TruthWave – A platform for corporate whistleblowers | Hacker News Reader

TruthWave – A platform for corporate whistleblowers

truthwave.com

98 points_gdim44 comments

So their team is anonymous. While I understand the desire for that, trust is built through transparency. It's really hard to convince someone who's job, career, it potentially even life is at risk to trust random strangers on the Internet.

It seems like they need people willing to stretch their name to create credibility.

Have we forgotten you can authorize witho authenticating? I can prove I'm inside the Google office without saying who I am

The point is that how does the whistleblower know whether or not they are not whistleblowing to the very people or allies to those being reported on if who is behind it?

To pull an example out of thin air, would you risk whistleblowing to TruthWave on Amazon if you knew that the Washington Post was running TruthWave?

Or, would you whistleblow on Tesla, if you knew any out of a hundred companies was behind it, like Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, ...? About the only "big" entity I MIGHT trust would be Berkshire Hathaway..

I would trust the Washington Post with a sensitive tip more than I would trust an Internet project.

I think this trust (in the Post) is now misplaced, and in the case of the Post and Amazon, you absolutely shouldn't. But perhaps it always should have been with any single newspaper.

This is why whistleblowers now often work with two different organisations with different ownership/politics, or in different branches of media, or with a journalist backed by the ICIJ (e.g. the Mossack Fonseca leak investigation was shared with the ICIJ).

But yes, any generic online whistleblowing broker with dozens of concurrent cases is going to be such an obvious target for state or organised crime interference. Anyone making a business of brokering whistleblowing for a cut of the reward is an obvious risk.

I would trust a Murdoch paper more than I would trust this site; I would meaningfully trust the WSJ, and I don't trust this at all.

Wrong direction, parent is asking for clarity who owns and operate the platform itself, not clarity around who the whistleblower is.

Does that prove much? I have been inside a Google office without ever having worked for Google (visitor).

Then the service seems to provide zero value, there are already “untrusted” platforms. If i have to anonymize myself anyways, i can just post on Reddit/Twitter/Orange site directy.

took me all of 2 minutes to put a name to one of the folks involved in the project.

i think this is a good goal but i question the platform, based on this point.

I mean, 35 years ago, a random stranger on the internet was MORE trustworthy in my eyes than some people I knew face-to-face.

These days? Pfft...

We all know how this ends lmao

This website looks like they’re gonna tell me I can use Zapier to get whistleblowing alerts in Slack. Truly bizarre presentation.

In case of whistleblowing, it really makes much more sense to contact a news outlet or investigative journalist. Using some kind of agency or random-website-service will legally fire back in almost all cases. Inv. Journalists are the best go to point as they known how to deal with sensitive material without burning the whistleblower

This would be a much better idea if journalism wasn't so behold to their corporate owners, all in a world where fewer and fewer media houses exist. I do agree that you might want to go to a news outlet first, which Snowden did well to do. But I do think we're setting up society for quite some trouble by weakening investigative journalism and disenfranchising an independent fifth estate.

Newspapers' tip line has a similar feature. I wonder what make a whistle-blower pick this over other traditional media (besides you're working at one of these.)

eg. https://www.nytimes.com/tips, https://www.washingtonpost.com/anonymous-news-tips/

Whistleblower platforms are usually meant for employees (e.g. lower down the org) to anonymously report things to someone within the company.

One of my favorite darknet diaries episodes is about corporate whistleblowing, it's a huge business. If you get a massive 1M+ payout, chances are the company is getting just as much (if not more).

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/80/

Per https://www.truthwave.com/legal/terms-of-service

> 8.6 Indemnification. If you behave in a way that gets us in legal trouble, we may exercise legal recourse against you. You agree to indemnify, defend (if we so request), and hold harmless TruthWave and our officers, directors, suppliers, partners, and agents from and against any third-party claims, demands, losses, damages, or expenses (including reasonable attorney fees) arising from (a) the content you post or submit, (b) your use of the Services (c) your violation of these Terms, or (d) your violation of any rights of a third party. Your indemnification obligation will survive the termination of these Terms and your use of the Services.

So if I submit a tip to TruthWave, and they get sued, I'm on the line to pay for TruthWave's legal defense? Yeah...no.

My first thought on the headline was, "Startup techbros, if that's what it is, are about the last people you should trust, when the problem is corporate misbehavior," but I held my snap reaction tongue, and went to look:

> Our founders, who remain anonymous, following in the footsteps of some of our nation’s most impactful justice efforts, understand the inherent challenges faced by those seeking justice on an imbalanced playing field.

OK, seriously, who do they expect to trust them?

Actual prospective whistleblowers, or someone else?

> Once Tips are validated and determined to have a likely positive impact on justice, our whistleblowers receive their initial compensation. Then, based on the ultimate justice achieved, our whistleblowers are compensated again. [...] Earn Big Rewards - Tippers can earn rewards of $1,000,000 or more.

Maybe they only need opportunists and scammers to trust them?

And donors/investors? And corporations with a problem-goes-away cost-of-business budget?

Trust is key, if you want legitimate whistleblowers.

Anecdote behind thinking a bit about this... I was discussing cofounding a startup that incidentally overlapped a bit with this space. One of the very top concerns was that we needed to be seen as trustworthy, to both employers and workers, and that trust would be a significant part of the value that we brought.

Then my prospective cofounder (a real straight-shooter) pointed out that one possible side effect of that trust (if we achieved it), was that workers might come to us with information about a company that we'd be obligated to report to gov't authorities, against the expectations of the worker. It was one of the many things we'd need to be very clear about, in course of earning and honoring the trust that enabled the good stuff we could do.

Looks like a honeypot to me.

They could be NK hackers using the service to target their next corporate ransom victim.

Or corporate espionage

Trying to understand who you are but not a single name listed in there ? https://www.truthwave.com/about-us https://www.truthwave.com/our-team

Mission is good, but how do you protect those people who disclose information to you ?

They seem to be more committed to protecting the viability of all future business decisions than anyone's anonymity:

> We may share your data with third parties under the following circumstances:

> During a Change in Control: If Truthwave undergoes a business transaction like a merger, acquisition, corporate divestiture, or dissolution (including bankruptcy), or a sale of all or some of its assets, we will take appropriate measures to continue to protect your anonymity and identity, but may need to share, disclose, or transfer all of your data to the successor organization during such transition or in contemplation of a transition (including during due diligence). (All data categories)

https://www.truthwave.com/legal/privacy-policy

I was just going to ask, why not use SecureDrop [0] instead, but then I realized Truthwave also uses SecureDrop [1].

[0]: https://securedrop.org

[1]: https://www.truthwave.com/tips

This looks like Robinhood for whistleblowing.

I'm curious what subset of whistleblowing are they looking for:

> National Security Disclaimer We do not accept any tips or material of any kind related to matters of national security.

> Legal Violations Disclaimer Do not send any information or material that violates or breaches any contracts or legal obligations.

If it works, it'll be used as a whitewashing platform for insider trading, and site owners could earn lots from a firehose to HFT houses. And if no one posts anything positive, you know the move is to simply go short when there's a post. Brilliant idea.

For fuck’s sake. Talk to a lawyer. Pick a newspaper if you can’t trust a regulator. Find a journalist who you think can cope with the nuance. Find two from philosophically opposed publications with different owners, maybe in different jurisdictions. Make them share it. Talk to them on Signal.

Don’t let techbros with a snazzy website template do a middle-man act on whistleblowing. Christ. These people just want a cut of the settlement.

I mean, this idea is profoundly dangerous. Every link in a whistleblowing chain increases the risk of someone being threatened, ruined or worse — hospitalised, defenestrated, family threatened -- before they can talk.

If you are going to blow the whistle, be paranoid as fuck. Ask the journalists to describe what assurances they get from their editor and publisher. Ask them to put you in touch with someone who blew the whistle to them and who can safely talk, so you can find out how they handled it. Ask them if they've ever had to help someone get the hell out of Dodge. Don't trust anyone to broker this stuff but yourself.

Without trust, the website feels like a honeypot set up to neutralise whistleblowers silently

Wait, is there any way to get this information onto a privacy-based blockchain like Oasis? Someone would own a Tip - perhaps they could be compensated for it and Tips aren't made public by default?

The more you write, the more you can read from others, perhaps? Some type of value needs to be assigned to Tips. Best ones can go public, or pay to make it public?? Decentralization would ensure uptime. GlassDoor already has some revealing company reviews.

How long would it take for anyone to whip up this site, including the copy, with AI? This could literally be teenagers.

My initial thought was DOGE/ICE or something, to catch anyone wanting report actual injustice and stop them..

This is a poorly hidden honeypot no?

> With our unique financial rewards model, scale matters. The more justice you unlock, the more monetary compensation you receive.

> In fact, we pledge to distribute to tippers $200 million out of every $1 billion we collect.

What? Donating 20% of profits is great, but this sounds very weird. Is the only thing that drives this revenue donations? In which case, why do we need a rent seeking intermediary? Nostr has bitcoin tips built in, and you don't have to pay anyone to send money to whomever you want.

Pretty sure that's 20% of revenue, and I'm assuming that their business plan relies on skimming from settlements, not just taking donations. But they are also paying investigators and lawyers out of all of that.

If this is a business, which it sure seems like it is, then this is such a messed up idea. Exploiting whistleblowers and the whistleblowing system for profit. And they're trying to incentivize whistleblowers with money too.

Whistleblowers take all of the risk here, and only get 20% of the proceeds. Seems like a pretty shit deal, besides being confoundingly greedy.

There already are people you can trust, who aren't anonymous, who are professionals bound by ethics, and who aren't out to sue for profit: Journalists. investigations@icij.org

> Nostr has bitcoin tips built in, and you don't have to pay anyone to send money to whomever you want. Apart from that, using a tiny niche platform like Nostr doesn't feel like a good comparison if you want to show how "others" are doing it.

Have you tried actually paying with Lighting and Bitcoin before? You definitely are paying someone a fee for mining / processing the transaction.

There is nano which doesn't have any fees at all if you are going into that, but personally I would recommend some chain like polygon or stellar etc. with low fees and to use stablecoins like USDC on top of it, personally, the fees are so negligible, and if they are still an impact, maybe pay them on nano but polygon's fees are in cents iirc, there are other low cost stable coin based tokens too i guess.

For whistleblowing though, Monero would be top tier.

Also I am pretty sure that there are already systems which can give a list of numerous crypto accounts from one thing but still monero would be my best choice for such kind of things tbh given how usdc can still hold/censor your money in a somewhat degree y'know, maybe there are some freedom usd things or something but at that point, having them in monero makes more sense.

These are the few applications of cryptocurrency which can genuinely be used (I am a bit of crypto skeptic because I don't like what the community has become, my only respect is for monero community really and some nano contributors or some chain developers in general but they form a very small portion and the markets don't move because of them and no matter how much trust I have in a project, I don't trust markets and I don't want to play a fool's game compared to stock markets where there is genuine productivity in conservative stock markets generally speaking although that productivity is also de-linking thanks to AI in S&P 500 )

To be really honest, I just don't like crypto personally except stablecoins and that too in just a very small degree, That is my personal experience that I am not going to take part in something which feels like an speculative asset no matter its use-cases as most of these would just converge on one or two and if not, they would have some niche use cases and their use case right now is feeling more and more like a ponzi scheme more and monero is the only one which doesn't feel that way really.

Direct quotes: "It pays to be brave." ... "we pledge to distribute to tippers $200 million out of every $1 billion we collect." ... "This is TruthWave. Welcome to the platform and community for those who bring unethical corporations to justice."

Useful service in my opinion. There are tons of people who would want to expose their employer.

But the team must be known, and the company should be transparent.

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