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Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

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Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#131
post #118
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best HN has to offer in terms of interesting and thought provoking discussion is on generic tangents, and so long as the discussion remains civil and contained to those threads concerning it I see no reason to discourage it for being discussed.

I know how unsatisfying this is going to sound, but: this is a point on which we just have to pull rank. It's our job to foster the kind of site where signal/noise ratio doesn't completely suck, and many years of experience have taught us that generic tangents lead to low-quality discussions that grow like weeds.

Do you think tedious or blatantly illiterate comments get as many flags as vaguely tangential or vaguely controversial comments?

(I really think there are lots of comments that are "blatantly illiterate", in that they respond to a meaning that is just obviously not in the parent. I guess that only kind of breaks the assume good faith guideline, as they are missing the meaning rather than mischaracterizing it.)

The point of the question is whether the userbase has been trained to respond aggressively to only a subset of low signal comments.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#132
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The judge hearing the case.

If I were a judge, I'd only have a slightly more negative or skeptical attitude towards IAC/Match as a result of that PR statement, at best. I'm not buying the wisdom yet. Anyone have something more convincing? Or am I wrong about most judge's mindsets? Don't judges 'see through' PR? Isn't their job about facts, not being influenced by rhetoric? Are our judges crap? BTW, this is one reason why AI ought to assist judg…

I have no idea why this is downvoted, I think this is pretty profound.

AI, or even sentiment analysis, could easily filter non-factual posturing from statements of objective fact. Of course, people can filter it too, you never see this type of crap slip in to an academic journal.

I think if an AI auto-highlighted social-judgements it could revolutionize how a lot of things are read (a news article, HN, etc)

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These quotes are from a PR response statement to the lawsuit, not any official court filing by Match.

believe a lawyer looked at them.

Sure, but the question was about how a judge would read them.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#134
post #113

> The suit alleges that IAC and Match Group manipulated financial data in order to create 'a fake lowball valuation' (to quote the plaintiffs’ press release), then stripped Rad, Mateen, Badeen and others of their stock options Wait, they didn't exercise their options into the sale? Did the founders hire a team of squirrels as their bankers? This is M&A 101 when switching to majority control. EDIT: Ah, Tinder was laun…

> Wait, they didn't exercise their options into the sale? What does this mean exactly?

Simply put, options are an option to buy shares at a specified price sometime in the future.

For example, a company can give you options to purchase X amount of shares at a ridiculously cheap price ( like $0.0005 per share ). Many startups do this. Sometime in the future, you can exercise the option and get X amount of shares. If you don't exercise the option, then you don't get to buy shares at the agreed at price.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ELI5 for me, because I don't understand this at all.

I just read the plaintiff's complaint, here's my summary (IANAL): - Match gave Tinder founders Tinder stock options, ~20% of Tinder's total worth. - Since Tinder is private, Tinder founders could only sell options to Match. Match would then have to pay 20% of Tinder's 'Worth' to the founders. - The founders could only sell at specific points in time, called "scheduled puts". - Since Tinder is private, 'Worth' is not…

Not the guy who asked, but thank you for the explanation!

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#136
post #89
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, not really. Real morality maybe. But there are environments where "doing the right thing" will simply fuck you. (I guess you could argue if you were _really_ really strong, you could do the right thing and survive. But that's almost tautological. The point is, the environment you're in may force you to make the choice of "do things you would rather not" or "fail".) Or, more concisely, hate the game, not the play…

I will agree "strength" is probably not the right descriptor there. I almost didn't play it because I wasn't entirely sure. I'm not perfect, far from it, but I try to fail graciously before I choose to stray from doing the right thing. That said, I absolutely do recognize that that is a luxury that not everyone has given their situation. However, I do think that some use that to justify not having to do the right thi…

I think it depends a lot on the thing involved. If it's just, oh hey, there's a norm of being kind of an asshole, then, fine, maybe it's not ideal, but go with it if that's what you have to do to be effective. (And I think that's the situation we were talking about originally, w/r/t "civility" in language.)

On the other hand, if it's something like "hey we're gassing the jews" or "we're bombing schoolbusses full of children," then hopefully you're doing everything you can to fight against it (though, emperically, most of us will just go along).

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#137
post #22

In 2014, former Tinder VP Whitney Wolfe, who previously had a "cofounder" title (and would later go on to found Bumble), sued IAC and Match over sexual harassment from another Tinder "cofounder" Justin Mateen, who is one of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit. (I put "cofounder" in quotation marks because it was an internal project at IAC and the history is a complicated.) Mateen was suspended and the lawsuit was settled…

Does anyone else find poetic justice in the fact that all these dating apps have hilariously dramatic business relationships that aren't working out?

What do you mean not working out? Millions of dollars have been gained by many employees, and many millions added to company valuations. That is all winning the lottery in my book.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#138
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know how unsatisfying this is going to sound, but: this is a point on which we just have to pull rank. It's our job to foster the kind of site where signal/noise ratio doesn't completely suck, and many years of experience have taught us that generic tangents lead to low-quality discussions that grow like weeds.

Do you think tedious or blatantly illiterate comments get as many flags as vaguely tangential or vaguely controversial comments? (I really think there are lots of comments that are "blatantly illiterate", in that they respond to a meaning that is just obviously not in the parent. I guess that only kind of breaks the assume good faith guideline, as they are missing the meaning rather than mischaracterizing it.) The po…

I'm not sure about tedious—there's an awful lot of tediousness in internet forum comments—but we certainly see many flags on blatantly unsubstantive posts.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you ELI5 for me, because I don't understand this at all.

I just read the plaintiff's complaint, here's my summary (IANAL): - Match gave Tinder founders Tinder stock options, ~20% of Tinder's total worth. - Since Tinder is private, Tinder founders could only sell options to Match. Match would then have to pay 20% of Tinder's 'Worth' to the founders. - The founders could only sell at specific points in time, called "scheduled puts". - Since Tinder is private, 'Worth' is not…

This matches my experience with IAC as well. Not the folks who win "most honest businesspeople" of the year awards.

Re: Tinder founders sue parent companies Match and IAC for at least $2B

#140

Glad to see founders get the employee treatment ;-)

Except its more like employees getting the employee treatment.

I'm playing the smallest violin in the world for these guys, a la Reservoir Dogs :-). I hope they can find a new job :-( if they can't suss out this 2b :-(((
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