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France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

reuters.com

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Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#231

Post by smabie »

privateprofile wrote: post #182
wheybags wrote: post #58

My trust of bloomberg has been pretty low since the spy chip story, that seems to have been just a hoax. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Any guesses to why aren't Super Micro or other affected parties taking legal action, if it was a hoax like what's reported in this case?

If Super Micro knows they didn’t do it, they should absolutely love the story. Buyback the underpriced shares and make a ton of free money once the market realized the Bloomberg story is false. I don’t know if they actually did that, but that’s what I would have done. I didn’t actually do that because I trusted Bloomberg a lot. But there was substantial profit to be made as an insider. I bet many/most employees made that trade, at the very least.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#232

Post by jfries »

smabie wrote: post #231
privateprofile wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any guesses to why aren't Super Micro or other affected parties taking legal action, if it was a hoax like what's reported in this case?

If Super Micro knows they didn’t do it, they should absolutely love the story. Buyback the underpriced shares and make a ton of free money once the market realized the Bloomberg story is false. I don’t know if they actually did that, but that’s what I would have done. I didn’t actually do that because I trusted Bloomberg a lot. But there was substantial profit to be made as an insider. I bet many/most employees made…

Would that be legal, or counted as insider trading? Since you're trading on relevant information not available to the public.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#233

Post by jrhurst »

jfries wrote: post #232
smabie wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Super Micro knows they didn’t do it, they should absolutely love the story. Buyback the underpriced shares and make a ton of free money once the market realized the Bloomberg story is false. I don’t know if they actually did that, but that’s what I would have done. I didn’t actually do that because I trusted Bloomberg a lot. But there was substantial profit to be made as an insider. I bet many/most employees made…

Would that be legal, or counted as insider trading? Since you're trading on relevant information not available to the public.

I assume if the company publicly denied the accusations it would not be considered insider trading

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#234

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

comex wrote: post #220
Hamuko wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Funding secured." - Elon Musk exercising free speech, 2018.

Read up on New York Times v. Sullivan. You can be held liable for knowingly publishing false statements, as Elon Musk did, but mistakenly publishing false statements is protected by the First Amendment. The exception (in the case where the target is a public figure) is if you exhibit “reckless disregard” for the statements’ “truth or falsity”, but that standard is much stricter than it sounds; you have to have “serio…

New York Times v. Sullivan was a defamation case. The 1st Amendment protects your right to show reckless disregard for truth or falsity, unless you're slandering someone.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#235

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

close04 wrote: post #186
humanrebar wrote: post #98

The headline probably needs qualification that the fine was in Europe, not the U.S. I was shocked that any U.S. regulator would attempt to push against the First Amendment in this way. It's a different story with more context.

> push against the First Amendment This isn't a freedom of speech issue since obviously they were free to say whatever they wanted, lies and misinformation included. This doesn't imply freedom from consequences. Causing a company to lose 18% value because they couldn't be bothered to verify is negligence, incompetence, or malice (or a combination) not freedom of speech and it's only fair to receive a fine. Bloomberg…

By that same logic, throwing someone in jail for insulting the President wouldn't be a violation of freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech does indeed mean freedom from consequences for your speech - at least governmental consequences.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#236

Post by comex »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #234
comex wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read up on New York Times v. Sullivan. You can be held liable for knowingly publishing false statements, as Elon Musk did, but mistakenly publishing false statements is protected by the First Amendment. The exception (in the case where the target is a public figure) is if you exhibit “reckless disregard” for the statements’ “truth or falsity”, but that standard is much stricter than it sounds; you have to have “serio…

New York Times v. Sullivan was a defamation case. The 1st Amendment protects your right to show reckless disregard for truth or falsity, unless you're slandering someone.

Do you have a citation for your second sentence? NYT v. Sullivan was a defamation case, but my assumption is that the level of protection the First Amendment provides to any given act of speech isn't affected much by which law is trying to penalize that speech. I could easily be wrong; is there a case where the issue came up? (Also, Elon's tweet may count as commercial speech, which is less protected in general.)

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#237

Post by nl »

wheybags wrote: post #58

My trust of bloomberg has been pretty low since the spy chip story, that seems to have been just a hoax. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...

Why are you saying it is a hoax?

A hoax implies they made it up. Instead they have multiple sources giving similar stories, in an area that is shrouded in secrecy of both the corporate and national security kind.

It's hard to report in this area: people can't and won't go on the record, motivations can be murky and very technical details are extremely important.

However, the parts that can be verified are easily verifiable, the technical details seem realistic and the motivations align.

It's possible that the story is wrong, but hoax seems to be the wrong way to think about this.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#238

Post by nl »

humanrebar wrote: post #225
scarejunba wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the 1st Amendment protects you from the SEC universally then you're in for a shock.

The relevant question is whether it protects Mike Bloomberg, who presumably has better lawyers.

Bloomberg the company is a legally independent entity to Michael Bloomberg (who I don't think has much of a role in the day-to-day running of the company anyway).

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#239

Post by nl »

driverdan wrote: post #214
gamblor956 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Big China Chip Hack was never actually debunked. It was refuted , yes, but every company always does that, right up until they admit in a court settlement that the allegations were true all along. Despite the supposedly slanderous statements, none of the supposedly slandered companies has sued over the article, even though in several cases they suffered material impacts to their stock prices and financial results…

It doesn't need to be debunked. Bloomberg never produced any evidence. Until they produce an example board it's safe to assume the story is garbage.

That seems a vanishingly impossible standard of truth. None of the companies affected want people to know they were affected, and the people within the national security complex are unlikely to hand out physical evidence.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#240

Post by blackflame »

blackflame wrote: post #226
davvolun wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you make the same argument that software on the 737 Max should be shipped and then fixed later? No, I wouldn't, but that goes to why not ALL software should be agile, not that it's best to have some journalism be "agile." I was going to mention space flight regarding software mistakes ( https://itsfoss.com/a-floating-point-error-that-caused-a-dam... ), but figured it was more of a digression than it was on-to…

But all journalism has the potential to become viral and once that happens you will never be able to fix the damage you've already done.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston S. Churchill
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