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Comment by cyberpunk | Hacker News Reader

What would be the motivation behind creating a 'false' rhetoric such as the experiences of women in tech?

I've certainly seen this happening / had to deal with it, I do feel that this is still an issue and something we need to improve. While it's not an across the board problem, I suspect most women working in tech would agree with me; the story, which I don't stand behind as as legitimate, is very similar to the sorts of things I've seen going on.

I wish we could just make it very hard for either false (I've seen this case happen, demonstrably, too) or true claims such as these to occur.

In most cases, talking to leads/mgt BEFORE these things get really bad would have helped and that's something we should be making easier..

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I don't know the motivation. Perhaps someone feels harassment is a real problem, but can't find any real examples of it, so feels the need to tell lies for a good cause? Perhaps someone merely wants to harm Uber? They certainly have no shortage of people who hate them.

But regardless of motivation, the facts show that many people are willing to fake stories just to support their "team". Sometimes they do this at great personal risk and cost, e.g. lighting their own truck on fire or making false police reports. As an example of one category, there have been many such incidents since Nov 7:

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/12/23/denton-man-s... http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/12/14/hate-hoax-nyc-musl... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/S-Jersey-man-ar... http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/ann-arbor-police-womans-s... http://patch.com/new-york/gardencity/man-who-drew-swastikas-...

So it's hardly beyond the realm of possibility that such a person took an hour to write a medium post in an incognito window for such purposes.

Sure; I can't fault any of that. Even if this was a link to a chapter of a fictional book though, I'd be saying the same thing.

I don't accept this as truth, I assume it's fiction as no one is standing behind it. My only point was, that in general, none of us are terribly shocked by stories such as these, and that's what I wanted to talk about.

I really do hope that less of this goes on than is reported, I sadly feel that the opposite is true -- and that's from personal experiences not unverifiable stories on the internetz.

Real or not, no one's shocked because we just had a major eye-opener (Fowler) so recently.

I normally disagree with everything 'yummyfajitas posts, and I personally dislike Uber due to the number of well documented unethical actions they've taken. Additionally, I think this type of story has played out so many times that no one thinks the story is truly unbelievable.

In light of all of that I still think this is the kind of story that needs to be verified before action is taken. Just off the top of my head I could think of a number of reasons for someone to create a false story in this situation ranging from semi-believable, a competitor like Lyft adding more fuel to Uber's current PR fire, to conspiracy theory level, China trying to hurt a foreign company so that Didi Chuxing has an easier time growing.

Its unfortunate, but the internet allows unethical actors to craft and spread unverifiable stories with little effort but a high payoff due to the emotions of everyone who reads them. The same feeling that leads us to want to take action after reading this, because it would be genuinely terrible if true and we want to believe people, is the same feeling that leads anti vaxxers to believe fake science they find on the internet.

It absolutely does (need verification).

As for the false news/polarisation thing... Am I the only one starting to panic just a teeny little bit?

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