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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

> The VP who boasted of hiring a hit team to dig up dirt on Journalists families is still working at Uber after saying this in a very public forum.

This point has obviously been through a few rounds of "telephone".

"boasted of hiring a hit team"--he suggested it as a hypothetical idea, he didn't "boast" of already doing it, nor is there any indication he did

"in a very public forum"--he said it at a private dinner party where comments were understood to be off the record, but someone brought a +1 and didn't read him into this so he ran with it.

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He was just drunk and made an offhanded joke. Come on people, we make offensive jokes all the time. The difference is that people laugh our jokes off and for him, a reporter picked it up and ran with it.

I'm not trying to defend Uber with any of the other stuff, I just think that one particular thing was blown up a little bit more than was necessary.

I prefer Lyft anyway.

lol when will people learn not to drink & make stupid jokes in public ;)

People in positions of power are held accountable when they don't take things they're responsible for seriously.

You could joke about fucking with people's privacy because you don't have a huge database of abortion clinic visits and one night stands and children's daycare locations. As soon as you did, people would start holding you accountable.

His comments were not a joke, but a direct threat against a particular journalist and her family.

in vino veritas

If the guy is dumb or arrogant enough to get drunk and make off-the-cuff offensive jokes about the press in front of the press and his boss then he should be fired promptly. That he wasn't speaks volumes.

Senior executives of billion-dollar companies do not accidentally have dinner with reporters. The dinner was part of a PR effort. Maybe the guy's really a rube or a loose canon. But personally, my guess is that he "joked" about harming a journalist whose coverage they didn't like because he wanted other journalists to think twice about giving them bad coverage.

I don't really want to restart that whole argument again, I just want to point out that in these firestorms of outrage, the actual truth of the matter can take a lot of the damage.

>Come on people, we make offensive jokes all the time. >I'm not trying to defend Uber with any of the other stuff

Sorry to break it down to you, but you're infact defending Uber.

> "in a very public forum"--he said it at a private dinner party where comments were understood to be off the record, but someone brought a +1 and didn't read him into this so he ran with it.

You know, I never did go back and find out how the Romney 47% leaks actually made it out the door. I wonder if it's public knowledge at this point.

A staff member of the catering company. It was very fight club.

The squealing about the very sane idea of doing some journalism on journalists is very lulzy. I don't trust Uber and have never given them business. I trust the NYTimes even less and will never give them a cent. They are crooks who lied us into war. They are now owned by the monopolist Carlos Slim who lies to us about telecom and immigration issues relevant to his business interests.

In the golden age of American journalism the idea of doing hit pieces on journalists wouldn't even be interesting. Mencken and friends did it to each other constantly. It's hilarious these people think they're part of some unassailable priesthood now.

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