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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

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Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#231

Post by [deleted] »

hda2 wrote: post #170
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #22

> Let’s keep focused on building an amazing company together; we are hitting amazing new records on users, volume and revenue, and we have so much great work to do together. Ignore any potential negativity, everything we do is great, all that matters is revenue, nothing bad ever happens hear, blah blah blah. Don't focus on the bad part, those are all lies! The NYTimes article isn't released so I can't comment on the…

Coinbase has been on the receiving end of news media abusive for a short while (ever since they offered to pay their disruptive employees to leave). I don't really blame them for wanting to preemptively defend themselves.

[deleted]

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#232

Post by jolux »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #167
jolux wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implicit bias is extremely hard to argue in the absence of other examples of racist behavior. In the court of public opinion, well. I think you're doing well as a baseline if the only arguments someone can make are about implicit bias. An accusation of implicit bias is far easier to defend against than one of racial abuse.

Not sure that's true. An allegation of racial abuse you defend against by saying "I did not do that", hopefully with evidence on your side (other people were at the meeting, maybe). But how do you defend against implicit bias? "No, I'm not"? In the current climate, I'm not sure that saves your public image...

You can always claim not to have acted with bias but if there’s strong evidence that you did then I’m not sure how one is supposed to defend against it, in an informal sense (IANAL). I would just admit it, make amends, and try to move on.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#233

Post by Rebelgecko »

muglug wrote: post #173
Rebelgecko wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit melodramatic to characterize their primary output as race-baiting propaganda However I think it's interesting to compare and contrast how they handled Andrew Sullivan's racist comments from 26 years ago, Sarah Jeong's racist comments from 5-8 years ago, and Quinn Norton's use of slurs around 8 years ago.

I think context is quite important. Andrew Sullivan is notorious for believing in some version of The Bell Curve theory — that differences in academic achievement can be at least partly explained by measurable differences in average intelligence between different races. He promoted that view in his role as editor of a major news magazine in the early 90s. That sets him apart from Quinn Norton, who nevertheless used s…

I think it's also interesting that (at least in part) Norton's firing was due to using a slur that refers to a group for which she belongs. Imagine if there was a similar cancellation when Barack Obama used the n word on Marc Maron's podcast. She was also pretty upfront about the moral conflict of befriending a person like weev who she considered despicable.

I dont think Sarah Jeong actually wants to follow through with her violent racist tweets, but I also don't think that Norton actually hates LGBT people or non-whites. It seems like a double standard to me.

wrt Sullivan, the NYT was still happy to publish Professor David Reich's op-ed in 2018 which cautiously espoused the same controversial ideas. Even HN's beloved Scott Alexander wrote a Slatestarcodex article about how some aspects of intelligence might be inheritable.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#234

Post by jolux »

manigandham wrote: post #153
jolux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's taking a side and saying that if you don't like the side they take then you can leave. The side they're taking is "we're above politics."

And "above politics" is the same as "not involved in politics". Call it a side/position/stance/perspective/angle or whatever else. It's still means they're not involved.

It means they’re involved in preserving the present state of affairs in politics. We can call this being apolitical if we’d like, we just need to be clear about what we mean.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#235

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

A lot of people are talking about the PR considerations of this, but I think there's an important factor that should be noted. There's been a growing perspective in SV, particularly among executives and VCs, that traditional media outlets are competitors to the tech industry rather than neutral reporters on it.

And lot of the puzzling aspects here make a lot of sense when seen in that context. This is exactly the kind of response you'd expect if, say, you discovered some famous short seller were going to release a report on you.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#236

Post by jolux »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #164
jolux wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's taking a side and saying that if you don't like the side they take then you can leave. The side they're taking is "we're above politics."

As I understood the "we're above politics", it was "you don't do politics at work". How is that taking a side? And if it is taking a side, which side ?

Well, this particular policy change appears to have been at least partially in response to labor action that the company didn’t like, and if that’s not political than nothing is.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#237

Post by Hamuko »

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.…

>what they expect to be a very, very bad article

Yeah, my first thought reading this was "Exactly how bad is it gonna be if they feel like they need to start damage control even before the article is out?"

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#238

Post by gamblor956 »

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.

Coinbase's political non-activism policy announcement at the end of September had no bearing on this article.

Investigations into racial discrimination or sexual harassment complaints take months (see for example, at Riot Games, an internal investigation took almost 5 months even though most of the facts were already publicly known at the start of the investigation. https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/26686134/how-got-her...). This means that the race complaints predated the September announcement.

Additionally, given that investigative pieces generally involve months of investigation, fact-checking, re-writing, it's very likely that this article was already being researched or written at the time of Coinbase's original political non-activism announcement.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#239

Post by drewbug01 »

rrdharan wrote: post #227
drewbug01 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thank you for your reply - I phrased my question the way I did because I was curious if anyone had more than just anecdotes, but I do still find the anecdotes interesting on their own. I suppose - absent more consistent evidence (they do a lot of reporting after all) - it’s not entirely convincing to me. A lot of other outlets made the same mistakes (especially stuff about the Iraq War, since you mentioned it - but…

I agree, it’s pretty easy to end up in a place where you don’t trust any source of news. Not sure that’s really a bad thing. I still read the New York Times (though I’m no longer a paying subscriber). I don’t think they are as un trustworthy as like, Newsmax or Info Wars or what have you. I just typically prefer the Washington Post or WSJ (sans crazy WSJ op-eds) since it’s hard to unsee the NYT slant in everything la…

Yeah - I think “not trusting” is healthy as long as it stays in the realm of skepticism ... and doesn’t cross over into “I now get all my news from random Youtubers.” Which... sadly happens sometimes. :(

I don’t have much of a preference between the NYT and WaPo as far as “trustworthiness” goes, but the point about their different voices is interesting to me. They absolutely do have very different voices. I actually don’t care for either one of them!

But ... thinking about it - I feel like perhaps some have trouble with a news organizations “voice” and general perspective on the world - and can’t distinguish that voice or perspective from the reporting. My gut says that this is a critical reading skill that is perhaps not as common with some people, and it leads them to think a source isn’t trustworthy.

> sans crazy WSJ op-eds

What?! The op-eds are where you go when you want to read crazy things for entertainment! Where else can you get that kind of fun?! (I jest, of course).

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#240

Post by gamblor956 »

rrdharan wrote: post #220
gamblor956 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 NYT's own privacy policy is irrelevant in context. Google's privacy policy affects most of the internet, aka, most of the world. The NYT's privacy policy affects the significantly smaller (and comparatively insignificant) number of people who read the NYT on its website. #3 The adjustments (aka corrections) were not silent. They announced them, and the big corrections even got their own NYT articles, see e.g., htt…

For 3. the louder correction came after they were called out for earlier silent edits: https://quillette.com/2020/09/19/down-the-1619-projects-memo... (Side note I don’t really trust Quillette either but I do believe this sequence of events is what unfolded)

The NYT article linked to is from March, and predates your link by 6 months. All of the changes in the Quillette article were similarly announced by the NYT at the time they were made, though as smaller changes didn't get their own frontpage articles.

As the 1619 project was itself described as an "ongoing" project it's bizarre and unusual for people to complain about it being corrected. That's the writing process: draft, and re-draft as necessary based on feedback re grammar, language, factual errors, etc.

In fact your complaint seems to be that the NYT corrects its articles on its website, which is a good thing. If you want archival copies of the incorrect versions, you can access those through other means, such as through databases like Lexis Nexis or through hard copies of the paper.

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