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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#201

Post by rhizome »

munificent wrote: post #172
jupp0r wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of us have made mistakes that we deeply regret and fear getting out Agreed, probably Jeff Bezos has made those mistakes as well. However I fail to see any mistakes of his threatened to be revealed.

> However I fail to see any mistakes of his threatened to be revealed. Cheating on his wife?

During what appears to be an amicable divorce? With an age-appropriate woman? I'm not sure that rises to the level of "mistake," and certainly not to blackmailable acts.

AMI way overplayed their hand here, and we may yet find that they had gone all-in.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#202

Post by _jal »

lapnitnelav wrote: post #98
stupidcar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with most super rich people is that they consider genuine risk far less important than potential embarrassment. E.g. they won't dare taking a stand politically because of the chance that someone will go public with some scandalous nonsense. Bezos on the other hand seems willing to calculate differently. I have to say, this has changed my opinion of him a lot in his favour. On the very remote chance…

All the money in the world can't buy your pride / dignity back, especially if some "embarrassing" evidence get out there. It's something in the way people would look at you, talk about you, etc ... If you combine that with the Streisand effect, there's no way a public figure can take this kind of hit and walk away unphased. It's very much human nature, and that's why Jeff's move is bold.

I suppose it is heavily dependent on one's personality and what one has actually been caught on camera doing. But assuming your average sexytime pics, if some of me were made public, I'd care very little about it. If someone started looking at me funny over it, I'd laugh at them; if my boss or someone else with power were to be a prudish twit, changing jobs would be a hassle, but that's the worst I could imagine, and, eh, I'm lucky that doing so isn't as huge a deal as it is for some.

I do of course realize that things can be very different for people in different positions, and of course sextortion of minors is a very different thing. But for someone reasonably secure both financially and emotionally, who cares? Only the sort of people I don't willingly spend time around anyway.

I don't know Bezos, but he's certainly OK financially, and this reaction seems to demonstrate emotional competence, too.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#203

Post by rhizome »

petercooper wrote: post #6
danso wrote: post #4

> Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a prominent person post the details of a personal extortion attempt out of defiance for all to see.

I think another interesting thing about these times, compared to when such things may have happened 20+ years ago, is that the photos they've described would cause rather little outrage or attract much beyond a few giggles from the public. Especially if released after their existence is already known about. I think the iCloud leaks of 2014 severely tempered society's salacious demand for more pictures of this nature.

As I read Bezos's post, I noticed that at the section where he describes the photographs, I found myself simply scrolling past them to get to the next part of the story.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#204

Post by alasdair_ »

inopinatus wrote: post #166
philwelch wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos has mentioned before that he tries to make big decisions from a “regret minimization framework”.

The "Principle of Least Regret" is an excellent way to make decisions, particularly binary ones: Given a choice between action X and action Y, and given all the facts and experience and self-knowledge currently at one's disposal, which option will you look back on in future with fewer/lesser regrets? You then commit to the path that you currently judge minimises your future contrition. The very literal minded will ta…

>Given a choice between action X and action Y, and given all the facts and experience and self-knowledge currently at one's disposal, which option will you look back on in future with fewer/lesser regrets?

One practical issue with this advice is that it can lead to the "death of a thousand cuts" where any single binary event can be weighed one way but over the course of thousands of iterations, the aggregate would be weighed the opposite.

Sure, in theory one would take into account all possible futures where this could happen but in practical terms that is a tough thing to do and there is seldom a good point to stop.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#205

Post by _jal »

justaguyhere wrote: post #124
minimaxir wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At minimum, this type of post would intensify a very expensive legal battle, which Bezos admits in this article he's looking forward to. For anyone else, going bankrupt in an attempt to fight blackmail would be a pyrrhic victory in the best-case scenario.

This could become a replay of Peter Thiel episode, with Bezos destroying the tabloid or at least seriously wounding it. Morality aside, I don't have any sympathy for tabloids like these. What bothers me is I don't think much will change, even if Bezos wins here. As long as the public has voracious appetite for celebrity juicy stories, someone will find a way to feed it.

I think there's an important distinction between Gawker and Pecker's rag. I get that people hate both for being celebrity gossip slime-factories, but only one of them seems to make a habit of extortion and (at the very least) gray-hat political operations.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#206

Post by alasdair_ »

gumby wrote: post #70
minimaxir wrote: post #18

Granted, this strategy is very high risk unless you're one of the richest people in the world.

Really? I'm at the other extreme: blackmailing me would be pointless as there would be no gain (not to mention in my boring case any unclad selfies would have to be synthesized). And in the current world[+] there's so much exposure that such pictures will be drowned out by the sheer volume of stuff. Yes, we're still at a point where politicians can lose their jobs because of racialist photos or certain indiscretions,…

>racialist photos

Can you clarify what makes one of these different from a racist photo?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#207

Post by rhizome »

Jgrubb wrote: post #65
weston wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how many people in Trump’s inner circle love quoting mob movies, calling people “rats” and “stoolies” but can’t seem to get down even the basics of being a half-decent criminal. I mean, Roger Stone literally told people to lie to Congress via an email. One can quote mob movies all day but that doesn’t make them a smart criminal.

I mean, they've lived in an era when being a white collar criminal is basically without legal penalty (as long as you're a white guy). It's really no wonder so many of them are so completely stupid, they would've had nothing to fear if their guy hadn't gotten himself elected.

Said another way, the underprosecution of white-collar crime provides an advantage to career criminals.

Go where the cops ain't.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#208

Post by rodgerd »

kumarvvr wrote: post #181
danso wrote: post #4

> Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a prominent person post the details of a personal extortion attempt out of defiance for all to see.

AMI picked the wrong person. Jeff, literally, has tons of money, extremely respected in the business world. Forget about the embarrassment, if he secretly capitulates to this, then the real blackmail material would be the capitulation, not the photos. Cause if the owner of Washington Post bowed down to blackmail, every article published in the article will be called into question. And who gives a shit if a billionair…

> Did he not divorce his wife by parting with half his fortune?

Half of their fortune. It was communal property.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#209

Post by ineedasername »

kawera wrote: post #141

"I asked him to prioritize protecting my time since I have other things I prefer to work on and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter." Wow!

Yeah I know. It's almost just slipped in there as an afterthought, but it tells a story of Bezos saying to AMI: "I'll spend more money on this than your entire media 'empire' is worth, if that's what it takes... And I'll barely notice the loss."

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#210

Post by rhizome »

3pt14159 wrote: post #158
rblion wrote: post #53

I respect him even more now. We are all human. Nobody wins this 'moral crusade' that takes up so much airtime. We should be much more focused on the existential threats that the entire biosphere is dealing with, not the 'dick pics' of the world's richest man. He's just another dude at his core it seems, happens to be founder of Amazon though.

[flagged]

Politics is about alliances, and I can fight against Bezos' shitty business behavior while also supporting his fighting back against those who would scandalize common social behavior (yes, sexting is normal), and exploit the threat of scandal for undue gain.
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