EDIT: It seems like the sites can't be held responsible because they didn't create the false information, they just disseminated it. Leaving up the wrong part of my comment for context.
The sites that ran articles quoting the garbage medium article should get sued over this. RMS lost his job and doesn't have anywhere to live because someone who never met him decided to write a hit piece instead of talking like an adult.
Yes, but the actual incident and blog post was weeks ago, and this is the kind of combination of thing that rags like to pick up on-- harshly-treated victim, forgotten by an up-and-coming company that doesn't know how to spin PR properly.
> a company specializing in optimizing LinkedIn posts, has been criticized after posting a crying selfie of himself on a LinkedIn post
And got press pickup from it. Everybody in the media (really, everybody on social media) should read Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. It talks about how companies plant negative media stories about themselves for publicity (from the pov of someone who has done it).
The story got retracted in total by NPR: click on the NPR link. It seems that Jeffrey Ervine, the self-proclaimed anti-cyber bully advocate, had fabricated everything from start to finish, to help his Bridg-It business sell its products. Congrats NPR and all the others here! Way to go!
This article raises red flags on the author's credibility. This looks less like a truthful account of a story, and more like a frustrated small company who had a partnership go bad, and are trying to defame their partner.
A whole web site, with linkbait headlines, set up to tell one story? Their about page doesn't even say they are trying to start a discussion... it just rehashes the story. With a few other pages to give a token appearance that they will tell more stories later.
I am sure there was fault on both sides, and I am equally sure the other side would have a vastly different story.
But this whole site sure looks like juvenile vengeance.
I would really appreciate more information from NPR on why the story was retracted and what, specifically, was wrong with the story. NPR's statement mentions that the site that was allegedly defaming Jefferey Ervine was never contacted and that the author of that site was maybe not really the author and they weren't contacted either. In fact, reading through the retraction, I was left with the suspicion that the _only_ person that NPR talked to was Jeffery Ervine himself.
Jeffery Ervine is now the president of Bridgit.com which... Well, even after looking at the site it's not clear to me what they do. It kind of sounds like they work with schools to combat bullying[0] and there's a page on the site covering the same material as the NPR piece.[1] But the NPR piece does end up spending a lot of time on Ervine and the story wraps up with a plug for his new company.[2]
Without more information from NPR, my first thought is that Ervine mis-represented his story in an attempt to drum-up publicity for his new company and NPR was sufficiently embarrassed that they have removed the story from their site. Bu that's just me guessing, since this retraction has practically no useful information.
Have you reached out to anyone? https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/news-tips/ would be my first place to go. It even specifically calls out "Here is proof that this company is conducting itself unethically" as an example, and asks for evidence corroborating the story. So if you have it, that would seem to be the place.
Having said that, I was more wondering if the people doing the threatening could be turned to better use. They surely aren't in it for the warm fuzzies, and if they're good at digging perhaps they could be convinced to do it for the good guys.
The original article had a long insightful comment- the author has since deleted it (some may have noticed the censoring). I will not be surprised if MGA's attack on Mucciolo's might be deleted as well- as MGA deleted its tweets.
Here is a record just in case: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/toy-billionaire-deletes-post-sla...
I detect some biased portrayal on part of the author towards MGA (investment newsletter)- we get that they made a killing on a 'great' product, but its negative implications cannot be understated.
Takeaways:
1. MGA is just profiting from trendy cultural uprisings, without actually believing in any values it embodies- as seen in its attack on Mucciolo
2. MGA is brainwashing girls into following counter-culture examples to fuel #1
So yes, MGA might be an underdog here (that is why the appeal), but not all underdogs are good: portraying as one is just another marketing stunt to accomplish 1 & 2
Note: "Fully developed brain" for girls as described in the article denies the fact that they are more susceptible than the general public to marketing tricks
If that second article is not fabricated then I believe the producers of that should be in jail. Forcing someone to do something that will injure them or they won't get paid anything, after lying about it.
I'm sure the whole industry is horrible but this seems pretty clearcut and high profile.
It it just me, or does the mob mentality of this scare anyone else just a little? With no real evidence and certainly no trial, a one-sided tale told on reddit led to the destruction of a small business.
Did this marketing company forget what happened to Cook's Source when they screwed with the little people? The internet doesn't respond kindly to that type of bullying:
I think you're missing the point--the CEO asked the victim to take down her blog because it was bad press. If you were considering funding the company, wouldn't you want to know about potential issues?
Whoever wrote this is an anonymous coward that was harassing employees from fake addresses and actively making up lies to sabotage the company for months. The person even made fake glassdoor reviews. It’s all half truths and bullshit. Is MariaDB perfect? Probably not, but they’re not about to go under. I mean the business writes all the code and keeps the foundation alive.
I just checked with some people I know over there and they can still slack Monty. He is still in their hr thing. Also, the old CFO wasn’t fired, he had to leave for some reason but still worked there for months after. They have a new CFO already. https://mariadb.com/newsroom/press-releases/mariadb-names-co...
Lawsuits are usually public and you can google it. There’s no crazy lawsuits like the person says. It’s just lies.
My wall street buddy told me the insurance stuff is standard practice when a company goes public. I think every public company has this. All the stuff about business risk is like standard boilerplate stuff. Every company is at risk if they don’t make profit or meet targets. Like wtf?
Even the stock price stuff - Look at the volumes, someone is screwing with them. Employees can’t sell yet anyway.
There’s accusations of "racism, sexism, and abuse" but like their youtube has women and a guy with a turban and a bunch of other races. There’s no lawsuits I could find either.
It’s like all taken out of context from SEC filings to make some sort of bullshit story.
I have seen corporate bullshit (including someone getting bullied into suicide) and believe every word. This deserves to get attention.
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