Live data from Hacker News

eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

bbc.com

31–40 of 146 posts

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#32
post #18
post #4

What's more surprising to me is seeing a story about Ebay that shows the date 2024 rather than 2004

eBay has the best prices on used electronics and buying weird/niche stuff that can't be found on Amazon imo.

I trust them more than Amazon. I don't trust them much, but... like, a lot more than Amazon.

In our city there's a flea market in a bad part of town where the parking lot has a metal sliding gate and there's barbed wire on the roof and all the windows have bars (obviously, given the rest of that) and there are live vendors in there hawking their goods at folding tables, with about the proportion (... high) of stolen and counterfeit goods you'd expect.

That's Amazon. Ebay's like an ordinary, mediocre antique mall. You might buy something that's crap or was misrepresented, or you might overpay, but it's not an entire business basically dedicated to crime.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#33
post #18
post #4

What's more surprising to me is seeing a story about Ebay that shows the date 2024 rather than 2004

eBay has the best prices on used electronics and buying weird/niche stuff that can't be found on Amazon imo.

Books out of print for example.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#34
The filings said the couple had been left "emotionally, psychologically, and physically" terrorised.

I always find it interesting that, when people sue other people/companies for some kind of harassment, they have to claim something like this. Shouldn’t it be obvious? Like, they got weird stuff by mail and got stalked. That should be enough? What if they didn’t actually got scared, what if they laughed at it? They were still harassed and this shouldn’t matter at all for the process and sentence.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#35

> The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners' home in Natick, Massachusetts. If someone I knew claimed that eBay execs were sending them things like this I wouldn’t believe them. It’s like something from a TV show.

I wonder what the rules on sending live specimens through the post are. Knowingly not using the right markings on the package can cause issues. When they ask you if you have any of "these" things in the package and you then say no would be a federal crime. Messing with the postal inspectors tends to be wildly underappreciated at the repercussions they can inflict.

I have had a snail mailed to me, via snail mail, before. I also get live tardigrades mailed, but they go by UPS.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#36

Curious, how were the executives caught? How was it proven that the harassment came from the executives?

Ah, answering my own question in case others are interested. Seems the bloggers were being followed by a van at one point and they were able to get the plates, which ultimately linked back to ebay. I keep being impressed by ai's ability to perform research for you. "Found" the answer here: https://www.phind.com/search?cache=xzz0am8o9ruxo4wztcc4v7xp

It’s also outlined in the civil complaint starting at page 36. If your AI happens to be making stuff up, this might be a better place to start.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#37

> The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners' home in Natick, Massachusetts. If someone I knew claimed that eBay execs were sending them things like this I wouldn’t believe them. It’s like something from a TV show.

I wonder where the execs got hold of those things. Did they buy it on eBay and have it shipped from a seller? Or did they go and put a dead pig in a box themselves? Messed up either way, and good that an end was put to their harassment of the bloggers.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#38

> The acts of intimidation included sending live insects, a foetal pig and a funeral wreath to the Steiners' home in Natick, Massachusetts. If someone I knew claimed that eBay execs were sending them things like this I wouldn’t believe them. It’s like something from a TV show.

Back when people used to say "there's no such thing as bad publicity" the internet hadn't been invented and there was little notion of the yet-unnamed Streisand Effect.

Even in the most generous interpretations of the saying, this is a uniquely extraordinary exception to it.

Re: eBay pays $3M fine in blogger harassment case

#39
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly the ordering is increasing in value Here's your mistake. Alphabet ordering is decreasing in value.

Yes you are right but I think you’ve found a bug with my cack handed description of my logic, not with the logic itself! We value things highly by assigning them symbols with low values, so a symbol with a postfix modifier that gives it a slightly lower value means we value it higher! Or something :)

Ah so what you’re saying is a - should represent moving the score toward the start of the alphabet (the 1st letter) and a + should represent moving toward the end of the alphabet (the 26th letter)
Post reply on HN