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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

> Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?

Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a prominent person post the details of a personal extortion attempt out of defiance for all to see.

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AMI picked the wrong person. Jeff, literally, has tons of money, extremely respected in the business world.

Forget about the embarrassment, if he secretly capitulates to this, then the real blackmail material would be the capitulation, not the photos. Cause if the owner of Washington Post bowed down to blackmail, every article published in the article will be called into question.

And who gives a shit if a billionaire cheated on his wife or sent dick pics. I don't care. Did he murder someone? Did he not divorce his wife by parting with half his fortune?

Agreed, if he gave into the request this time, it would have only escalated. Fast forward in time. Oh, we also want you to remove this article, or stop talking about that subject. If you now disagree, not only will we release the photos, but it'll also become public that you've been our puppet for years, and both you and the Washington Post have no credibility and everything you've written in the past cannot be trusted.

I imagine this was the goal. They have some nude photos which are embarrassing and a chance for them to get in the door. If they could get Bezos and Washington Post to bow down on that, they'd have much more power and leverage going forward that could potentially destroy them both. Bezos called them out, and now all they have are these fairly meaningless Bezos nudes, which are not in the highest of demand.

I heard some people suggesting that it was a really poor move to blackmail Bezos in writing. However, if you believe the above, then it makes perfect sense. They wanted a very clean paper trail of their requests, Bezos and the Washington Post accepting the offer, and the future outcome of those actions. This would provide them with blackmail material much more valuable than the photos.

Looking at descriptions of those photos, I honestly don't understand why it's even such a big deal. And I suspect that it's not nearly as big of a deal to Bezos as the blackmailers thought it would be. Perhaps a little projection at play.

It's a big deal because buckling to blackmail will hurt his credibility immensely more.

I think AMI was looking forward to either damage WaPo or want JB to relinquish control of it. The game is WaPo, not JB.

Who knows why anyone thought it might have been a big deal. I can imagine reasons. Maybe not all the photos were exchanged with Sanchez. Maybe those descriptions are sufficient to identify the photos within Bezos' collection, but the description doesn't include the most salacious details.

The whole affair reminds me of nothing so much as that scene in "The Dark Knight" that ends with Lucius Fox saying ". . . and your plan is to blackmail this person? Good luck."

A masterful performance by Morgan Freeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUfv32dmVFw

> literally has tons of money

If his keeps his money in $100 bills, then you're right. $136 billion would weigh about 1,230 metric tons.

More likely, his cash consists of electronic entries in bank systems which weigh substantially less.

If you count the weight of the servers required to service all the funds at the institutions his money resides at, and the percentage of his funds compared to the overall amount at that institution, it still might be tons.

but what if you only accounted for the drives in the servers that contained the data ? would it still hit that 'multiple ton' threshold

Literally has literally been destroyed:

"Used for emphasis while not being literally true." [1]

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/literally

Also, naked selfies have somewhat become normal in the smartphone age. It's nothing you can shock anybody with anymore...

> if he secretly capitulates to this, then the real blackmail material would be the capitulation, not the photos.

I wonder if this was the plan all along.

> Did he not divorce his wife by parting with half his fortune?

Half of their fortune. It was communal property.

David Letterman laid out the details of a blackmail attempt on air a several years ago. If memory serves, he had been having sex with a young staffer on his show. These sorts of blackmail blowbacks happen from time to time, and it's always people who are very secure - either with money or social status or both - who are able to pull them off.

Not specifically a big fan of Uncle Jeff but gotta admit it takes some guts to publish such a thing.

Sneaky edit : I'm sure one could not ignore his massive balls on any of the selfies AMI allegedly got their hands on ;)

Yeah, and he makes a great point - if he can't fight back against this sort of thing, then who the heck ever could?

Exactly - I'm trying to imagine being in his place and being open about all of this...and it's HARD. It's easy for me to want HIM to do it, but as much as I think being disgustingly wealthy would be great...I'm sure I'd still be really nervous about pressing that button.

And it's easy for us to say "Well I wouldn't be in that place to begin with", but as I much as I not be in this EXACT place, most of us have made mistakes that we deeply regret and fear getting out, or at least have the capability to. I don't have to assume I'd do this particular set of bad acts to be vulnerable. And once socially vulnerable, would money make it go away? No, not entirely, not enough. So how hard must it be for people who AREN'T disgustingly wealthy? Or even wealthy? Or even well-off?

Heck, with the quality of "deepfakes" or whatever now-a-days, all you need to do is find someone vulnerable to BEING vulnerable, and they don't even have to have done wrong. One marriage that has had no infidelity but is struggling, one person with a child/spouse who is suffering from serious depression/anxiety/suicidal/related issues. "hey, I have these pictures, and if you do X they don't have to see the light of day. You can deny them being real all you want...do you think that will really help?"

Or take the gross spectacle of releasing celebrity sex pics, or even just non-celebrity revenge pics. The only answer is for (1) we as a society to reject attempts to abuse this info and (2) to be less puritanical and judgmental about the victims here. To the Bezos example, one person can do wrong and we can oppose another using it to do wrong against them without condoning any of the original wrong.

Bezos has a hard time doing this, and it's far, far easier for him than for anyone else. I didn't care about his personal life before (note: Not the same as saying it doesn't matter) and I still don't, but even if I did I can find the blackmail efforts repugnant without letting adulterers off the hook.

...but that's hard too. Just not nearly as hard.

> most of us have made mistakes that we deeply regret and fear getting out

Agreed, probably Jeff Bezos has made those mistakes as well. However I fail to see any mistakes of his threatened to be revealed.

> However I fail to see any mistakes of his threatened to be revealed.

Cheating on his wife?

During what appears to be an amicable divorce? With an age-appropriate woman? I'm not sure that rises to the level of "mistake," and certainly not to blackmailable acts.

AMI way overplayed their hand here, and we may yet find that they had gone all-in.

This isn't the 1950s. The conservative candidate in the last election is literally a serial philanderer. We're way past the point where the public at large is going to wring their hands about hum drum infidelity.

Jeff was using company money and contracts to keep his mistress happy. The pictures keep that in the spotlight.

And despite the letter, does anyone think he isn’t spending a big chunk of time on this?

Most Fortune 500 CEOs would be gone or forced into retirement.

> Jeff was using company money and contracts to keep his mistress happy.

That would mean he literally committed fraud. What's your source for that info?

> And despite the letter, does anyone think he isn’t spending a big chunk of time on this?

Why shouldn't he spend his time on whatever he wants?

> fraud

Blue Origin yanked a super bowl ad after it was disclosed Sanchez was involved in its production team (presumably she was not free, and the ad certainly wasn’t.) It was then shifted to Washington Post at the last minute, with a slapdash ad. [0]

> ... time on whatever he wants?

He can, but that time has to come from somewhere. It’s hard to believe Amazon is getting his full attention. He can own the stock, but I certainly question whether Amazon has a business-focused leader right now.

[0]https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/04/jeff-bezo...

I think another interesting thing about these times, compared to when such things may have happened 20+ years ago, is that the photos they've described would cause rather little outrage or attract much beyond a few giggles from the public. Especially if released after their existence is already known about. I think the iCloud leaks of 2014 severely tempered society's salacious demand for more pictures of this nature.

This is especially true because it isn't a matter of hypocrisy: Bezos isn't a political figure or religious authority claiming high moral standards.

As I read Bezos's post, I noticed that at the section where he describes the photographs, I found myself simply scrolling past them to get to the next part of the story.

100% — Let’s be realistic. Between two consenting adults is there anything non-violent that is truly that weird? We have a few pleasure bits attached to our bodies. Some people get excited by objects (fetishes). When you step back a level, the window dressing becomes laughably irrelevant. You’ve seen my dick? Oh no. You saw me courting another female? Private, but oh, the horror.... it’s just so silly in the scheme of it all. I would laugh and laugh at anyone that tried to extort me in this way. “Hey team, someone stole some dick picks of mine, don’t look at them if you want eye contact to remain comfortable, lol.” Life goes on. Am I being a little flippant, yeah, but seriously, step back, in 10 years this won’t even be a footnote on his Wikipedia page beyond the fact that he spanked AMI like the bad toddlers they are.

Even violent consenting things shouldn’t be weird.

> is there anything non-violent that is truly that weird?

Weird and outrageous things I can think of that people have consented to:

- 'playing' with excrement (Gross! this is what the owner of Whole Foods thinks of basic hygiene)

- master slave play (Misogynist Bezos ordered this woman to ...)

- cuckolding (haha Bezos isn't enough of a man to satisfy his girlfriend himself)

None of those are weird or outrageous if all participants are enthusiastically consenting adults.

Which of the sample headlines I gave would not cause outrage you think?

Maybe the last one will 'only' cause you to lose the respect and thereby business deals of your peers.

"I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything."

--The President of the United States

Everything you mention pales in comparison to the quote above as long as it's between enthusiastically consenting adults.

Outrage? I doubt it, frankly. Max Mosley was literally filmed in 2008 having a BDSM orgy with hookers dressed up in Nazi regalia and even then the reaction was more muted than not. To the extent there was a public outcry it stemmed entirely from the Nazi themes more than the sexual acts themselves. Personally I give that a pass as well, but understand why it would ruffle feathers.

Probably more to do with the fact that there's so much high quality porn on the internet that we're honestly desensitized to amateur quality celeb nudes. Briefly intriguing, but overall rather "meh?"

Granted, I could just be projecting, but I don't think I'm alone here.

Well, it's sort of weird because I think at one time the thought was that "serious people" would never take a nude of themselves or have affairs, that this kind of action was somehow "beyond the pale" and an action only a few outliers engage in. Nowadays, everyone seems to have decided that these activities are actually very common, though likely still in the minority (I think??)

By and large, humans are sympathetic when they can empathise - or in other words when they can see themselves in another's shoes. At this point, I'd wager most adults in the developed world have learned that they too have an impressive capacity to grow skeletons in their own digital closet, and adjust their worldview and morality slider accordingly.

I think I speak for the majority of humanity when I say I have zero desire to see Jeff Bezos’ package. There’s a reason tabloids stick to celebrities.

I don't know. To be honest, I'm a tad curious. The prospect of memes comparing him to Johnny Sins and subsequent bezos / Amazon porn parodies seems humorous.

Yeah, AMI really seems to be operating with an outdated world view here, whereas Bezos correctly assessed that the public at large will be more impressed by the act of standing up to a blackmail attempt than they're concerned about his marital fidelity. AMI's going to get dunked hard : being simultaneously amoral and stupid makes them the easiest target in the world.

I remember David Letterman doing just that. Apparently that's the conventional wisdom on this sort of thing: announce it yourself rather than let the other person take the first public move.

I guess he had no real choice, there is no way the extortionist would not come back for more.

Maybe a combination of defiance and comic relief:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7f9D4KclJw

(David Letterman talks about an extortion attempt on him)

David Letterman was being extorted over an affair in 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaIwHWEE7k

That's some Reynolds Pamphlet biz right there.

David Letterman also did it very publicly on his TV show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44QgPty17Mc

This shows the whole Trump/AMI/Campaign org to essentially be a criminal mafia enterprise.

> This shows the whole Trump/AMI/Campaign org to essentially be a criminal mafia enterprise.

There are quite a few connections with organized crime, it turns out. This isn't just a random slur, but something that merits investigation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/are-trumps-mob-conne...

and of course there's this, too:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/d...

Are the people downvoting this (presumably Trump supporters), that AMI admitted guilt in attempting to influence the 2016 by using their well known tactics to snub a story damaging to the candidate, and that their plea agreement stipulates that they would no longer commit anymore crimes, and that by blackmailing Bezos, they're essentially broken their plea agreement?

This is the very definition of a criminal enterprise. Breaking federal election laws, blackmailing those investigating your crimes. If the connection to the Trump campaign bothers you, that too is factual, given that AMI's agreement involved assistance they gave to the Trump campaign that was illegal, and the owner, David Pecker, is a close personal friend of the President.

There's pretty good circumstantial evidence from this, and the Cohen tapes, that using power and privilege to "deal with" personal or political enemies does not give pause to these people.

Thus, mafia-like behavior.

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