Hacker News Reader

Comment by TomVDB | Hacker News Reader

Why a disservice? It’s the contrary.

Thanks to those kinds of leaks, I had already decided I’d never want to work for that place.

When a good friend started working there, he confirmed pretty much everything.

It’s fun and juicy to read leaks from other companies but it really sucks when your leadership stops being open or stops taking questions in all hands meetings because everything they say immediately gets posted on Twitter.

Just because you’d like to know the information about the on-goings of a company doesn’t make you entitled to it and I wish large companies would collectively do more to go after leakers in court to stop this trend.

> I wish large companies would collectively do more to go after leakers in court to stop this trend.

"Don't talk or we'll ruin your life financially."

Whistleblowers have a hard enough time in this day and age. I hope more do this - corporations dominate enough of our lives.

There is a very specific meaning of whistleblowing and giving every leaker that title does a disservice to those that are actual whistleblowers.

I don't see how this doesn't fit the meaning - providing info of something that can severely damage many people's livelihoods.

Running to a news outlet to tell them that some company is going to allegedly raise some performance bar is very, very different than, for example, reporting illegal activities about private companies to federal agencies. The former is someone looking for some thrill or 20 seconds of fame and, afaik in the US at least, there is nothing like whistleblower protections for that behavior.

I also disagree that anything in what was leaked of Mark’s statement is severely damaging to livelihoods any more so than any other time someone has gotten let go for performance reasons.

So you say it's not a big enough deal to be whistleblowing. But then you want the courts to punish people for leaking this information.

Which is it? Your position is logically inconsistent.

How did you get to the conclusion that anyone thinks they’re entitled to that information? Of course nobody is.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s this information is useful for outsiders, not a disservice.

As for wanting leakers to be dragged into court…

Are you saying, for example, that Amazon warehouse workers should not be allowed to expose terrible working conditions? Or pretty much any other unethical action of a company?

Because that’s exactly what you’re advocating for.

I’m not advocating for any change in laws; talking about working conditions is generally legally protected in the US, even online. That seems very different to me than leaking the contents of a company meeting that contains sensitive information.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com