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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#71

Post by throwlastone »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #10

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?

Counter whatever evidence is presented with facts. The same way you make any argument. "You can't prove a negative" is mostly an imaginary problem, you don't need to prove anything, you need to convince people that your argument is better.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#72

Post by wilg »

nilkn wrote: post #59

I have to wonder to what extent this is just punishment from the establishment for Coinbase’s recent rejection of political activism in the workplace. Of course we will need to see the article from the NYT first before drawing any conclusions, but the timing is pretty suspicious; this implies that the NYT more or less launched this project immediately after that announcement went out.

Sounds like a good conspiracy theory to me!

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#73

Post by flowerlad »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #10

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?

> It's really really hard to prove your not racist. If anyone has any clue as how to do so, please share.

If you have been accused of racism that's because somebody has an example of you being racist. If you did not have racist intent you can clarify your intent. Simply claiming you're not a racist won't do because pretty much everyone accused of racism makes that claim (example: central park dog walker, or any other person in the news accused of racism).

Edit: I am talking about instances where the facts are not in question. For example, you did not hire Xyz, and you're accused of racism.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#74

Post by refulgentis »

Damorian wrote: post #65
refulgentis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, you're using a corporate blog post sharing an internal email responding to a story that hasn't been published yet, to jump to a series of unrelated conclusions. Namely, extrapolating that unobserved reactions to a story no one has read are a 'mob', and the 'mob' is 'outraged' instead of being concerned about 'the truth', and it'd be better for Coinbase to ignore it. It's also striking that this reaction c…

I've played this game before. Why should I expect it to be any different from the usual political social media cancel culture nonsense it always is? I'd love for my assumptions to be wrong though.

It's worth discussing but I'm not sure how to move in with the entrypoint, it feels like 'i know, its a strawman, but its not because the strawman is always real'

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#75

Post by someonehere »

As many of my HR friends have said (I’m sure most of you have heard this too, HR is in the business of protecting the company and not the employees.

I’ve been at plenty of startups and have witnessed people doing the right thing or rocking the boat and being let go. I myself have been in that boat for reporting sexual harassment on behalf of a friend/peer at work who was too afraid to report the manager. I caught the heat from it and was let go over that.

This is going to be an interesting who said what and what really happened in the next few days.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#76

Post by TigeriusKirk »

I don't think any response they could make would change anyone's mind about anything.

They've taken a stance that has generated a polarized response, and people are going to respond to any and all problems that arise at the company based on their now-existing polarization.

I don't exempt myself from that.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#77

Post by jolux »

hnracer wrote: post #55
beervirus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably wouldn’t have responded preemptively .

Why not? They would've had intel from current employees who were interviewed about the likely contents, and they claim that a number of the allegations that are likely to be published are false. If I was either innocent or guilty of such allegations, I will want to try to control the narrative ahead of time. Doing so doesn't seem to update our prior beliefs about the probability of guilt, all it shows us is that the…

Because ideally your culture should be strong enough to weather things like these, and your damage control should read more as a statement of facts than "we did nothing wrong," especially when you issue it preemptively.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#78

Post by drewbug01 »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #49
drewbug01 wrote: post #27

Well, the whole press release / internal email smells of a company desperately trying to spin what they expect to be a very, very bad article. But this line jumped out at me twice: > To be specific: Although the story will likely allege that a number of Black employees and contractors referenced in the story filed complaints with the company, only three of these people filed complaints during their time at Coinbase.…

It seems to me that Coinbase is well aware of NYT's recent decline from paper of record to race-baiting propaganda, and knows that instead of being factual about numbers NYT will use weasel words to make it seem like Coinbase's entire company is run by "far right extremist racists" or whatever similar language. Of course, only time and the publication of the NYT article will tell, but given their recent track record…

> race-baiting propaganda

I think it’s reasonable to debate the quality of the NYT (and I have serious issues with a lot of what they publish - and dear lord, don’t get me started on how I feel about their opinion columnists).

But I do think that calling the NYT “race-baiting propaganda” is a gross mischaracterization of what they do.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#79

Post by doublekill »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #10

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?

What I learned from diversity training is that you need to accept the fact that society is systematically racist, and as a white person you benefit from this. So all whites are profiting from racism already. They have to come to terms with this, acknowledge the role that their ancestors played in furthering or creating racial inequality, and do everything in their privileged power to right this wrong: hire more black people. Promote more black people. Mentor more black people. Pay reparations to black people. Be a vocal supporter to black people. And realize and appreciate that you are different, and will never have to share what black people go through every day. What more can you do?
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