Gosh you make it sound like a schoolyard flirtation. "Stole a kiss". She was trapped in his car and he grabbed her by the throat. He grabbed another woman by the throat and didn't let go. He raped a woman. There is a pattern of behaviour here that is profoundly disturbing.
Victims are often frightened enough to not come forward. The kind of trial by social media in which you're now engaged is all part of that. Why allege anything when you'll be accused of making it up, being a slut, having your life history raked through by trolls online...
"Hunted by his money" ffs. "Without more data". Have some empathy.
Also note that he is NOT "being sued for sweet money" but criminally charged by a prosecutor. They don't do that unless they have strong evidence and there's no compensation to victims in a criminal trial.
> The kind of trial by social media in which you're now engaged is all part of that. Why allege anything when you'll be accused of making it up, being a slut, having your life history raked through by trolls online...
The accused can also have their lives raked through and ruined simply for being accused. There is something to gain (e.g. financial and moral support, feeling as though one were on the "right" side of history, etc.) from being a professional victim, and doubly so on social media. Whether that applies here remains to be seen.
> "Hunted by his money" ffs. "Without more data". Have some empathy.
Empathy: The ability to identify with or understand another's situation or feelings
Waiting for data and considering the potential motivations involved are empathetic actions. It may be simplistic to make such claims, but there is no lack of empathy to consider that these situations can occur and have occurred to other people and that they might be applicable here. At the end of the day, no one here was present when the alleged events occurred. We're all relying on news reports and hearsay.
> Also note that he is NOT "being sued for sweet money" but criminally charged by a prosecutor. They don't do that unless they have strong evidence and there's no compensation to victims in a criminal trial.
Any evidence obtained in a criminal trial can be used in a civil trial with a lower burden of proof, even if one is acquitted in the former. Additionally, prosecutors have issued charges on exaggerated, or even fraudulent evidence before. The Innocence Project is a testament the consequences of zealousness and lack of impartiality that occurs in courts across the country.
In what is likely a to be a he said/she said scenario, one should wait to examine how damning the evidence and testimony actually is so as not to come to a premature conclusion.
Was she? She said he grabbed her by the throat. What’s that mean? He actually did? Did it leave a mark? I mean, if it was strong enough to choke her?
Did his hand brush her throat?
What was her immediate description of what happened to the very first person she told?
These other acts you describe, were they accusations or facts?
You are literally engaging in trial by social media asserting claims as fact when they are accusations.
“They don’t do that unless they have strong evidence” - spoken like someone who has only ever read about the criminal justice system. The news has been filled with stories of unjust actions the entire length of Covid.
You don’t understand how things work. If you can get a criminal charge to stick, then you can threaten to settle out of court for money (with the woman) to avoid her bringing a civil trial.
Is she lying? I have no idea, but your argument is as bad as “that black man wouldn’t be charged by the police for raping that white woman if he didn’t do it. The white woman wouldn’t lie, it must be so scary for her to come forward”. Literally this except replace black with “rich”, the new boogie-man.
Dude should have an internal recorder in his car, like an Uber driver. It would either save him from false accusations or himself.
"stole a kiss" wtf is this minimising bullshit? According to the article, he forced himself on someone, grabbing them by the throat. They feared for their life.
According to the article, he also literally had sex with his partner while she was under the influence, without her consent.
Be careful about crossing the line from "innocent until proven guilty" over into "victim-blaming" territory.
It takes an insane amount of courage to come forth publicly with the kinds of accusations these women are bringing, and a history of men victim blaming women is why so many abusers roam our midst with impunity. When I hear these kinds of accounts, I typically have more reasons to distrust the accused abuser who is usually the person wielding more power in the whole system.
victim blaming requires someone choosing to do something that creates a victim
as you can see, this is at odds with the prior posters observation and puts you both at an impasse
I can empathize with the limitations of evidence and the limitations of the law as a reflection of the culture
that alone doesn’t help me pick a side based on any “lived experience” or power dynamic
But for anyone reading this: don’t put your hands on people necks just because of the lack of evidence or consequences. Its very abusive to target people that made a permanent digital message of flirting with you, or targeting people that you know made a white lie sometime in their life that you can use against them if they ever go to the police about something else, society relies on the mutual cooperation of everyone at all times
Can we stop with this unfounded speculation please? These are real human beings we are talking about with serious allegations. Let the court follow its due process and come to a decision. The jury is still out there. Innocent until proven guilty.
All this armchair criticism and judgement on HN is turning out to be a very poor reading experience.
Claiming she is accusing him for "for sweet money" is as much unfounded accusation as the response to it. Actually even more if you look at the actual content of what posters wrote. While the response you reacted to contained mild claim, the original one was flat out vilification and direct accusation. Why is it that the former one is acceptable, but people who respond to it have to tip toes around?
I agree with you. I did not mean that the former comment is acceptable. Both comments are not unacceptable. I chose the lower comment to reply to. That might have given that impression. But I find speculation for either sides to be problems. Nobody should have to tip toe around. A good response to the speculation in upper comment could have been to point out that it is speculation and unfounded, not make more speculations!
Maybe possibly yes may very well be maybe possibly no, so basically we know 0 and should act accordingly by having our mouths shut about this till things are more clear.
Its way too easy to completely destroy a person these days for many different reasons, lets not add ourselves to mindless clueless outraged crowds.
I hate these stories, because we have no idea which side is true. The reckless drive is the only charge than can be proven, or at least have vitnesses.
Criminal charges really should be kept out of the media until there’s enough evidence to jail the suspect. This is to protect both sides.
> Criminal charges really should be kept out of the media until there’s enough evidence to jail the suspect
That's why some countries in the EU, and the UK, have laws protecting the identity of people until after sentencing. E.g. in Bulgaria only their initials can be used, and no photos are allowed. In the UK, they just vaguely describe them (footballer from Manchester in his 20s accused of sexual assault).
I am a woman and just scrolling through the NYT article header made me cringe, it felt like a hit peice. Judging by how previous incidents have been portrayed by the media, NYT included, I never take sides. It's up for the courts to determine this.
Well it would have been in the media due to him resigning anyway, regardless of the truth or otherwise of the recent allegations.
While I don't know about the recent stuff there seems clear evidence he was sketchy financially re the original setting salaries to 70k thing. He claimed he did that and then his brother and fellow shareholder sued him for doing it but really the brother launched the suit before that happened objecting to him paying himself a $1m+ salary and hence grabbing the profits and making all salaries $70k was probably a reaction to the suit. Source https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-gravity-ceo-dan-pric...
Interesting how the media continues to bring up the lawsuit but never share the real story and the outcome to the lawsuit. I guess it is more profitable to spread lies.
Here is one article sharing the details after the lawsuit with Dan and his brother. People should do more research before blasting opinions. It is terrible what the US is allowed to share and spread buyer to gain more article clicks!
The moment you define “rich people”, though, all people who fit that definition will suddenly transfer all of their assets to their spouses and immediately divorce them, heh. Assessing a person's actual worth is not an easy task. Not impossible, mind you, but not easy.
I hope this means he'll stop posting the 70k story every other day on LinkedIn. Only person I've ever had to block there. I didn't follow him, but too many 2nd+ degree connections liked his posts to make it too much for me.
Given how anodyne (even if sometimes vapid) most LinkedIn activity is, it’s quite a feat of obnoxiousness to get yourself blocked on LinkedIn, of all places.
I understand that our current society expects me to believe by default his wife's accusations of sexual assault, but are we also supposed to believe that he waterboarded her, as she alleged in a TEDx talk?
(I actually think he is likely an abuser, etc., and it seems like the 70k thing was in response to a lawsuit, but c'mon I really doubt he waterboarded anyone.)
And again a good example of American Puritanism where someone pass from the status of Hero to Paria as soon as someone discover he has flaws.
Everybody is flawed, damned everybody, including yourself.
And the most extraordinary people are, Often the less acceptable in term of social norms they are too.
- The Most brillant CEOs are often terrible family Dad and with psychological/narcissist problems.... Still they are giving people jobs and making the world a better place.
- Many Brillant scientists have asperger syndromes and are asociable nightmare for the people that work with.... Still brillant scientists that make the world a better place.
- Many authors have self-destructive syndromes and chronic depression affecting their close relative. Still they wrote amazing piece of art.
Same for actors, authors, philosophers, producers, political figures.. your neighbor, everybody.
Nobody is ever perfect even close to this fake perfect public image hero they try to create.
That apply to Dan Price too, whatever he did.
Maybe it is time to grow up America and accept the world as it is.
> Maybe it is time to grow up America and accept the world as it is.
What does that mean?
I think I understand your point - that people like to create hero-narratives that are mostly not true, and that at high levels of achievement some very successful people carry the seeds of their own destruction.
Fair enough. But the Puritan America that you want to grow up is a straw man. And Dan Price is a effectively a nobody, who either assaulted someone or didn’t and as he’s been formally accused, it’s for the courts to adjudicate.
He is a public figure, frequently in TV and media presented regularly as "The alternative CEO model that arrive to give to his workers excellent working conditions while having a successful and growing business".
And yet, I can bet with you that whatever the judgement of the court will be, the American press will now (opportunistically) vomit on him for the rest of his days.
Plenty of publicly shamed and dishonored CEOs have come back from the brink, from Travis Kalanick to most spectacularly, recently, Adam Neumann. If Price is able to be found innocent by the courts, he would likely do so as well. He doesn’t need you weeping and clutching pearls on his behalf.
“The one moral CEO in America.” That's up there with Ken Lay's proclamation that Enron set the bar for corporate ethics (I can't find the exact quote, and obviously before the collapse).
'The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.' -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Anyhoo, I have no actual idea if the accusations against Price are founded or not. That's for the courts to decide. I'm not into the whole "trial by Twitter" thing.
"Innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt" is the gate for government violence, but as a society we operate on a very different standard, for very good reasons.
Multiple credible accusations, corroborated by contemporaneous accounts, collated by a reputable journalist is definitely enough to call the accusations founded.
Not enough to send people with guns to take away his freedom, maybe, but enough to form an opinion. Otherwise, are we supposed to involve the legal system in every assessment we make of anyone?
What is the value of forming an opinion about someone we will probably never interact with and has no influence on our lives? I can understand if you work for his company or know him in person. But for the rest of the internet, I don't see the purpose except to fuel outrage.
Because you've already formed an opinion (Maybe you've read articles saying "The one moral CEO in America" like the grandparent) and you want to correct it if your prior opinion was incomplete.
I mean… he’s the one out here in front of the press all the time. He was a CEO of a card processing company! There is a universe in which he wouldn’t be a household name.
Sure the “outrage” is just high level gossip for most people talking about it, but it’s a reaction to this person being a loud and vocal person who was trying to build a public persona of being a Good Guy.
There’s definitely a larger idea here about journalism in general looking for hero stories. But the guy is out there giving the interviews
You also answered the GP's question as to why we should care about this.
If you're reading and seeing multiple stories all over the media about what a wonderful, altruistic person someone is, the information as to whether that person is in fact a great guy, or whether he's a predatory scumbag who is exploiting the media to make himself look great is very valuable. It tells you something about how the media works.
There is essentially no such thing as "inherent qualities" distinct from their source. Or rather, you can never actually know all the inherent qualities.
Knowledge of the sources history, character, motivations, and intentions is itself one of those inherent qualities.
If someone presents you with an idea, you often don't know if it's a good idea or just looks like a good idea because it was crafted to look good, in service of some unknown ultimate goal that you would not voluntarily choose to support if you knew everything.
Every scam in history is based on convincing a victim to harm themselves. Apparently, inherent qualities can be unknown, unknowable, or hidden. It's too late to contest that. It's already been happening for all of human history, and on every possible scale.
Judging something because the source has a known evil character is not wrong or counterproductive or unfair the way it is judging something because the source has pleasing charisma or lacks it.
If a Nazi says something, it's automatically not a wonderful idea in the first place, even if someone else later says the exact same thing and we all agree it's a wonderful idea then.
It's not wrong or illogical. It's just a slight of hand used by the dishonest (or the merely misguided) to try to make it seem wrong or hypocritical by pointing out only the surface similarity between that and prejudice based on nothing that stands up to scrutiny, when those are actually two very different things.
It's like a less obvious version of crying about being ddnied the freedom to deny others freedom.
Nowadays, exactly the same process you describe, is used to cancel people without proper chance for them to defend themselves. So I would be double careful with "multiple accusations", amplified in mass media and/or social media bubble because this is exactly how mob virtually lynches people in 2022.
What do you mean by 'cancel', outside the context of blacklisting entertainers? How does that apply to a CEO? Presumably anyone considering employing or funding him is entitled (and likely competent) to read the facts and others' thoughts about them.
I think the point about 'multiple accusers' is fair. People will come out of the woodwork, especially when there's money at stake (from the press or from legal action). Michael Jackson is a good example: undoubtedly he did rape some of those kids, but not all of them. Still, I don't see why this provides an argument against forming an opinion, rather than one for forming opinions judiciously.
Also, look up Jesse Washington if you want to understand what lynching means.
Not "we", but people like you certainly. There is no "credibility" if there is no real evidence. History is full of journalists creating sensational articles and amplifying things out of proportion to sale news papers. They deliberately leave out the context just to create outrage. You feel entitled for being jury and the judge and punish a person because it all "feels" right - except if you would be on the receiving end.
Unfortunately, that approach leads to confimation bias, as well as other biases. The point being - the media and other nefarious characters knowing - once the seed of accusations are planted, for the most part we are wired *not* to let go of that. It lives on well after the real facts have surfaced.
Also, along the same lines, the human memory is fairly easy to manipulate. It's not the air tight SSD we all presume it to be.
As a rule of thumb "follow the money". The fact is there are plenty of CEOs and other champions of Crony Capitalism that would pay good money to see him fall. If Big Sugar can buy off Harvard profs and their research so they blame fat for America's failing health ...Price is definitely fair game. And look...sugar still gets a free pass from most people.
I'm not defending Price. He's got a lawyer for that. Simply pointing out that beneath the surface, the world is a dirty place. When money and the status quo is involved I'm far slower to jump to conclusions.
You may form opinions which are yours to keep. When you enable a hivemind with half the power of the legal system, you ought to bear half the responsibility of the legal system.
> Multiple credible accusations, corroborated by contemporaneous accounts, collated by a reputable journalist is definitely enough to call the accusations founded.
Journalists build a narrative and then find facts that fit their narrative. If you continue to form your opinions on accusation you will find yourself easily manipulated by those who know how journalism works.
Your take is that having sex with someone who you believe to be asleep is ok if that person has chosen to sleep in the same room as you and to take cannabis?
An online mob isn’t what put this guy’s behavior in the spotlight - it was the reporting done by a journalist who saw through his program and the actions of women who were willing to go to the police, to speak to each other, and to talk to reporters.
The power of social media that this story reveals is the degree to which presence and popularity can drown out important information. He just kept rooting his horn and everyone forgot what his wife said.
That's why you don't judge someone by what they say but what they actually do. Cutting his pay and giving hikes to his employees is commendable. The rest of the allegations against him, not so.
There has been plenty of those accusations like waterboarding his ex-wife and usually no smoke without a fire is pretty good thumb-rule about these things.
This is actual human beings approaching legitimate newspapers with fact checking departments and legal departments and risks of defamation lawsuits, providing their stories and attaching their names to it.
Everyone of the entities involved are at risk of being sued for defamation if they are lying in this situation. The fact that people can’t tell the difference between Twitter BS and actual news claims is a true indictment of modern society.
Some might see it as a true indictment of modern journalism, more concerned with generating clicks than reporting news. Also the bar for defamation is extremely high, spreading lies is not enough to qualify.
Defamation is a hard thing to prove. For one, the one who publishes must know that something isn't true. Newspapers have zero risk of that when they quote somebody's statement.
If one wanted to wage a dirt campaign against him the accusations would look exactly like they do now. He is obviously a controversial figure. Might have rustled the wrong feathers.
Many accusation are also very nebulous, hard to verify and avoiding anything concrete that could get the person making them get sued for defamation.
Of course, he also could just be an asshole and abuser. We simply can't know.
Exactly! Also the media should be sharing more of this. Than continue to push out stories that are already resolved. The brother Lucas ended up paying for all the lawyer fees after Dan won the case Interesting how the media continues to bring up the lawsuit but never share the real story and the outcome to the lawsuit. I guess it is more profitable to spread lies.
Here is one article sharing the details after the lawsuit with Dan and his brother. People should do more research before blasting opinions. It is terrible what the US is allowed to share and spread buyer to gain more article clicks!
Just curious if you have an opinion regarding Deshaun Watson or his accusers. For context, he is a high-profile quarterback who earlier today was suspended by the NFL, based on a series of mostly anonymous accusations of sexual misconduct.
The very concept of slander could be defined as "smoke without fire". Surely you agree that slander exists, whether or not it's the case in this particular situation?
Also, $70K is absolutely terrible in Seattle. I don't know why everyone applauded. He was massively underpaying most employees before and still did after.
Sure, but his company is a credit card processing company, so there are probably a lot of tech workers.
I mean, a quick look at Glassdoor will show that while they do pay their "minimum" wage workers (which is probably an incredibly small part of their employees given the industry it's in) way above market, they underpay the rest and it is mentioned in almost all the negative reviews.
Sounds like they/he decided to pay their workers more evenly across the different roles. That choice would be internally consistent and desirable for some.
As the sole shareholder, does that mean he is reaping all the profits? It sounds like they had millions in profits from the article? That is quite a niche for a small company to carve out, when their competitors are stripe etc
This really is a good reason to keep personal and professional lives separate.
I'd like to see more people having one name at work, and another for their personal life, and keeping each compartmentalized.
It's legal to do in England for example. You can have as many names as you like, including surnames. To use multiple names for the purposes of furthering fraud or evading the police is illegal though.
"But you never wore a ring, I didn't know you had a wife." -- "And my wife doesn't know I have a job, I keep my personal and professional life separate."
Western names are really odd and strange. So many people named after the fact that their grand-grand-grand-fathers did a certain job or people named after the city their forefathers used to live in and stuff like that. We think of names as fixed, but really the only reason they are like that is to support bureaucracy. A fluid relationship with names seems strange and exotic to us, but is far more natural.
The really unfortunate part of this is the number of people who will use this as evidence that what he did with Gravity Payments either simply doesn't work, or is an actively bad idea.
Because, as several others here have pointed out, either someone is a Perfect Paragon of Purity, or they are Evil To Be Shunned And Cast Out...and everything associated with them must follow in either case.
"Gravity Payments, which helps businesses process mobile and point-of-sale payments, cleared $6.5 billion in transactions for more than 12,000 businesses in 2014."
What exactly is the business model here? What do they do?
Allowing you to accept something other than cash without the hassle of interacting with a myriad of banks (and their APIs) yourself. They either give you a terminal to do it or an add-on for whatever you have currently. And they do the same for e-commerce.
I don't know about Gravity Payments but one of the huge money making machine in credit industry is collections. If you can figure out tricks to have people pay off their debt without getting dragged into expensive court, you get a huge portion of the proceeds. Many people would just pay things off right away because they did not notice library fines and things like that. As collection agency, you get huge cut for basically locating a person and sending them $0.25 mail.
Context matter. Tim invested small (for him) amount of money in company of daughter of the family friend. At seed stage - there was really no due diligence to do at the time.
That’s like saying you can be a New Yorker without living in New York.
Just ain’t possible. Culture comes from circumstances, weather, geography, history and so many other things. Something is always lost when you try to copy it without the context.
But Silicon Valley isn't even a fixed geographical location before. It used to refer only to the South Bay. But during this tech boom, it has spread to as far as San Francisco to the north, and to the East Bay. It's a very fluid entity with no fixed boundaries.
Facebook was started at Harvard, it only moved to Palo Alto later on. Does that make it truly a Silicon Valley company, or a johnny come lately? What about Amazon or Microsoft, the standard-bearers of the Seattle tech scene? Are they somehow not Silicon Valley even if their industry impact and business practices line up exactly with the rest of the Silicon Valley crowd? Perhaps it can be said that in some contexts, "Silicon Valley" can be synonymous with "the American tech industry in general."
Terraform Labs was based in Seoul. The name of the company was not "Terraluna".
I'm uncertain what Silicon Valley has to do with Terraform Labs, WeWork, nor Gravity Payments given that neither of these companies were based in the valley.
If you are attempting to make a jab at Silicon Valley, it doesn't seem to be landing.
That's a legal principle which exists because of the incredibly high bar we want our governments to cross before they deprive people of their liberties. Individual citizens can believe whatever they want to believe.
You are absolutely correct, but many people like to forget this cause obviously mob justice only happens to bad people. They tend to hold this position right until the mob stands in front of their own door.
Its generaly attributed to Sir William Garrow a British barrister who made the notion that people should be innocent until proven guilty in trial in 1791. before that the justice system was guilty until proven innocent, so the salem witch trials in 1692 would absolutely be under guilty until proven innocent and unfair trials like that are what changed people mind to mob justice where guilt is assumed not proven.
Exactly! HN is full of armchair judges, armchair scientists, armchair inventors, armchair researchers, you name it! More likely than not, their comments are going to be negative, belittling and demorsalizing to actual human beings involved.
This goes both ways. We don't know which party is guilty. It could be the women. It could be the defendant. We don't know. We don't have access to the case files. The jury is still out there.
Pretty sure this is not how the HN commenters behave with their colleagues in real life or they would be without jobs pretty soon. Pretty sure they would hate it if they were the target of such comments that they spew out here. But here on HN, it is just so easy to sit behind a keyboard and become an armchair expert in everything and attack others or their work or their inventions or their writings. Absolutely deplorable. I am very disappointed!
FYI I’m replying with a humorous (to me) notice. While many HN folks fit your “armchair” statements, I can’t help but think that (as programmers) we generate a lot of value while sitting in chairs that have armrests. I haven’t read the article yet (I generally check the comments first to see if it’s worthwhile, and this one looks interesting), but I can’t help but contrast your opinion with the idea that your “armchair judges” have a level of (pseudo?)intellectual value that I appreciate. I have good experience using the opinions here as a good “tell” whether or not internet content (like the current article) is worth my time.
I don't want to read the times article, it's just going to be more accusations and conjecture without proof
And even if I did, and decided I don't want to let my daughter near him based on the rumours, I would certainly not slander him in public based on rumours
The problem is the bar for proof, like a guilty verdict, is so high in cases of massive power differentials, that it is almost unreachable. Look at Harvey. It was an open secret for decades. He used his connections, payoffs, shady private investigators to suppress his victims. Or like Dan Price put it himself:
> “In the unlikely event that you are falsely accused, remember that it will be much easier for you to overcome false allegations than it will be for actual victims to overcome the trauma of harassment or assault.”
social discretion has nothing to do with the legal system
that being reiterated, thats a total nightmare for the guy in that couple to reinforce his girlfriend to see Dan, another man, and then needing to rescue her from peril, whether that’s just reckless driving that made her uncomfortable and putting her in danger or if thats includes a someone (Dan’s) hand on her neck and that crossing her boundaries and that relationship’s boundaries (I would say consensual or nonconsensual, but these are things I don't know with this dynamic, read below). Thats nightmarish when I think about people I love.
I find it interesting that they both made a trip to Seattle from San Diego and the boyfriend was therefore available to rescue her by car, I am wondering if that context was made clear during this date with Dan. This doesnt excuse any nonconsensual thing, there are some aspects I find completely foreign.
The man literally hired a professional to write fake content signaling virtue. Quite a bit of content. I don’t think it’s a political affiliation thing.
Wanting to do good and talking about doing good in proportional amounts to the (a lot of) bad you are doing (as well as a solid way to gaslight everyone and drown out the negative sentiment) are not the same thing. Virtue signaling refers to the latter, not the former. No need to invent strawmen to "dunk on conservatives", conservative politicians give plenty of actual legitimate reasons to be disliked.
Without commenting on the actual story, human morality isn't a single switch (or even dial) with evil on one side and good on the other — it is entirely possible to be a demon in one aspect and at the same time an angel in another.
For example: Washington bought slave's teeth, with circumstantial evidence those teeth ended up in his mouth. By the time he died, he was against slavery but didn't seem to know how to approach the abolition of the practice.
An anecdote of why we should be comfortable with not idolizing any moral figures and yet respect whatever good things they've achieved / done. I guess this dichotomy of how broken men / women can also do great things or how great men / women can also do bad things is something we have to deal with in the real world. Could I point to DC Comics for some simple life lessons on that?
I'm thinking that he wouldn't have been allowed to become successful unless there was dirt on him.
It's the sad reality nowadays that the only people who can speak for the average person and for what's right are compromised in some way... They have to be compromised in order to be allowed to get that kind of reach.
Still, the accusations against him sound kind of hand-wavy... The 'waterboarding' thing sounds bad but if consent was given and it was done out of curiosity or thrill-seeking then there is no crime there.
'They' are a bunch of algorithms and they don't take appointments. Just say a lot of positive things about the following topics on social media and the algorithms will start working for you:
- Fiat monetary system
- Banks
- Big corporations
- Big tech
- Hedge funds
- Billionaires
- The importance of censorship to prevent misinformation
- Executive bonuses
- Surveillance
- The need for more regulations
- Big government
- Stakeholder capitalism
- Climate change
- Inclusivity
Never say anything negative about them. Only positive but try to keep it realistic, don't go overboard because the algorithms might interpret that as sarcasm. You're welcome.
It doesn't require a conspiracy for tech platforms to modify their algorithms to promote certain agendas.
Governments can print unlimited amounts of new currency; this provides them a mechanism to distort the markets to reward activities which suit their agenda. ESG is a prime example of that.
Even wars happen in a large part because governments can print unlimited money and hand out huge contracts to weapons manufacturers.
The government doesn't care about net losses because citizens are the ones who will pay through inflation...
So long as the politicians' buddies who head the weapons manufacturing companies can rake in the profits, all is well. But government agendas extend far beyond just wars; they extend to just about every aspect of the economy these days.
Efficient market hypothesis is becoming increasingly irrelevant as government intervention in the economy increases.
How you jumped from private tech companies and their "agenda" to governments printing money for their "agenda" is really weird. While some of what you're saying has a seed of truth to it, you definitely like jumping to all sorts of conspiracies. I think you should speak to a mental health professional.
Let's not pretend that governments aren't working for big corporations. There is a lot of overlap between the private agenda of various large corporations and the government agenda. If it seems disconnected it's only because I don't have time to write out the whole theory and explain how all the different parts of the economy interact and TBH I can't say I fully understand it to be able to make an airtight argument. I just understand enough to make some predictions. The economy is too complex to fully explain; all you can do is lay out some loosely related facts and hope that it resonates with the reader. It's not a hard science. Let's wait 10 years and see which of us is the one who needed to see a professional.
I think if you start tweeting or publishing a lot of positive material on social media exclusively around those topics (save for the last few topics, because a lot of people actually are into those in 2022), you are far more likely to end up in a situation that is the exact opposite of "algorithms working for you".
Unless you amp it up to the point of irony/satire maybe, so that people would follow it for the comedic effect. But for that approach to actually work, the tin foil powerlevel gotta be a bit higher.
Alternatively, psychopaths who are good at pandering on social media and attracting a lot of attention from gullible people, are also likely to do messed up things in their private life.
It doesn't have to be some kind of conspiracy, I don't know who you think is doing the "allowing to become successful" here.
Sorry, but this seems ridiculous. Surely it's plausible that a tech company can see success independently of any dirt on a founder, and that his $70k thing made for easy headlines and brought him a lot of attention.
It's more likely that a self-promoter conceives of this sort of angle and with a view to pushing it as a gimmick, and that the same personality type is prone to the allegedly selfish behaviour.
You underestimate how many people there are in the world competing for attention. I guarantee you that there are many far more interesting stories which never see the light of day.
No, I absolutely don't underestimate it. Why would you assume that the far more interesting stories would get more press? No one says "the far more interesting wheel gets the oil". There are loads of contributing factors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/technology/dan-price-resi...