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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

11–20 of 320 posts

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#11
post #9

>Overall, we expect the story will paint an inaccurate picture that lacks complete information and context, despite our best efforts to fact-check details of the story with the reporter. Probably the most important line from this; those that have been through it before know it better than anyone. Likely best to apply healthy levels of skepticism to both parties.

Only problem is that they don't offer that complete information or context either?

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#13
In an HN thread the other day someone mentioned Coinbase as a positive example of a company that decided to separate employee political activism from the workplace (which IMO is the only rational option unless you like volunteering for lose-lose landmine situations).

As soon as I saw NYT in the I assumed it would something along those lines. It’s not clear what the grievances were yet so I’ll hold back judgement for now.

There are always consequences to trying to run an apolitical as. It’s always seems easier to just give in, especially on the surface layer, with the social media grievance machine, but upholding values through out your company is worth the effort. Not being racist should be common sense by now. Engaging in political campaigns is another matter.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#14
Wonder how they think / thought that this will play out?

That internal email is nothing but "NYT bad" and what seems like pretty cheap promises... if you have to send those to your employees in the first place.

Then I don't think it will help Coinbase itself much with the potential backlash of a NYT story with what seems like multiple employees coming out including receipts that will get published.

And it doesn't seem really helpful for employees to defend themselves from some potential inquiries/harassment either?

And then there is the Streisand effect...

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#17
This is an odd thing to see widely published. I'm at a company that had a rather detailed negative article written about us, and we were warned about it internally shortly before it was published, after the reporter had contacted us with details and questions. However, we didn't go public with a reaction until after it was out, since it seemed rather pointless to respond to something that hadn't been published yet, especially when we hadn't even seen it in full.

It is odd to me that they would preemptively go loud on this, drawing attention to a story that might not even get that much traction. It seems like it would have been much easier to just let that story go out and respond with a simple "We've investigated this before and dispute the claims, except for these few unfortunate stories we can confirm happened, and here's how we will prevent them in the future." What on earth do they gain with a preemptive memo like this? Are they really scared of their employees leaking this? Would anyone even pick up a story of "someone's about to publish a bad article about Coinbase"?

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#18
post #9

>Overall, we expect the story will paint an inaccurate picture that lacks complete information and context, despite our best efforts to fact-check details of the story with the reporter. Probably the most important line from this; those that have been through it before know it better than anyone. Likely best to apply healthy levels of skepticism to both parties.

The wording here seems particularily unfortunate.

Actively "fact checking" a story that criticizes oneself sounds like a deep misunderstanding of conflicts of interest.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#19
post #11
post #9

>Overall, we expect the story will paint an inaccurate picture that lacks complete information and context, despite our best efforts to fact-check details of the story with the reporter. Probably the most important line from this; those that have been through it before know it better than anyone. Likely best to apply healthy levels of skepticism to both parties.

Only problem is that they don't offer that complete information or context either?

Sure, I cannot claim to defend Coinbase when I know nothing of the matter. But since news is inherently cherry-picked (after all, one cannot report on literally everything), there will generally be an inherent slant to the information provided, and such an inherent slant will likely tend more towards an optimization of metrics (clicks, engagement, ad revenue, subscriptions, etc) rather than perfect statistical representation of the baseline (which it turns out people are not excited to read about!).

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#20

It's really really hard to prove your not racist. If anyone has any clue as how to do so, please share. They could have waited until the story was published I guess to share this statement, but publishing it preemptively makes sense too I believe (it's an always open entity that is incredibly easy to switch away from). But truly, when you get accused of racism, what can you even do?

I wonder how the nyt feels about them posting it publicly? Is that something that's going to make them reconsider sharing details in future stories?

(I think it was probably the right choice either way given how serious the allegations appear to be, so this is just idle curiosity on my part).

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