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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#191

Post by muglug »

doublekill wrote: post #159
muglug wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> society is systematically racist, and as a white person you benefit from this. So all whites are profiting from racism already American society, certainly. Some white Europeans are a bit miffed at being lumped in with America’s problems. Europe has race/diversity problems of its own, but not on the same scale as the US’s.

My first European colleague was a male-to-female person. She had worked at a major company for years, got a bad performance report, and attributed it to her transition. It went to court and the company settled, instead of defending not promoting her (with or without regard of her transition). Very good programmer. She worked there for 1 year more, doing only things that the company laywers agreed to. In America I see…

I don’t believe neurodiverse people make racist jokes as a matter of course. At least, that hasn’t been my experience.

I think journalists are also able to tell the difference between “some dude made a poor-taste joke once” and “dudes were always making poor-taste jokes targeted at one specific minority when the employee was present”.

I’ll also say that, at my reasonably woke US company, I’m not aware of any neurodiverse person getting in any trouble for making a bad-taste joke.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#192

Post by gabereiser »

peteretep wrote: post #131
theanarcrist wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect part of the motivation is to scoop the reporter's own story as a passive aggressive reprisal. It also serves to reduce the chance of future reporters on negative topics to talk directly to Coinbase since they've already showed they're willing to break stories before they publish.

Their PR agency is asleep at the wheel; there's no way this doesn't amplify the story

Streisand effect

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#193

Post by [deleted] »

julianmarq wrote: post #186
muglug wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not an expert debater, but if you’re going to accuse an organisation of being race-baiting, it’s always good to at least provide an example or two. Since the commenter didn’t, I sort of zeroed in on that.

> I sort of zeroed in on that. You didn't. > if you’re going to accuse an organisation of being race-baiting, it’s always good to at least provide an example or two. This is "zeroing in on that". What you first replied is many things, but it is certainly not this.

[deleted]

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#194

Post by cbthrow91 »

predictmktegirl wrote: post #115
travisoneill1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> employees who walked out, "forcing" his hand > No one was asking for a political statement Pick one

They walked out because he wouldn't say, in private, that black people's lives mattered. It was simply outrageous to see that in this age. Do you really think it is political to say that a human's life is important, in private?

it's possible to believe black lives matter and be hesitant to cave to the demands of a mob.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iV8X8ubGCc -- as comically illustrated by Seinfeld

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#195

Post by drewbug01 »

disown wrote: post #130
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.…

> underscore the fundamental truths of whatever the NYT I wouldn't ever use the words truth and NYT - especially when it comes to cultural topics. And also geopolitical topics. Or anything of national significance. Or war. You get the idea. > Otherwise... why bother dignifying it with such a response? Why is the NYT writing a hit piece on coinbase? For what reason and what ends? When it comes to propaganda, it always…

> I wouldn't ever use the words truth and NYT - especially when it comes to cultural topics. And also geopolitical topics. Or anything of national significance. Or war. You get the idea.

Can you expand on that? It feels like you’re saying that the NYT lies (to greatly and possibly incorrectly paraphrase). But I don’t generally believe that to be true; and I haven’t seen much evidence to indicate they’ve been engaged in that kind of behavior. Certainly not often, if at all.

> Why is the NYT writing a hit piece on coinbase? > When it comes to propaganda, it always helps to get out in front of the "story". I'm guessing that's what coinbase is doing.

Did the NYT write a hit piece on Coinbase? I haven’t read the article yet, since it hasn’t been published. No one has.

What I believe to be absolutely true is this: Coinbase desperately wants everyone to believe that it’s a hit piece. That’s obvious from the timing, tone, and things they actually wrote in the letter.

But at least in theory, the NYT higher goals and aspirations in life - to uncover and publish truth.

Coinbase doesn’t, and they live and die entirely by customers choosing to trust them with their business. They have every rational incentive to fight for you to trust them regardless of whether the NYT piece is true or not.

And what if it is true? Whatever it turns out to be (again: it’s not published).

To me, when a company launches into this kind of PR Hail Mary, it’s not a sign of integrity.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#196

Post by rrdharan »

drewbug01 wrote: post #190
ericpauley wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, The Times is notorious for crafty implication. For the casual reader, these implications can ring far louder than the actual facts, without the piece being false, per se.

Can you expand on that? Reading through the comment threads on this piece, I’ve noticed this idea of the NYT being intentionally misleading in various forms (“they lie,” “they mislead,” “they make implications,” etc). That isn’t my perception of the NYT at all - but I’d like to hear more of what you’re saying. Has any research been done on the overall veracity of the claims the NYT makes in their articles, or on the…

These aren’t exactly what you are asking about but some recent examples of what I consider to be disingenuous and manipulative:

1. The New York Times published a scathing critique of Google’s 4000 word privacy policy, neglecting anywhere to mention that their own privacy policy was 25% longer and sketchier.

2. The entire handling of the Caliphate podcast and subsequent backpedaling and retroactive reframing.

3. Similar to 2., the doubling down but silent adjustments to the 1619 project historical inaccuracies.

4. The maddening insistence on handling of Slate Star Codex author’s identity and hypocrisy as compared to Chapo Trap House.

5. The submarine propaganda piece about CP on the dark web, which was clearly an attempt to build societal consensus for mandatory backdoors in E2E messaging.

You can go back farther into obvious hits like the second Iraq War and WMD madness of course..

I generally don’t trust the New York Times.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#197

Post by Taek »

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?

If you get accused of racism, what you should do is take the accusation seriously, assume that it is the result of genuine tension within the company, and then figure out places in your process where you were not being proactive enough about looking out for your employees and team chemistry.

Happy employees don't accuse their employers of racism. If you are being accused of racism by your employees, surely something went wrong and there are things you can identify to improve, and then commit to improving those things as part of rebuilding your integrity.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#198

Post by ramraj07 »

csense wrote: post #66
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?

That's the beauty of it. Denying the charge or defending yourself simply digs you deeper into the hole. What you're supposed to do is admit you're a racist, fall down on your knees, abjectly beg forgiveness of your accusers, and list all the new things you'll be doing to stop being racist. Then your accusers have the power to forgive you. But you really, truly have to go all the way in submitting to their demands. An…

I agree that getting blamed of racism means you lose no matter what you do.

However, the statement "I know I'm not a racist" is slippery. Perhaps you're not, but guess what, most racist people think the same too. I've seen explicitly racist things told to me with the same statement prefixed to it. How do you absolutely know you're not racist? Perhaps we all are at least slightly racist and should strive every day to just reduce that part of us?

This is similar to 'I know I am not a bad person' - the majority of the people subscribe to this hypothesis and I believe that is the root cause for many ills in society. I subscribe to an alternate hypothesis - "most of us are kinda bad people" - I mean most people here have burned tons of CO2 on plane trips for personal pleasure, or bought fancy cars or thought we deserve luxury when many in the world continue to suffer - all of this is bad in some definition anyway so even if we all don't promise to be saints let's at least acknowledge that we all ain't angels as a first step?

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#199

Post by julianmarq »

drewbug01 wrote: post #184
philtar wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about what we have in front of us. You're defending the NYT's article without even having seen it. I can't argue against magical articles that haven't been published yet. Also, if you think the NYT doesn't 'lie', then how about you read up on their reporting of the Duke lacrosse team case, or their hundreds of others examples of complete disregard to journalistic integrity. Coinbase isn't perfect. But NYT…

> I'm talking about what we have in front of us. What we have in front of us is a very poorly executed attempt at damage control - over an article that has not been published - and we really must remember that. If we simply accept what Coinbase has published as truth, then it frames everything differently. But we must read what they’ve written as an attempt at controlling the narrative. They’re asking the world to di…

> we really must remember that

Do we? Your opinion that is poorly executed doesn't actually mean that it is.

> But we must read what they’ve written as an attempt at controlling the narrative.

And...? God forbid their wanting to control the narrative about... Themselves? I'm not seeing the problem there.

> They’re asking the world to discredit an article that (as you’ve mentioned) hasn’t been published yet. That deserves an extreme amount of scrutiny and skepticism.

But the NYT should be inherently trusted, unless I read your original comment incorrectly.

> How could I possibly defend an unread article? It’s impossible and illogical.

You literally called it "fundamental truth" in your original comment, so I'm actually a bit curious about your answer to your own question.

> I’ve been attempting to illustrate why their own attempt at damage control actually predisposes me to distrust them

Reading your comments, it seems more like a bias in favor of the NYT et al what is predisposing you to distrust them.

Of course, nothing wrong with that. If you feel like they properly represent the truth of your views, not supporting them would be incongruous. But that doesn't mean that someone who disagrees about how well they represent the truth of the matter has to share your opinion. Indeed, sharing your opinion would be incongruous in that case.

> It’s an incredibly amateurish PR move on their part, honestly.

This is not enlightened discourse. Again, just because you think it is doesn't mean that it is. Specially when using vague non-descriptions like "amateurish".

> it’s partly speculation

It's entirely speculation.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#200

Post by [deleted] »

philtar wrote: post #158
drewbug01 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’ve said and what I’ve said are not in conflict. Coinbase clearly states that they believe there to be three complaints and that they’re generally in the clear. My point about reading between the lines is that the explicit, specific repetition of the claim and the way they’re saying it implies that the NYT is going to allege there were more complaints. So then: what of the missing complaints? What Coinbase is…

I'm talking about what we have in front of us. You're defending the NYT's article without even having seen it. I can't argue against magical articles that haven't been published yet. Also, if you think the NYT doesn't 'lie', then how about you read up on their reporting of the Duke lacrosse team case, or their hundreds of others examples of complete disregard to journalistic integrity. Coinbase isn't perfect. But NYT…

[deleted]
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