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An upcoming story about Coinbase

blog.coinbase.com

141–150 of 320 posts

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#141
post #66

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…

> Defending myself against ridiculous allegations

What in the heck are you doing that's inviting frequent accusations of racism?

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#142

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?

> when you get accused of racism, what can you even do? Make sure nobody has any examples of you being racist

Say you're, I don't know, the person who gives driving license tests. You fail a person, person claims you are racist against . How do you make sure no one has examples like that? Just always pass literally everyone no matter how bad a driver they are in case they're going to later claim discrimination?

You can avoid explicit examples with evidence attached ("he called me a n-word and fired me, see ") but I don't see how you can reliably avoid claims of bias. And while the nyt article isn't out yet, I'm willing to bet that these (like most) claims is one of bias. Moreoever most actual legitimate instances of racism are also going to be of that form, because most people aren't stupid enough to make illegal things they are doing obvious.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about in the day and age where "silence is violence"? Apparently just trying to not get involved is enough to make a whole company raciest?

Announcing a policy where you’re saying “we’re above politics and we’ll pay you to leave if you’re not” is quite definitely not an example of “trying to not get involved”

How is it not?

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#144
post #51

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.…

> Reading between the lines, I imagine that the complaints workers claim to have filed were ignored by management at some level of the process, or not filed on the right paperwork or something. Reading the lines (instead of between them) tells you that two of the complains were investigated by a third-party which found no evidence of wrong-doing.

It doesn't tell you what standard was applied when finding no wrong-doing. "not legally actionable" might be the criteria, which doesn't mean that everyone will say "oh, there was nothing wrong there."

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#146
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when you get accused of racism, what can you even do? Make sure nobody has any examples of you being racist

Say you're, I don't know, the person who gives driving license tests. You fail a person, person claims you are racist against . How do you make sure no one has examples like that? Just always pass literally everyone no matter how bad a driver they are in case they're going to later claim discrimination? You can avoid explicit examples with evidence attached ("he called me a n-word and fired me, see ") but I don't see…

That kind of thing would not hold up in court without a strong pattern proved or additional explicitly discriminatory behavior. Discrimination is surprisingly hard to prove, in fact.

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#147
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. They're just trying to own the narrative with this post here. Streissand effect only applies when someone tries to cover up an already-published piece of fact.

That’s not how I’ve understood the Streisand effect - nor how Wikipedia does either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect From the link: > The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of further publicizing that information, often via the Internet. It’s not so much about whether a piece of information has been…

The wikipedia link backs the parent's point more than it does yours

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Announcing a policy where you’re saying “we’re above politics and we’ll pay you to leave if you’re not” is quite definitely not an example of “trying to not get involved”

How is it not?

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."

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#149
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.

Probably because the announcement made people question if the change in policy was prompted by exactly something like this brewing internally. That's kind of how investigative journalism works.

It's like Google changing their policy to never mention the words 'marketshare' in internal documentation and journalists going out and investigating Google's antitrust situtation and writing about it. That's not a bad thing, that's what generally prompts journalists taking a look at a company

Re: An upcoming story about Coinbase

#150

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, e…

Maybe it's to warn pre-IPO investors so they don't all panic sell when the article drops?
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