How many publications did SBF bribe? | Hacker News Reader

How many publications did SBF bribe?

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34 pointsxqcgrek224 comments

Pretty rich coming from David Sacks

Edit: recent profile of his media manipulation https://newrepublic.com/article/168125/david-sacks-elon-musk...

You’re poisoning the well. It’s not even subtle, it’s a rough, crude, ham-fisted hatchet job.

How does one hold a hatchet with a ham fist?

There's honestly such a clear bias in how they're handling this whole thing. I see the tides turning slowly though. I just don't understand why they're handling this with kid gloves when you see other people absolutely torn apart for much less.

The question isn't "do publications receive donations" it's "does that change their coverage" and given that Vox quite happily completely monstered him immediately, I think we can feel pretty good about the trade off.

I honestly think it has less to do with money and more the fact they want to save face. They spent the last few years building him up. Whether the pretty generous donations contributed to that... would almost be irrelevant.

All I'm saying is if SBF were not really "in favor" with many in the establishment/journalists, I feel his shady dealings would have been highlighted vs mitigated.

I mean Forbes just put out an article about Coraline where it made her out to be a "misguided, whizz kid."

Its great that Vox was blunt... but almost every other publication seems to have dropped the ball.

> Fortune magazine put SBF on its cover this year asking, “The Next Warren Buffett?” Now the author of that story, Jeff John Roberts, confesses, “I was charmed by his nerdy affect as SBF, unkempt in a T-shirt and bushy hair, as he twirled a fidget spinner and rattled off tidbits about everything from M&A strategy to the macroeconomy to the importance of trust in business deals. It was all bullshit, of course, and I didn’t see through it.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/how-sbf-sweet-talked...

I've seen a lot of hate on "the media" for being fooled by Bankman-Fried which is fine, but I get the feeling those who disparage "the media" as a singular entity with a singular agenda weren't really inclined to trust them to begin with.

I never really trust the media because 1) I briefly worked with a few and 2) I've seen them report on areas of my expertise and they got so, so many things wrong or misleading. (and this was before our world became highly politicized too)

I just chalk this up to another reason. I would have loved to come on here and leave a comment like "typically, I don't like how the media handles things but I'm glad they didn't hold back."

I'm glad that the author of one of the articles that put SBF on a pedestal was honest about being fooled. I knew and talked with SBF circa 2018-19. I was fooled too, so I totally understand that. What I don't understand is why we need articles from supposedly "prestigious" NYT and Forbes that convey that Sam and Caroline were just misguided MIT whiz kids.

The world is a very complicated place and it's hard to boil complex subjects down into a few minute story (and that's fairly long form these days). I suppose I never had too many illusions because my mother was a local journalist who, looking back on it, was pretty excellent at it - she was industrious and really good with people, meaning she was great at getting out and talking to people, maintaining a network of sources, and asking questions. Probably he biggest strength was just her interest in people and her ability to get them to open up using that interest. She's even somewhat curious about discussing devops / internet infrastructure with me (I sense some effort on her part) which are not subjects that tend to get much interest from people.

She'd be the first to tell you that she wasn't an expert in much of what they did; how could she be? What she was committed to was journalist ethics - conforming to a set of rules and correcting mistakes when they happen.

In some sense, she's still at it. She's nearing retirement, but is still technically in the role, but it's been vastly diminished by one company or other over her career. I don't know what magic there was in the post-WWII American Economy that tended to make things work so well, but it is clearly lost, and I'm starting to suspect it won't be returning in my lifetime.

So I'd call myself a media skeptic (and a skeptic overall) as well, but I suppose that means I understand that "The Media" is a diverse human institution with all the problems and failings that entails, and as such, I don't get too wrapped up in the failures.

And I suppose the question is, were Samoline (let's bring back the celebrity couple portmanteu, it's really funny in this context) 100% scammers, or were they 100% misguided idiot savants? It's never clear is it because it's never 100% anything. Madoff is the famous scammer of his era, but I believe his fund was legitimate in the beginning. So it's natural that there will be some debate on the topic. Michael Lewis was there and will give his view of events, but many books will be written in the years ahead.

They aren't being handled with kid gloves, the company is being investigated.

The only company/person currently handled with kid gloves is another "billionaire" with a social media app with political ties.

Outside of Breitbart and maybe Fox News, I definitely wouldn't agree that the media handles Trump with kids gloves. Journalists are very happy to call him out for his missteps

I think Musk is being referenced here.

Not the media, the justice system. Any normal person who mishandled information post-presidency or fomented insurrection would be in jail.

There's another question that's been irking me... How many other rotten to the core companies are there out there? I wonder how many are able to keep pressing on with their scam and never get caught.

Here is something clever that I noticed. I was working for a company that spent a LOT of money on advertising. (I supported the call center, not in marketing). I would frequently hear radio ads for my company.

I would take note when my company would make the news - simply out of corporate pride. I would also take note when we were involved in something scandalous (we got hacked, we provided services to someone that did unscrupulous stuff, we did unscrupulous stuff).

What I noticed is that our advertisements disappeared from news agencies the same week our story aired - and the news agencies didn't disclose support from our company, even if we were portaied in a positive light.

I have my doubts on Palantir. Peter Thiel is another one of these big grifters. Made one lucky investment in Facebook and spun his whole life around it as if is some kind of techno genius.

Talks about why we don't have flying cars and ends of making an online cesspool of a currency transfer (thank god Stripe came in and dismantled that) and a shady chart.js version of excel sheets.

Now how much bribes and stuff are they involved in? I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot.

If he believes that donations have clearly altered the coverage of FTX, I would like to see him predict which media outlets received money but have not yet revealed it.

Not just publications, either. FTX was the major funder for tons of COVID research (including the very influential "TOGETHER trial")[0]

[0] https://www.themainewire.com/2022/11/bankrupt-ftx-gave-18-2m...

Like data from the Nazis inhumane experiments being used to find treatments for hypothermia, the ends do not justify the means.

A Godwin in two comments, that's pretty wild considering the topic.

So I shouldn't have mentioned it because it's a meme, and SBF should be in the clear now because he donated a few dollars of stolen funds, mostly from individuals who got sucked into it, to medical research. Solid.

Yes, but mostly because it is a very weak analogy that teaches us nothing.

There are plenty of crypto exchanges still accepting deposits. If you enjoy their philanthropy so much you are welcome to invest your life savings into any of them in hopes of getting rich quick and respecting their reallocation of your funds, having learned nothing from history and from the present of FTX's collapse. If you really want to prove your dedication to the cause I await your screen shots of said deposits showing that you put your money where your mouth is.

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