don't interpret "families" as including children, what do you interpret it as? Her parents? Does that make it better?
    • DontBeADick 12y ago
      The guy never threatened to target children or reveal any information about them. Why is that so difficult for you to grasp?
      • crpatino 12y ago
        How long would it take to get a restraining order if he had done as you say? And what would be the effect on the valuation of the company if that happened? Play fair. Don't be a Prolog interpreter.
    • Dylan16807 12y ago
      >Does that make it better? It avoids the "think of the children" reaction, so yes.
  • Asparagirl 12y ago
    In the same story that they talk about digging up dirt on reporters' families, Uber revealed details of a different reporter's movements to her, without her consent, and supposedly an impossible thing to do. Is it such a stretch to think that revealing details about your family + revealing details about your movements and location could also = revealing details about the movements and location of your family? Again, read Sarah Lacey's rebuttal piece in PandoDaily. Her first thought after hearing about the threats (by phone) is for the safety of her kids, who are not with her at that moment.
• netcan 12y ago
  Perhaps. OTOH, it could also be (certainly if it was serious and possibly if it was just venting) a sign of something bad. Sarah Lacey's criticism was that Uber have an "asshole culture." This does not exactly disprove her statement. I'm not touchy. I think a lot of "PC outrage" (including possibly hers, I haven't really dug) is the nasty "fun to be outraged" variety. This has a terrible effect, turning corporate (also police and every type of official) vernacular into an unnatural lifeless sludge. I'm usually on the other side of these kinds of debates. But, there is such a thing as misogyny, asshole culture and such. They exist, and this might be a sign of it here. Uber are an extremely aggressive company. They need that aggression to do the job they're trying to do which brings them into conflict all the time. Aggressiveness can spread. Uber is now a big company. They have many people's livelihoods, safety & privacy in their hands. There's a standard they need to meet. If a senior exec talks like this to reporters off the record, it may be the kind of talk that happens a lot. It is a little disturbing, even as just talk.
• eli 12y ago
  > That's still unacceptable ... Yes! Extremely unprofessional and completely unacceptable regardless of whatever it is she did to "deserve" it. By the way, is there a link to this article she wrote that is allegedly so over the line?
  • Chronic29 12y ago
    People are overreacting to this. It's not a big deal
• freshflowers 12y ago
  Sure, that could be the case. Of course you would have to completely ignore the constant pattern of scummy behavior from Uber that is perfectly consistent with this particular incident.
• AJ007 12y ago
  a) Organizations (for profit and not) should be monitoring journalists and columnists who write about them. Conflicts of interests are rampant and often undisclosed. Individuals, both writers and editors are courted and manipulated continuously. You should care if journalist X is getting invited to the White House or your competitor's private events. As a blatant example there is a certain NYT columnists whose contributions have included almost word for word the position of a lobbying group I'm familiar with. I'll leave him unnamed. b) The page view journalism model rewards writers for being inflammatory and exaggerating. This means you really need to keep a close eye on writers for disinformation because when something spreads, it happens really fast, within hours. Rather than lengthy investigative pieces, the model is basically a fire hose of shit and watching which chunk sticks and goes viral. This also means writers tend to produce volumes of articles attacking the same or similar individuals and organizations. Some of the ludicrous stories I've seen recently track back to writers with minimal to no credentials and a long stream of irrelevant "stories." One piece of shit stuck and it blows up. What these guys are doing is more closely analogous to trolling and hate speech than informed research. I'm not the kind of person who imagines the world is constantly devolving towards a lower state. I think the negatives from the current nature of "journalism" are outweighed by the positives we have gained from the same communications & publishing trends. The best thing you can do as an individual is to not read stories from these sorts of groups. The headlines are misleading, the stories are often irrelevant and misinformed. Stick to places that publish accurate titles and require writers with some sort of credentials.
  • hackuser 12y ago
    > The page view journalism model rewards writers for being inflammatory and exaggerating Just look at this discussion
• Angostura 12y ago
  I think it's sad that you feel the need to use a throwaway, because your interpretation is pretty much how I read things.
• Angostura 12y ago
  I think it's sad that you feel the need to use a throwaway, because your interpretation is pretty much how I read things.
• wpietri 12y ago
  In front of journalists, the man talked in detail about a plan to destroy journalists giving negative coverage. As far as I know, you're the only person calling it "a conspiracy". But plenty of people are taking that as a way of threatening journalists. The "blowing off steam" theory doesn't strike me as plausible. If it had happened at his local alley while talking with his bowling team, sure, maybe. But the CEO and and SVP of a $16 bn company don't sit down with a bunch of journalists by accident. Either the guy was intending to intimidate journalists (and Lacy in specific) or he is so dangerously clueless that a) he should not be a senior executive of anything bigger than a lemonade stand, and b) it would be hard to explain how he made it this far. A journalist friend said that powerful people threatening journalists is routine, and that this sort of thing has a chilling effect on coverage. When smart people "accidentally" do something very self-serving, a reasonable working hypothesis is that they actually knew what they were doing.
  • tripzilch 12y ago
    > If it had happened at his local alley while talking with his bowling team, sure, maybe. Several relevant scenes from The Big Lebowski come to mind ... :) (it'd make me seriously reconsider my choice of bowling-buddies, though :) )
• lexap 12y ago
  Amen.
• baxterross 12y ago
  Ya, on the record here, I think you're absolutely correct. A lot of journalists, Lacy included, have written pieces targeting founders based on events in their personal lives and their pasts. People are correct to freak out when someone targets another person by digging into their private lives, the problem is a lot of tech journalists have gotten away with this, especially when the founders or entrepreneurs in question have been libertarians or right-wingers.
• tripzilch 12y ago
  > This whole story feels like they took a frustrated guy venting at dinner and making it into a conspiracy. A frustrated guy venting at a business dinner, attended by an influential crowd, specifically addressing a person they just hired that could (and probably would) make this "conspiracy" happen for real if he made the call. See, personally, I think even in a perfectly informal off-the-record setting, what he suggested was simply wrong and should be called on it. Whether you're frustrated or not. Unless it was extremely clear from the context it was just a joking "haha we should .." with no intent to follow through, then, maybe then it becomes acceptable to say these sorts of things in an informal off-the-record setting, assuming you're sufficiently acquainted with the current company that you know they won't be put off by such a tasteless remark. What he called for was a personal attack on someone's personal life. With a straight face, to his hired media mouthpiece. It's IMO not very different (though obviously less illegal) from telling your hired muscle "we should teach that person a lesson, beat them up a little", with no intent to follow through, obviously. The window to make that last bit over-abundantly clear evaporates within a minute or so. And even then, in what sort of company does he think it's okay to even begin to vent about that sort of thing, even without intent to follow through? Surely a lot more private than some fancy I-thought-it-was-off-the-record dinner. Obviously his own moral compass didn't prevent him from saying these things, in the first place. That's exactly why he should be called on "venting" such ideas. Even when he honestly had no intent to follow through, he's a powerful man, speaking directly to someone whose task it would be to make this happen, someone might take it seriously and warm to the idea that such behaviour could be acceptable.