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TechCrunch is a bully

lanewood.me

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Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#101

Post by softbuilder »

mcantelon wrote: post #86
softbuilder wrote: post #54

>It’s like reading a middle school girl’s diary. Exactly this. There was no point to the story. Sure, I'll buy that the lady is a headcase/creeper or whatever. But that's it? No real crimes detailed or list of people screwed over? It was just a finger-pointing "hate this person right here" piece. Cyberbullying doesn't just happen to kids.

Expose fraud isn't bullying. She's a grown woman who chose to risk her reputation by playing a con game. Most con artists get away with it: she didn't. Her being exposed will deter other would-be parasites. Good.

If there was a real exposé here, I might agree. There would be more specifics, statements from victims and prosecutors, etc.. This article lacked any purpose aside from pure humiliation. Maybe this lady is so awful that she deserves that, but the case wasn't made. What if she's mentally ill?

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#102

Post by mindcrime »

corin_ wrote: post #62
mindcrime wrote: post #45

And she has the top media company in the tech industry trying to take her down. TechCrunch isn't anything close to a "top media company." TC is a shitty blog run by a bunch of amateurs who should be lucky enough to be referred to as "wannabe journalists." TC exists to whore for page impressions and ad clicks, nothing more. The best thing to do is pretend they don't exist... quit reading TC, quit sending them "news",…

I guess it depends whether you define "top media company" as top in quality of top in readership/influence/etc. I've on idea about stats but it wouldn't surprise me if TC was at the very top for its niche on the latter.

I guess it depends whether you define "top media company" as top in quality of top in readership/influence/etc.

Here, I'm referring more to quality / journalistic standards / ethics / etc, than readership. And even in terms of readership, I doubt TC can touch actual mainstream media outlets in terms of eyeballs.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#103

Post by protomyth »

unreal37 wrote: post #52
herval wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, photoshopping yourself into pictures with several different people is "an exaggeration" to you?

Its certainly not "lying many times to many different powerful people" and deserving a big TC article. I once photoshopped a friend of mine next to George Clooney as a joke - where's my TC article? We have no idea where those photos are from, or what she claimed when she posted them, or even if she was the one who photoshopped them, or a friend did or a stranger. There's no context to them, and no claims in the artic…

I remember an HP commercial where the main character photoshops himself into photos with multiple celebrities and locations. I would guess its fairly common fun for some people. Using those in a non-fun context would be bad, but the article is obtuse on the point.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#104

Post by pnathan »

deniszgonjanin wrote: post #7

America has always been a land where you could fail, then pick yourself up. You could move west in search of a new beginning and a new identity. You could go bankrupt, then start over, and eventually fail your way to success and a better life. There is no longer a place to hide or run away to. There is no way to re-invent yourself and start over. The foolish crimes of our youths are now a permanent part of who we are…

If you don't like the surveillance culture, don't work at a place that accelerates it.

There are a ton of companies that do good work unrelated to scraping big data for personal information.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#105

Post by rhizome »

shurane wrote: post #40
rhizome wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who stopped reading them years ago, let me tell you an incontrovertible fact of the Internet: if it's worth reading, it will show up in every aggregator you still pay attention to, three times on the front page of HN if necessary. Propagation is a cue for importance, which is why TC (and RWW, and...) spend so much effort manually posting these stories all over the place themselves. They're faking it, too.

But there are so many things that are propagated that aren't important. Consistently negative world news, for starters.

While your second sentence is a non-sequitur and a pretty transparent dig besides, your first sentence is partly covered by "they're faking it." PR agencies, Digg-like upvote groups, all of them are corrupt attacks on organic popularity.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#106

Post by illuminate »

I don't understand how exposing frauds is "bullying". This person is trying to pass false credentials, and has been somewhat successful in doing so. I don't see how exposing someone's scam is really "mean", yes, she might have some sort of personality disorder, but not all mental illness can be tolerated. If it's pathological, I feel badly for her on some level, but I still see no reason why she shouldn't be blocked from performing this social engineering in the future.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#107

Post by ChuckMcM »

robomc wrote: post #91
lmm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How naive and self-righteous. Such people "deserve" to be defrauded? Because they acknowledged the reality that funding often depends more on who you know than the merits of your product, and tried to work around it and get on with what they actually wanted to do rather than getting sidetracked on all the little injustices of the world? Because you consider the funded model of starting a business to be fundamentally…

I agree it's self righteous, but yeah, basically. Most businesses in the world focus on products, customers and profitability, not trendy lines of funding (and the non-tech "startup" scene has notably better rates of success - no googles, just honest businesses that do useful things for more money than they spend). Regardless though, all businesses should think long and hard about hires, not just hire pointless peopl…

I think it is a fair point that many businesses focus on products, however it is also important to consider that many of those products have a 'fashion' aspect to them, which is to say they are potential 'fads.' Perhaps the poster child for such a business was the "Pet rock" business in the 70's where the 'product' was a rock in a nice package mocking practice of attempting to create a special identity around toys. It was also a fad, and came and went fairly quickly.

The thing about fashion is that its a perception thing and hard to control. And unfortunately technology has developed a wing in the fashion district.

So how does a fashion get 'launched' ? How does a certain look become 'the look' or a certain hairstyle become 'the hairstyle' ? The answer is that highly influential individuals endorse it through words or actions. The fashion designers know that the influencers in their sphere will have a huge impact on whether or not they are successful, so they court the influencers. the influencers get courted by everyone so they have high barriers to access. And in that mix emerges 'the connector' who is a person who can get a fashion designer 'access' to the influencers who they think will be key to making their designs successful.

Not an area that comes easily to many deeply technical people, perhaps less so as a population than the more general population. So knowing someone who can get your product in front of, and used by, one of these key people can be the difference between nobody ever using your product and everyone using it. Simple example, take the top 100 people on Twitter and get them to move enmasse to identi.ca, their followers will follow to see where their influencers have gone, at that point identi.ca is a credible threat to Twitter's dominance.

The key is that there aren't any technical or product related challenges that identi.ca doesn't match, it's just not fashionable.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#108

Post by mcantelon »

softbuilder wrote: post #101
mcantelon wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expose fraud isn't bullying. She's a grown woman who chose to risk her reputation by playing a con game. Most con artists get away with it: she didn't. Her being exposed will deter other would-be parasites. Good.

If there was a real exposé here, I might agree. There would be more specifics, statements from victims and prosecutors, etc.. This article lacked any purpose aside from pure humiliation. Maybe this lady is so awful that she deserves that, but the case wasn't made. What if she's mentally ill?

Well, they included a court document and any small startups thinking of pushing consulting money to her likely won't now, so mission accomplished.

>What if she's mentally ill?

Not all dishonest people are mentally ill.

Re: TechCrunch is a bully

#110

Post by richardjordan »

richardjordan wrote: post #27

I thought the same thing when reading that article. Here was someone I've never heard of - and I'm pretty active at getting around the startup world; someone who seems to have got herself into a web of lies which probably started off with some exaggerations. Let's stipulate to the fact that it's not okay to lie about yourself to get a gig, even if you think it's harmless and you'll make up for it in work. I thought i…

Looking at more of the news coming out since the original article, the more serious this person's actions appear to be.

I still stand by the opinion that folks like TechCrunch are as responsible for creating this phenomenon as for exposing it. However it's clearer why it seems to have become so personal for TC folks: "The fact that Ms. Hornstein’s roommate was TechCrunch community manager Elin Blesener also helped “legitimize her,” the same investor added."

Still, I think this story should be left behind, let authorities deal with any genuine harmful fraud. Let those taken in learn from this and realize that extraordinary claims should be fact checked and one shouldn't let one's desire to feel special and connected trump common sense and basic background checks.

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