eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Story of a Stalking Scandal | Hacker News Reader

eBay’s Cockroach Cult: The Story of a Stalking Scandal

nytimes.com

194 pointspseudolus107 comments

Mr. Wenig and Mr. Wymer have no such worries. In June, Mr. Wenig was re-elected to the board of General Motors, a position that pays $317,000 a year. Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, called the cyberstalking scandal “regrettable” but noted “it didn’t involve any GM business.”

Mr. Wymer has a new job, as the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. The chair of the board said the nonprofit was “aware” of what happened at eBay, but believes Mr. Wymer is “a leader with integrity” and was the unanimous choice for the job.

I'm uncomfortable with the way that "cancellation" can destroy people's careers without a proper trial, but after reading the article I'm also disgusted that these two are able to continue their careers without apparent repercussion.

Is the problem that I'm trusting the article without allowing the two to defend themselves? Is it better to trust the judicial system is sufficient? Or are extra-judicial "mob style" punishments actually a good thing in cases like this?

Cancellation culture exists because this is the expected norm for those in power. A slap on the wrist at worst while being protected by their powerful friends and expensive lawyers. Most likely they'll also destroy the lives of anyone who tries to get justice (blacklisting, smear campaigns, lawsuits, etc.). So you get a mob together where no one person is an easy target for having their life destroyed and ignore the justice system which can be easily bent with money/connections. It's a logical response to the power structure in place.

But who's getting canceled under cancel culture? The people "in power"[1], or rank and file employees? From a unscientific sampling of cancellations[2], it doesn't seem many people in power are being canceled. The only one I can think of is Brendan Eich, but even then I doubt he has powerful connections. If this is the case, it doesn't seem like cancel culture is achieving its objective of punishing people who previously couldn't be punished.

[1] The parent comment mentioned "being protected by their powerful friends and expensive lawyers", so I wouldn't consider someone to be "in power" just because they're high on the totem pole within a small organization.

[2] https://twitter.com/SoOppressed/status/1282404647160942598

Worth noting for the record that Brendan Eich didn’t exactly get cancelled either. Yes he was pushed out of Mozilla but he found community success and support when founding the Brave browser[0], by all accounts nobody seems to be holding it against Brave for his actions

[0] https://brave.com/about/

> Brendan Eich didn't exactly get canceled.

Brendan Eich disagrees.

https://twitter.com/brendaneich/status/1217512049716035584?l...

"In 2014-15, I could not get funding or a job, went outside valley to found Brave, took big pay cut & still-substantial long-term risk."

On on hand you're right that this is "real" cancellation but you're doing a terrible job at showing that this is some kind of undue, non-deserved pain. Being unemployed for part of two years with savings strikes me as something most humans can weather without permanent trauma.

Humans can also weather having to exist in the same world with people who believe different things than they do, too.

Yeah... I think when your beliefs are then saying that other people in society should be treated as lesser and then you push money to enable those beliefs, it crosses a line.

If people just thought stupid shit but didn’t act or vote or spend money on it, it’d not be of consequence. Problem is, few people do that. They want their beliefs to be implemented. If they think gays aren’t worthy of being treated as equals then they’re probably gonna act on it.

Which was rather the point regards the reaction to Eich, who sought to put force of law behind his differences in belief.

Frankly speaking, it'd be a better argument that he was "canceled" if he hadn't gotten funding at all. If this is what "being canceled" means, that your browser (I.e. commodity software in a mature marketplace where everyone gives it away for free) still gets funded then maybe it's not actually a meaningful harm to begin with.

I suggest "no effects at all" and "canceled for life, now dead or on welfare" is a false dichotomy. Obviously I had to rebuild a company and codebase rather than build on Firefox. Mozilla's loss, now.

I just want to be clear I hold nothing untoward against you or anything like that. I have my 10000 foot view of corporate politics and such, and we may not well align there, but I don’t want this to be taken as something untoward.

I rather appreciate that you read and responded to my comment and I don’t want any thing to come across as untoward

Too late, you've already been cancelled.

So you faced what seems like an ultimately mild consequence for a publicly-held and socially unpopular position.

And this is the cancel culture we're all supposed to be worried about, really?

What would have been, in your estimation, the appropriate consequence for working to deny marriage rights to gay people in California? Please don't say "nothing," i.e. no consequence.

Question is now, to be poignant, is to what you learned from the experience and what your regrets are.

I can't comment on anything about Mozilla covered by NDAs. The rest will have to await my memoirs.

"And what did you learn from this experience?"

Probably not to donate to causes you believe in six years before you receive a promotion at the organization you've founded and helped lead for a decade and a half?

Actually, the question is if you knew that Brendan Eich was harmed before you claimed he wasn't harmed at all.

Pretending the victim wasn't harmed and then asking him "what he learned" and "what his regrets are" is pretty malicious.

I take issue with this. Reading my question back, it wasn't intended to be malicious (short and to the point is what I was going for).

Broken down, its like this:

I'm asking what he learned: What was the take away form the situation? Is there something of value from what happened that can be shared that is worthwhile? If it comes across as implied as anything else, then I did a poor job at framing, but the question in the literal is asking nothing more than that.

My second question is simply, do you regret the experience? Do you have regrets surrounding the situation? An answer of "I don't regret anything about that situation" is another way to answer the same question.

I wasn't setting a trap, I was hoping to use the fact the person in question was actually commenting to get more information about the experience from a different source.

I don't think that's unreasonable at all.

I'm doing my absolute best to leave my own personal feelings out of it as well, which is why I used the words I did, actually, I felt they were far more along the lines of matter of fact than anything else.

Granted, I will concede we lose some of the human element in all this when talking over a text forum, so maybe this isn't obvious to others, however the questions were meant to elicit an honest response, not a defensive one.

Edit: I'll go on the record (now seeing I got an answer)

I think this narrative about "cancellation culture" is somewhat ridiculous. Its just an outgrowth of everyone being outraged in public forums now (Twitter, Facebook etc). Inevitable and very human, since any form of mass media was widely consumed (Tim Wu wrote a great book about mass media called The Master Switch which covers this very well). I don't think its a "problem" like some people make it out to be.

Secondly no, I don't think he was harmed, Brave is a successful product, and having to go outside the valley to raise money isn't "canceling" somebody. You still have a business, you still are CEO of that business, and its a successful business. In fact, I know since all this with Mozilla he's been interviewed in positive lights for Brave specifically. This isn't exactly following the guys career.

I know I'll likely take some flak for this, but I also don't disagree with what happened either. Actions have consequences, and the more publicly visible you are the more severe those consequences will be. A CEO that doesn't stand for the companies public values and missions isn't going to be kept on as CEO. In Mozilla's case, social equality is important enough that it affects the boardroom.

Your question, and explanation, read as malicious to me. Here you are explaining to someone that they weren't harmed by being fired because they managed to get another similar job two years later.

Well, I’d argue founding a company is a little more than just “managed”

I don’t mean it as being malicious. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a different point of view on what happened but that is separate from my goal of becoming more informed

And Brave is a little less than Mozilla. Regardless, you aren't in a position to tell someone else whether or not they were harmed by being fired. For one, getting fired is a pretty obvious harm. Second, the person involved is saying he considers it a harm.

Welcome to cancel culture.

Well, I think the lesson is that the safe thing to do is don't say anything on social media that could ever be perceived as remotely controversial (and given that's hard to predict probably don't do it at all), don't post photos with people because who knows might be controversial some day, and don't do anything like donations that are a matter of public record especially in a political context.

Now, most people will be fine with those things up to some point, but if you want to minimize risk you avoid those sorts of activities. And you may give up benefits if you don't do some of those things as well.

Why should he "learn from a situation", and how can you have regrets?

The way I see this:

1. He spent $1000 of his own money on something. It was a legal transaction. (Some people spend that on car stuff, others spend this on computer parts, and others spend this on their addiction to anime). Others, in other countries spend money in ways the US deems "immoral."

2. Other people tried to take what he spent it on and then apply this on his performance and tried to associate that action with "how the work place may be" (Is there evidence that he treated gay married individuals differently?)

He did have an affect from this. (All the details aren't clear.. also I don't think they're important for this arguement from this). What is your stance on punishing him for doing #1 and #2?

Its all about takeaway, of course something like this might contain some valuable lessons, just like Osbourne Computer provided us with lessons in how not to sell a new product, in effect.

I ask about regrets, because people have them, another valid answer would simply be that they do not regret anything about the situation. Sometimes, when answering the first question, they never get around to talking about this part, which can be equally if not more so valuable.

I don't know how I could phrased this - and given the comment window, for visibility sake - any other way. They're two questions that I genuinely didn't intend to be "charged". I ask the same exact questions at the end of our sprints!

Of course, the human element can be missing a little in a text forum, but I didn't want to accidentally word things in a way that would make someone defensive either, as I couldn't come up with a good way of wording things without introducing my own personal biases and opinions on the matter, which wouldn't have been a way to approach this to get someone to answer objectively (where objective means non defensive and in their own words and thoughts)

First really consider the ask, on its face value, and consider you can always answer the question in the negative, if thats how you really feel.

Thats what I was going for.

I appreciate your clarification here, and apologize for the shortness of my response:

The way your comment was phrased, combined with your dismissiveness of Eich's departure from Mozilla in the comment's predecessor caused myself, and seemingly the preponderance of your respondants to read it in the tone of a kintergarten teacher asking a child if he'd learned his lesson, and to respond as such.

Because Brave is a very niche browser still. As soon as it gets popular, people will start to remember.

It's like hacking. Most hackers won't be able to hack a specific target. But with a wide enough net they will get some hits. And the hits are usually due to the victim doing something really stupid rather than the hacker's ability. So you'd expect you'll mostly see nobodies get hacked.

The term is so broad and vague you just need to pick a meaning. Of course it would be much more useful to directly have conversations about, say, at-will employment.

That's the trade off with mob justice which doesn't mean it's not a logical response to a situation. It also doesn't mean that it's not a net benefit to society in the long term if it forces social change. Nothing is close to perfect including the current system and including cancel culture and including mass protests. Just logical and imperfect responses to situations by people who are trying to make things better.

As for larger targets, J. K. Rowling is a billionaire and is being hit by cancel culture on-and-off. Seems to be weathering the storm but the attempt is being made.

I think we’ve also entered a stage where people have learned to cynically leverage “cancellation” as a marketing strategy.

There’s no shortage of people who will rally behind someone whose been “cancelled” without any attention to the particulars. Knowing this, you can go out of your way to be cruel or obnoxious, and then turn around an play the victim to yet another mob, happy to indulge your ploy.

Louis CK, Bill O'Reilly, Matt Lauer, Megyn Kelley, and several other celebrities come to mind.

While some may technically be employees, most were also executive producers and quite powerful in their own right.

Also, your source there isn't really valid because the author says at the beginning he is specifically calling out examples of regular people getting cancelled and rather than the rich and powerful.

Celebrities, CEOs and politicians have also been cancelled, if that counts.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pajiba.com/AMP/celebrities_...

Side note: JFC I hate Google Amp. I'm preserving the link out of disgust.

Can you provide some examples?

Louis CK.

I honestly hadn’t considered that before: cancel culture is an overreaction to an under reaction.

I guess that’s just kind of what we do when we wield our protest powers. I wonder if a sensible measured reaction would be met more openly (although maybe not even possible to do).

As I see it, measured reactions against power structures get squashed. Maybe you get a token appeasement that actually changes nothing. It's just too easy for those in power to make it go away so they logically go that route. Going overboard is the only way to force a reaction other than suppression (not guaranteed of course, you might just get massive suppression instead).

A good example of this is unionization. If a decent chunk of employees are upset about things, but you don’t do anything to alleviate it, they’re more likely to want to unionize so they can force the hand of their employer.

Intuitively I think you’re right. But I also think the side effect of overreaction is that those who disagree can very easily point at it to dismiss the cause’s legitimacy. “Can’t take them seriously at all. They want to cancel everyone and defund everything.”

True but you generally get to this point where all other lesser options have failed. People are lazy and won't put the effort into mob justice if they see an easier approach. There have been decades of previous issues that simply were swept under the rug.

I also don't think public opinion matters when it comes to mob justice. It's background noise. The conversation is between the mob and those in power. If the mob frightens them enough then changes will be made. What those outside the mob think is irrelevant unless they care enough to form their own mob.

I hear you. I wonder though if the amount that the mob frightens the power is affected by public opinion. Especially when it involves politicians.

I think some politicians will care but it depends on the specifics of their voter bases. The mob and anti-mob groups tend to split across political lines so for many politicians one or the other are already lost causes. So it's a question of how your expected voter base thinks about the issue and that's likely to be a lot more skewed than the overall population. So even if 50% of the population is anti-mob, if 90% of your political party local voters are pro-mob then you have a reason to listen.

It's less that people are mob or anti-mob so much as pro their mob and anti the other mob. Don't forget that cancel culture is not an entirely left-wing phenomenon.

Plenty of the same people who rail against SJWs and leftists cancelling people would have no problems with cancelling Bill Maher, the Dixie Chicks or Colin Kaepernick.

I would think of the economic persecution of individuals as powerful weapon.

just like with any weapon:

- some will call it 'great equalizer'. Meaning that a victim no matter how small and physically weak, can still fight off a number of aggressors

- some will call it a tool of death making, that belongs to the hands of military (in the case of cancel culture, it would be equivalent to saying that this tool belongs government )

Point is, just like usage of any weapon, the morality and legality of economic persecution depends on:

- what / who is it used for

- amount of collateral damage

- who used it

- were there other means, was it legal

- the manipulative power of the legal team defending the use

One thing we can sure of, any new weapon gets adapted by all sides of a conflict.

The case of misuse of this weapon, in my view, was against Brendan Eich [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonybradley/2014/04/05/backlash...

You also had the bidirectional mess at PyCon a number of years back.

One problem is that what is going to completely blow up is at least somewhat unpredictable. And, especially if an individual is low level/status (unlike Eich), many companies are going to take the path of least resistance and "kill them all and let God sort them out" so to speak.

Which of course given that "blow up" is pretty much defined by social media footprint means that they'll also have whatever happened probably dog them is search results for a long time.

And it's largely random. Someone's ill-considered tweet or even post on an internal company email list or political donations or etc. ends up going viral, they get fired, and the whatever will be at the top of Google searches for possibly the rest of their life.

> Cancellation culture exists because this is the expected norm for those in power.

The problem with that line of thinking is how "those in power" is defined more and more broadly and has now evolved to a point where who you are is more important than what you did.

So now most people who gets cancelled do not tend to be the Harvey Weinstein but one of those "racist Karens" videos where the context have been cut off and the people are obviously in the early onset of dementia or college kids making offensive jokes on Twitter.

> So you get a mob together where no one person is an easy target for having their life destroyed and ignore the justice system which can be easily bent with money/connections.

This is double edged knife since mobs and thugs can be bought too. There is a reason why all modern nations give the state the legal monopoly on violence.

> It's a logical response to the power structure in place.

Correction, it is an emotional response. Mobs are never "logical".

Mr. Wymer has a new job, as the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley

Let's see who else is on that board...

Eddie Garcia - Chief of Police - San Jose Police Department

They had the chance to defend themselves after the case became public. What did they do? Had their trails tucked between their legs and went to hide. It's a shame only these pawns were charged.

That is arguably the best approach, especially if they think there is no usable defense. The storm always passes.

In the UK executive directors and non-executive directors of NHS Trusts need to be "fit and proper persons".

There's a rough guide to what that means here: https://nhsproviders.org/fit-and-proper-persons-regulations-...

In my opinion, companies need to start being more selective about who they appoint. Directors will say they need to be paid so much because they bare a huge amount of responsibility, so it seems fair enough to remove that responsibility for poor behaviours.

My recollection is that be declared unfit and improper had very little effect on Robert Maxwell.

I generally think of “cancellation” referring to punishing someone for an unpopular opinion.

In this case, if the emails The NY Times really exist, there was a conspiracy to commit a long series of crimes to harass critics of EBay.

If for some legal technicality these men cannot be prosecuted, a socially enforced penalty seems appropriate.

I’m perplexed at this reaction to the story - that the biggest takeaway is that the executives who sponsored this harrassment by the “security team” should not be tainted by the scandal as long as the legal system did not punish them.

when cancel culture first became a thing, I too found it very worrying. surely there is a better way of accomplishing these goals, I thought. eventually, I came to the conclusion that this is probably the best way for these people to express their frustration. it's basically just a boycott. the only reason it has any real power is because a bunch of people are getting together and threatening to vote with their wallet. they are using the tools provided by capitalism the way they are meant to be used. I might not always like the outcome, but of the available options, this is probably my favorite technique for forcing organizations to make changes. when people are this upset, the alternatives are much worse: enforcement action from the government, civil unrest, direct violence, etc.

if you still believe in the values of liberalism, you have to consider methods and goals separately. while I might not always agree with the goals, I can't really fault the method. even if you do think cancel culture is terrible, how would you stop it? you can't make it illegal for people to take their business elsewhere.

I think your mistake is assuming “cancellation” is only applied to the rich and powerful, but it has become used more and more against non public persons, who often have not even done what they are accused of, or at the very least the accusations against them are greatly exaggerated.

Absolutely this. Any single instance of cancel culture is an individual exercising their right to free speech and association, as well as the so frequently touted primary method of individuals to voice their opinion within capitalism, voting with one's wallet. Somehow when many people all with the same opinion do it in concert it becomes cancel culture. Both sides of the political divide do it, and both seem to have a problem with it only when the other side does it. Decrying a fundamental mechanism of democratic speech because it goes against what you agree with seems to me rather undemocratic. And I think the view that it is disliked by those in power as it gives normal people an unusually powerful weapon is spot on.

It’s startling the huge amount of resources thrown at this. The fact that they booked flights to visit the victims home is creepy and disturbing.

The police reaction seems quite competent.

The non startling part, the higher ups moved on and are fine while the low level contractors are in trouble.

What?!

This team was an absolute joke. Read the criminal complaint, then imagine they had any (or all) of the following, which are all for sale:

* Real-time location from your cell provider

* Real-time AirBnB booking

* Real-time purchases from credit card companies

* Real-time browsing records from your mobile ISP, home ISP, and behavioral advertising networks

* Your complete prescription history from your pharmacy

I severely doubt any of these things are for sale. If you pay up front costs out of pocket and get accurate answers, I'll cover the cost. Interested?

There are documented cases of each in the press.

I'll pay you cost, then a bonus matching cost, plus hourly rate matching your day job, min 4 hours (for each)

That comparison is dishonest.

You are claiming that if rmrfstar can't do it, it doesn't exist.

If a given forum commenter does not know how to buy someone's cell-tower location does not mean that an experienced practitioner could not, etc. for the other data.

> If a given forum commenter does not know how to buy someone's cell-tower location does not mean that an experienced practitioner could not, etc. for the other data.

Then perhaps the commentator shouldn't leave comments about things they know nothing about.

They were challenged and have not even supplied any evidence.

I don't know how to buy 1000 random credit cards but if someone payed me to I could quickly find out.

> Real-time AirBnB booking

I doubt this is even close to true.

And the concept a different random person magically knows because they are in the news is logically inconsistent.

There aren't any references to this going 90 days back, other than the same exact list as the original comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24210623

I don't understand why you have to other me into a FUDdy opponent here, I did as best as I could to incentivize and create a situation where you gained heavily from simply explaining your claims.

Prescription history is 58 days back. Others are farther back. This stuff is common knowledge, and documented extensively in the press.

Your own comment history includes a number of instances where you either minimize or deny the seriousness of surveillance capitalism. You are spreading FUD, and I'm calling that out.

Moreover, your "offer" is one of the most degrading and distasteful rhetorical techniques for asserting certainty that I've ever seen. There is no difference between your "offer" and Mitt Romney's wager in the 2011 presidential debate. This technique convinces no-one, but carries the odious implication that the person you are speaking to is for sale.

It's called a prediction market.

What you were offered was a little different and better for you but the same idea.

It forces you to actually think about your claim and work out how true it really is.

I wouldn't expect you to actually take them up on the $ but I'd expect a screen shot you took of where you could do one of those things you claim. But not even a link to crappy media was given and you agreeed the person willing to do the work was spreading FUD.

You created a false dichotomy where either OP can do it or it doesn't exist, then told me I created the dichotomy. Weird stuff

FUD is an effective tactic.

There are documented examples of each in my comment history.

Not sure what's up with your insistence on this.

Maybe you want to spread uncertainty so that some fraction of people continue believing these capabilities aren't out there (and extremely common among the moneyed classes)?

Maybe you want to continue your own cognitive dissonance?

It's because I'm relatively secure in my knowledge of these areas, I count 3 vast hyperboles, 1 discontinued, and 1 unknown and I'd be getting good value out of you teaching me how to pull it off. That's all

> staying ahead of geopolitical and individual threats

Am I mistaken in thinking how utterly bizarre it is for an online auction site to run some CIA style intelligence unit? Sounds like you would only ever find a bunch of deranged nutjobs running that kind of operation. I mean, their idea of a geopolitical threat was a website run by a couple in the suburbs?

You are mistaken only in that it is likely far more common than you think for corporations to do this kind of stuff. The people at eBay just got caught because they were egregiously poor at doing it covertly.

Companies have long employed internal and external private security forces to silence their critics and threats to them. The Pinkertons have been doing this in the US since the 1850s, for example, which predates almost of every form of state intelligence services.

eBay is a shockingly poorly run company. Any company that invests resources into this sort of CIA type unit is just burning cash. The only company it might actually make sense for would be actual national security companies.

On one hand, it makes sense. Any large organization will attract "threats" and a multinational organization cannot count on the legal and civil framework of one country. Think of the World Trade Center: it was a symbol of something to somebody, but to most Americans outside of New York before 2001, it was just a big office building.

On the other, consider that money is power and that those in control of the assets of, say, eBay would want to use that power at their discretion.

Don't all the big valley companies do shit like this? I remember Uber had some kind of crazy counterintelligence division that was trying to get dirt on journalists and local lawmakers to blackmail them.

Same info, with less editorializing and more details, in the FBI complaint: https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/USAvBau...

I'm surprised there is no mention about the Steiners moving a civil lawsuit against eBay. Specially after criminal charges were applied. It seems that it would be an easy win, or at least a large settlement.

It's entirely possible that somebody at bay after the ceiling started caving in called them and gave them a check along with an NDA so there wouldn't be a civil suit.

I said this in the thread when the arrests were announced (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529035) but I had a similar thought again reading this. Just a little funny and bizarre to see people react extremely differently to the same situation.

> Wild. I'm like 99% positive I know the couple and the newsletter they targeted, because I used to work for an ecommerce company that also came under fire from said couple semi-frequently. Of course, like adults, we just rolled our eyes a little bit when it was particularly over-the-top and tried to use our rational heads to determine whether the criticism was warranted or not. Truthfully, I think they kept us in check and I'm glad they exist.

> If we had done anything even close to this, we would've been fired immediately. To be even more blunt, I think I would've been fired for interacting with them AT ALL, even just a strongly-worded email.

That blog was widely read within Amazon's 3P business units back when that business unit existed. It was an easy way to assess seller satisfaction and for product managers to find feature ideas among the complaints.

The heroes here are the police department for taking this seriously.

The article also hints of a Bay Area police department where insurers were willing to falsify evidence to help eBay. I wish they named that department. I know they're mostly in San Jose, but I’d love to confirm my suspicions about the Sunnyvale police department.

It speaks very badly of eBay that such a cultish and abusive group was allowed to exist.

What makes you think such a "cultish and abusive group" is especially uncommon?

Either they are exceptionally good at covering their tracks and silencing victims, or, this is a rare case that people have been writing about for months.

It isn't always as egregious as the eBay case. SLAPPs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...) are one example. Then there are Twitter-fests such as Arizona Public Service (https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2019/07/30/aps-allies-attack...), involvement in political campaigns against elected critics (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/technology/amazon-pramila...).

On the other hand, there's the Kerr-McGee corporation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood), Monsanto (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/07/monsanto-fu...), and Bloomberg LP (https://www.npr.org/2020/04/14/828565428/bloomberg-news-kill...).

Corporate investigations is an industry, too. (https://www.aegis.com/investigations/corporate-investigation...)

Them getting caught required a bit of extraordinary luck on the part of the victims and a lot of over-confidence on the part of the perps.

After almost getting spotted once they came back and the victims managed to get a photo of their tag.

Without that the whole thing would probably be dismissed by people as a crazy conspiracy theory.

So if Ebay did this totally incompetent, clownish wetwork -- How many companies have done similar things competently, that we haven't heard about or have dismissed as conspiracy theories?

If execs at Ebay wanted to silence an ecommerce blog, why didn't they just form a shell company and use that shell company to buy the blog and then shut it down. As terms of the sale, they could have had the owners of the blog agree not to start a competing blog for X years. Seems like a much more effective solution.

> Mr. Wenig resigned later in the month, saying it was clear he “was not on the same page” as the eBay board. There was no hint of scandal. His exit package was $57 million.

Well that's pretty disgusting.

Is it me or is this piece terribly written. Even after first 10 paragraphs very little context of what I was reading. Odd for a NYT article.

Seriously, they should start off with a brief summary of their article..

I don't understand why the subordinates are being charged. Their jobs were at stake, which in the USA means that their lives were at stake, because there is no legitimate social safety net here. It sounds like this guy Baugh deserves most of the blame and his subordinates should not be punished.

That seems like it'd be a very strange standard. These crimes weren't in a grey area where they could have reasonably believed they were doing nothing wrong. If you found me smashing up your car, and I told you "oh my boss said I should", would you really say that I've done nothing wrong?

Preserving one's employment is not a legal defense

It’s not. But OP’s comment was about how the employee was somehow worse than their manager

Is it my imagination or bias, or did the NYT perhaps choose creepy-looking photos for Wenig and Wymer? But they look resting-crazy-face nuts to me. Who would hire people like that or work with them after such a scandal?

Your perception of their portraits is just anchored by the content of the article. Be wary of being so easily manipulated.

Pretty boring pictures of two people.

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

>Is it my imagination or bias, or did the NYT perhaps choose creepy-looking photos for Wenig and Wymer?

Seems like it's your imagination. Those look like pretty normal photos to me.

It’s a common journalist thing to find pictures that depict your subject in the light you want to. Left leaning sites writing about Trump will show not-so-appealing photos while right leaning sites writing about Pelosi will also show not-so-appealing photos. But flip the script and you get more appealing photos.

It’s not always intentional, but it’s pretty obvious sometimes.

Yes, and I am probably a bit emotional given the infuriating article, which is affecting how I perceive those pictures

If nothing else, it's likely that a Fox editor would pull an unflattering Trump photo and vice versa. It's hard to imagine an intentional process for making the other side look bad (can you imagine a meeting where that is decided?), but what I described is an organic way in which a systemic process could arise.

I don’t know how it would come about, but on Ars Technica’a articles about the Republican Party, they use pretty unflattering photos, and I’ve seen many articles from conservative sites using unflattering photos of Democrats.

I'm talking about reputable mainstream sites, which seem to at least maintain a guise of plausible deniability

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