81–90 of 103 posts
I always wondered how the software people who work in places like this live with themselves. Is it some sort of “enough money can make me forget and look myself in the mirror” situation?
> After sending the messages, Hershowitz declared his comments “off the record,” which requires both parties to agree to the terms in advance. TechCrunch is publishing the responses as there was no agreement made What a failure for a spokesperson.
More like a failure on TechCrunch. There is an implied agreement and violating it will result in a flat refusal to talk outside of prepared press releases. This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.
This is not a new or unique circumstance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first statement doesn’t sound like anything a professional investor would ever say
Are you sure? I feel like ESG has been rammed in to every company i've worked at for a couple of decades now.
"Tens of millions" for controlling stake in NSO is like an order of magnitude less than what I'd imagine in todays environment. Comes off as cheap. Have their capabilities been overplayed? Is selling done under pressure? Are they not actually sitting on big bank and procurement network of valuable 0days?
If you sell something for 1 billion, would you tell gov/IRS you got paid that ammount?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can say this about most of tech. Sure, we agree spying is bad. But, is it worse than ad tech at large? Is it worse than companies addicting people to their phones via psychological tricks at alarming rates? Or siphoning money from kids via freemium models? Or working on a chatbot that helps kids kill themselves? Or the gazillion payday loan apps? Or the gazillion prediction market/sports betting avenues? I'm sure…
Enabling the state violence of authoritarian governments through surveillance software is unequivocally worse than the examples you listed.
I always wondered how the software people who work in places like this live with themselves. Is it some sort of “enough money can make me forget and look myself in the mirror” situation?
You can say this about most of tech. Sure, we agree spying is bad. But, is it worse than ad tech at large? Is it worse than companies addicting people to their phones via psychological tricks at alarming rates? Or siphoning money from kids via freemium models? Or working on a chatbot that helps kids kill themselves? Or the gazillion payday loan apps? Or the gazillion prediction market/sports betting avenues? I'm sure…
Take Epic for example, on one hand they're heavy in Marketing/PR about user freedom, but in practice they deliberately targeted children for harm with their Fortnite game, while also looking the other way when it came to issues of sexual predation and bullying. Their behaviours led to a settlement with the FTC for over half a billion USD.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...
https://lawandcrime.com/technology/makers-of-fortnite-to-pay...
I always wondered how the software people who work in places like this live with themselves. Is it some sort of “enough money can make me forget and look myself in the mirror” situation?
You can say this about most of tech. Sure, we agree spying is bad. But, is it worse than ad tech at large? Is it worse than companies addicting people to their phones via psychological tricks at alarming rates? Or siphoning money from kids via freemium models? Or working on a chatbot that helps kids kill themselves? Or the gazillion payday loan apps? Or the gazillion prediction market/sports betting avenues? I'm sure…
That being said, I also don't have a family to support - it's just me - which makes the calculus easier. It's still a choice, and everyone should try to face the reality of "what effect is the 8 hours a day I work having on the world?", but I know life-shit can be complicated and stressful and most people are just trying their best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not how that works. You don't get to decide statements are off the record after you realize you said something that would look bad. Every interview would be a puff piece if that was how things worked.
This will just stop people from talking to journos, like many have done. This whole rhetoric of the journalist being an "adversary" that is "outing" things is extremely problematic. You should be able to retract statements. If it's live, it's practically not possible so it's fine, but for articles I think that journos should respect retractions, regardless of whether it is post-hoc or pre-decided. Now, the "victim" h…
It's quite the opposite, actually. As Katherine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, used to say: News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is just advertising.
TechCrunch is not obligated to let NSO's mouthpiece advertise on their pages.