Angry over critical coverage, tech figures discuss hitting back against journalists, on Twitter and invite-only Clubhouse, leading to harassment of NYT's Lorenz
chiefly journalism in the public interest. https://www.vice.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : Someone leaked an hour of audio from Clubhouse last night where Balajis, Felicia Horowitz, and others were talking ahout the media. It's disgusting what these people will say when they think no one is listening. https://www.vice.com/... @jason : Fair warning: everything you say on #Clubhouse is being covertly recorded by journalists to weaponize against you This is the reason I told folks that a certain NYT journalist was in our room on #clubhouse (without warning folks)—for which she claimed I was harassing her (?!) https://twitter.com/... Balaji S. Srinivasan / @balajis : The only objection journalists like @jason_koebler have to “surveillance capitalism” is that they want to be the monopoly providers! This is the same guy who outed Naomi Wu (@RealSexyCyborg), by the way. https://twitter.com/... @harper : Watching VC twitter attack Taylor has been gross. The fact that they don't attack male journalists who have similar tweets and articles is very telling. https://twitter.com/... @dhh : This trail of abuse is ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE. Bitcoin bounties offered to meme warriors trained on Gamergate fits right into this. To see VC twitter cheer this on with the support of the main agitator is just disgusting. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : It seems Steph Korey wasn't a great people manager, likely exacerbated by her gender (i.e. people expect women to be nurturing) but a company narrative that they replaced their female co-founder for a male CEO because her posts on maternity leave weren't woke enough is just 🤔 Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Steph Korey being fired as co-CEO of Away while on maternity leave because she posted an Instagram story answering a question about why the media prefers taking down female CEOs and employees thought she should be posting about #BLM or #PRIDE is wild. https://www.theverge.com/... @dhh : I hope the security team at @nytimes is taking this harassment campaign seriously. The targeted journalist should probably be under protection. This bounty call would have been dangerous in any year, but in 2020, in a country teetering on the brink, armed to the teeth, it's 🤯. @dhh : It's either a cry for help or a profound projection that the bounty for harassment is offered alongside one for legal advice (paid in BTC?! priced at $1k??). Any responsible lawyer would tell him that he's risking prosecution for cyberstalking, and to cease and desist. @dhh : To see a VC of a major firm explicitly incite this same kind of anonymous abuse with Bitcoin bounties is beyond the pale. Once you've legitimized this, it's a short and uncontrollable hop to SWAT'ing, cyberstalking, or worse. Siqi Chen / @blader : Presented without comment: Exhibit A: This answer on Quora, written by a random person on the internet, summarizing recent events: https://www.quora.com/... Exhibit B: This article on VICE, written by a professional journalist, summarizing recent events: https://www.vice.com/... Evan Hill / @evanchill : Tech has been extremely successful at convincing the public that it is unlike every other industry that came before and its top profiteers unlike any other businesspeople who came before. It'd probably be better and healthier to just start treating it like oil or finance imho. https://twitter.com/... Balaji S. Srinivasan / @balajis : Kara Swisher still hasn't run a formal retraction for Recode's dangerously false reporting on COVID-19. Since their business model does not incentivize truth, the public will have to do it. $1000 #Bitcoin bounty for the first person who can get them to correct the record. https://twitter.com/... Siqi Chen / @blader : .@TaylorLorenz I like you and respect your work, but leaving out the rest of that screenshot where its clear that @balajis is simply repeating the same words you wrote to bash a woman CEO, is exactly illustrative of his larger point. https://twitter.com/... Rory Cellan-Jones / @ruskin147 : Watching how US tech/VC has responded to even mildly negative coverage has reminded me of the pain I've caused poor UK PRs when I've put challenging questions to their US bosses. For years Silicon Valley CEOs just got used to hero worship and were shocked when it was withheld https://twitter.com/... Dan Primack / @danprimack : Something missing in the tech/media translation: Tech gives a pass to failure. A product didn't work? That's ok. The effort was still there. Media doesn't. If you write something that's wrong, particularly VERY wrong, it's a stain that sticks. Credibility is our currency. @rmac18 : Those reporters are so awful. All they want to do is write stories about *wait I'm getting new developments in my ear piece* “protecting vulnerable people”. https://twitter.com/... Robin Wauters / @robinwauters : I can only hope this results in massive mirror-looking behaviour from all involved, but who am I kidding https://twitter.com/... @suhail : .@stephkorey the CEO of Away, $1.4B luggage startup, reflects on why woman are specifically being targeted in various media outlets & how the business model is built that way to incentivize it. Coherent & great to hear her balanced perspective in a world prone to cancel culture. https://twitter.com/... Ed Bott / @edbott : @bhorowitz @TaylorLorenz @balajis @FeliciaHorowitz Hey don't take this the wrong way Ben but maybe you should jump in a fucking volcano or something. Or, as an alternative, apologize and do the right thing. Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : Gamergate is happening again in Silicon Valley https://www.vice.com/... B-Boy Bouiebaisse / @jbouie : these people are the biggest, blubbering babies i've ever seen https://www.vice.com/... Bobby Lewis / @revrrlewis : a bunch of venture capital babies, cloistered away in an invite-only social media site where they can pretend to be better than we common poors, are harassing @TaylorLorenz due to their being Offended at tepid criticism of a (shitty) luggage CEO's insta. https://www.vice.com/... Tom Dotan / @cityofthetown : There's not enough medium posts and clubhouse chats in the world that would make them as happy a single positive story in NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg The Information etc. It's why the pitch us. We're a part of their business plan. More critically, we feed their ego. Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : You think I kid about the victim mentality of the richest and most powerful people in the world who control so much of our society. This is a feature, not a bug: VICE - Silicon Valley Elite Discuss Journalists Having Too Much Power in Private App https://www.vice.com/... Nicole Perlroth / @nicoleperlroth : Twitter user here. I've covered 3 male-dominated communities for more than a decade: infosec, natsec and Silicon Valley. But I've never seen more entitlement, disdain for accountability and mansplaining than in venture capital. See: the past 24 hours of VC Twitter. https://twitter.com/... Emily Bell / @emilybell : ...a few weeks ago a Silicon Valley-based journalist was talking about the impending ‘culture war’ between technology companies and other media...maybe this is what they mean https://twitter.com/... Max Tani / @maxwelltani : great point. in the old days, journalists were never tweeting. now, they tweet all the time. why is that? https://twitter.com/... Jane Manchun Wong / @wongmjane : Clubhouse is in a bit of paradox — if they opened up the app, the community abuse might scale, which the app is yet to be prepared for; if they kept it invite-only, it will grow as an echo chamber https://twitter.com/... Josh Barro / @jbarro : I assume one employee who was especially unhappy was Stuart Haselden, who was not supposed to have to share the CEO job with her. https://twitter.com/... Ben Sandofsky / @sandofsky : In the last few years, journalists have done important work exposing bad behavior in tech. A lot of people in the VC scene are responding with anti-journalist rhetoric. https://twitter.com/... Anthony DeRosa / @anthony : Most people I know are in awe of @TaylorLorenz's ability to grok a beat that didn't even exist until she mostly created it and now everyone's trying to catch up. On top of that, her work ethic is off the charts. https://twitter.com/... Catalin Cimpanu / @campuscodi : So, let me get this right. A bunch of self-entitled and self-labeled geniuses with years of experience in the dog-eat-dog Silicon Valley world, VC rivalries, and press leaks actually thought this insanely obtuse conversation wasn't going to leak? 🙃 https://twitter.com/... Blake Montgomery / @blakersdozen : Tbt to “yesteryear” when journalism was fair and truthful and William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were such well-known exaggerators that everyone believed they started a war with Cuba for content https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Spiers / @espiers : One of the dumbest things about this is how it utterly misunderstands media in general, but particularly the history of media and how newspapers worked pre-Internet. Lotta tech people in this thread demonstrating that they never read any of these fabled “print newspapers.” https://twitter.com/... James Ball / @jamesrbuk : This is a fantastic thread on the toxic and changing relationship between journalism and tech. https://twitter.com/... Kara Goldin / @karagoldin : Leaders lead. @hunterwalk you just went up about 17x in my book. We all make mistakes but the shitshow that went on yesterday was just horrifying. It's like we forgot what we teach our children. Kindness does win. On all accounts. 🙏🏼🥰 https://twitter.com/... @realsexycyborg : As usual, when it's a White girl being mildly inconvenienced suddenly all the tech journalists form Voltron🙄 When an actual woman in tech gets dragged into detention? Defunded, deplatformed? Not so much. https://twitter.com/... Katie Bo Williams / @katiebowill : Taylor and I were colleagues at the time. I was impressed by her badassery then and I'm still impressed now. Y'all leave @TaylorLorenz alone. https://twitter.com/... Sara Mauskopf / @sm : Wait @bhorowitz is @pdavison? Come to think of it I have never seen them in the same clubhouse room... https://twitter.com/... Southpaw / @nycsouthpaw : I hate to see a friend of mine, a kind and insightful reporter who is asking for help to rein in a powerful VC investor's abusive behavior toward her, treated like this. https://twitter.com/... Laurie Voss / @seldo : VCs: “We're woke! We care! Look at our stats!” Woman: “I am being harassed by your friend” VCs: “Don't @ me” https://twitter.com/... John A De Goes / @jdegoes : #CancelCulture may be new, but trying to defeat your personal enemy by inflaming a mob is an ancient con. I admire @bhorowitz's instant recognition of this dynamic in the spat between @TaylorLorenz & @balajis, and his polite but firm refusal to play this NYT journalist's game. https://twitter.com/... Jack Appleby / @juiceboxca : Imagine starting an audio chat room just to criticize a human being. What a bizarrely evil act from people who'll beg for press coverage when they need it, then claim media shouldnt exist when it's inconvenient to them. https://twitter.com/... Hamza Shaban / @hshaban : Motherboard gets leaked audio: “The call shows how Silicon Valley millionaires, who have been coddled by the press and lauded as disruptors, fundamentally misunderstand the role of journalism the moment it turns a critical eye to their industry” https://www.vice.com/... @chillmage : Tech leaders have boasted for years about how disruption has destroyed traditional journalism and then when they happen not to like the journalism of the moment they say journalism is too powerful. Can't have it both ways https://twitter.com/... @rationalwiki : this is why @balajis is being so obnoxious to journalists lately, particularly female ones, that people are noticing it's organised of course, he's not very bright, so even the super rich guys turn out to be as competent as gamergate mk 1 https://twitter.com/... Farhad Manjoo / @fmanjoo : The extra crazy thing about this stupid story is I really can't think of a reporter whose work more often shows the positive, zany, unexpected and hopeful effects of tech than @TaylorLorenz — like the whole dumb idea on this call that she epitomizes “anti-tech media” is insane Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : This was just one hour of what was actually recorded in just one room of the app. Think of what else these people have been on Clubhouse saying and what they're saying behind closed doors. The audio is shocking and everyone should listen https://www.vice.com/... Mat Honan / @mat : Clearly one industry VCs do not understand much about is the media business: https://www.vice.com/... Harry McCracken / @harrymccracken : Don't torment @TaylorLorenz unless your goal is to make yourself look terrible. And not even then, actually. https://twitter.com/... M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : Not weighing in on tech press v. tech insiders because I already did, 50 years ago — er, 5 months ago, which feels like 50 years ago. The song remains the same. https://500ish.com/... Sally Shin / @sallyshin : It's really disappointing to hear the platform has overnight become such a place. As for bashing on tech journalists and the role of the profession, remember that some of the top VCs today came from our industry. See also Mediagazer
“VC puts out bounty for harassment memes targeting journalist who reported on media criticism from a disgraced, former CEO of a suitcase maker” sounds like something The Onion would have written in 2019. But this is 2020, and not funny. It's incredibly dangerous. https://twitter.…
@glennkelman @sohambhatia @Jason Glenn, here's one of the most cut and dried examples you'll ever see. I published a contemporaneous dissection of a Recode article on COVID-19 with 10+ specific criticisms, including citations. The article still hasn't been corrected. No apology e…
You know those asshole Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists who spent the week brigading Taylor Lorenz? THEY are the audience for Bret Stephens's perpetual drivel. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
If you're critiquing media for not being objective, you can't complain when they reach out to you to give you a chance to explain your side. These are mutually exclusive states. https://twitter.com/...
You want to know about @TaylorLorenz? She's a role model for a legion of young reporters and an educator for the rest of us about the latest social trends. Few people exhibit her empathy or dedication. You want to know about VC dudebros? They'll show you their quality themselves …
I also read this article in Vice that characterized that private discussion and quoted a few sentences or phrases from it. That article really did *not* seem like an accurate representation of the discussion that I listened to. https://www.vice.com/...
this got me curious to re-read the original post at the start of all this. Steph's points strike me as plausible and lucidly written, regardless of what she did as CEO. “Ranting”, “incoherent” are misrepresentations of what you can read for yourself https://twitter.com/... https:…
If you don't like negative coverage of your industry with today's media, just wait until you have a decentralized marketplace of competitors funding anon memers with no concern for hurting their own reputation by posting whatever sticks
I share this to help explain why some VCs are so terrified of someone like @TaylorLorenz. Someone who actually thinks reveals their intellectual nudity. Someone who pursues the truthful description of the world is incomprehensible to them, because to them ideas are power grabs.
If you're wondering where the toxicity in tech comes from, pay attention to how VCs are behaving right now. These are the (mostly white) men who not only financially enable young CEOs (mostly white boys), but teach them how to behave. https://www.vice.com/...
The big takeaway from this insular, maddening conversation is that many people with power and money reject the concept of social accountability and resent forms of independent criticism they can't control — chiefly journalism in the public interest. https://www.vice.com/...
Someone leaked an hour of audio from Clubhouse last night where Balajis, Felicia Horowitz, and others were talking ahout the media. It's disgusting what these people will say when they think no one is listening. https://www.vice.com/...
Fair warning: everything you say on #Clubhouse is being covertly recorded by journalists to weaponize against you This is the reason I told folks that a certain NYT journalist was in our room on #clubhouse (without warning folks)—for which she claimed I was harassing her (?!) htt…
The only objection journalists like @jason_koebler have to “surveillance capitalism” is that they want to be the monopoly providers! This is the same guy who outed Naomi Wu (@RealSexyCyborg), by the way. https://twitter.com/...
Watching VC twitter attack Taylor has been gross. The fact that they don't attack male journalists who have similar tweets and articles is very telling. https://twitter.com/...
This trail of abuse is ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE. Bitcoin bounties offered to meme warriors trained on Gamergate fits right into this. To see VC twitter cheer this on with the support of the main agitator is just disgusting. https://twitter.com/...
It seems Steph Korey wasn't a great people manager, likely exacerbated by her gender (i.e. people expect women to be nurturing) but a company narrative that they replaced their female co-founder for a male CEO because her posts on maternity leave weren't woke enough is just 🤔
Steph Korey being fired as co-CEO of Away while on maternity leave because she posted an Instagram story answering a question about why the media prefers taking down female CEOs and employees thought she should be posting about #BLM or #PRIDE is wild. https://www.theverge.com/...
I hope the security team at @nytimes is taking this harassment campaign seriously. The targeted journalist should probably be under protection. This bounty call would have been dangerous in any year, but in 2020, in a country teetering on the brink, armed to the teeth, it's 🤯.
It's either a cry for help or a profound projection that the bounty for harassment is offered alongside one for legal advice (paid in BTC?! priced at $1k??). Any responsible lawyer would tell him that he's risking prosecution for cyberstalking, and to cease and desist.
To see a VC of a major firm explicitly incite this same kind of anonymous abuse with Bitcoin bounties is beyond the pale. Once you've legitimized this, it's a short and uncontrollable hop to SWAT'ing, cyberstalking, or worse.
Presented without comment: Exhibit A: This answer on Quora, written by a random person on the internet, summarizing recent events: https://www.quora.com/... Exhibit B: This article on VICE, written by a professional journalist, summarizing recent events: https://www.vice.com/...
Tech has been extremely successful at convincing the public that it is unlike every other industry that came before and its top profiteers unlike any other businesspeople who came before. It'd probably be better and healthier to just start treating it like oil or finance imho. ht…
Kara Swisher still hasn't run a formal retraction for Recode's dangerously false reporting on COVID-19. Since their business model does not incentivize truth, the public will have to do it. $1000 #Bitcoin bounty for the first person who can get them to correct the record. https:/…
.@TaylorLorenz I like you and respect your work, but leaving out the rest of that screenshot where its clear that @balajis is simply repeating the same words you wrote to bash a woman CEO, is exactly illustrative of his larger point. https://twitter.com/...
Watching how US tech/VC has responded to even mildly negative coverage has reminded me of the pain I've caused poor UK PRs when I've put challenging questions to their US bosses. For years Silicon Valley CEOs just got used to hero worship and were shocked when it was withheld htt…
Something missing in the tech/media translation: Tech gives a pass to failure. A product didn't work? That's ok. The effort was still there. Media doesn't. If you write something that's wrong, particularly VERY wrong, it's a stain that sticks. Credibility is our currency.
Those reporters are so awful. All they want to do is write stories about *wait I'm getting new developments in my ear piece* “protecting vulnerable people”. https://twitter.com/...
.@stephkorey the CEO of Away, $1.4B luggage startup, reflects on why woman are specifically being targeted in various media outlets & how the business model is built that way to incentivize it. Coherent & great to hear her balanced perspective in a world prone to cancel culture. …
@bhorowitz @TaylorLorenz @balajis @FeliciaHorowitz Hey don't take this the wrong way Ben but maybe you should jump in a fucking volcano or something. Or, as an alternative, apologize and do the right thing.
a bunch of venture capital babies, cloistered away in an invite-only social media site where they can pretend to be better than we common poors, are harassing @TaylorLorenz due to their being Offended at tepid criticism of a (shitty) luggage CEO's insta. https://www.vice.com/...
There's not enough medium posts and clubhouse chats in the world that would make them as happy a single positive story in NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg The Information etc. It's why the pitch us. We're a part of their business plan. More critically, we feed their ego.
You think I kid about the victim mentality of the richest and most powerful people in the world who control so much of our society. This is a feature, not a bug: VICE - Silicon Valley Elite Discuss Journalists Having Too Much Power in Private App https://www.vice.com/...
Twitter user here. I've covered 3 male-dominated communities for more than a decade: infosec, natsec and Silicon Valley. But I've never seen more entitlement, disdain for accountability and mansplaining than in venture capital. See: the past 24 hours of VC Twitter. https://twitte…
...a few weeks ago a Silicon Valley-based journalist was talking about the impending ‘culture war’ between technology companies and other media...maybe this is what they mean https://twitter.com/...
Clubhouse is in a bit of paradox — if they opened up the app, the community abuse might scale, which the app is yet to be prepared for; if they kept it invite-only, it will grow as an echo chamber https://twitter.com/...
I assume one employee who was especially unhappy was Stuart Haselden, who was not supposed to have to share the CEO job with her. https://twitter.com/...
In the last few years, journalists have done important work exposing bad behavior in tech. A lot of people in the VC scene are responding with anti-journalist rhetoric. https://twitter.com/...
Most people I know are in awe of @TaylorLorenz's ability to grok a beat that didn't even exist until she mostly created it and now everyone's trying to catch up. On top of that, her work ethic is off the charts. https://twitter.com/...
So, let me get this right. A bunch of self-entitled and self-labeled geniuses with years of experience in the dog-eat-dog Silicon Valley world, VC rivalries, and press leaks actually thought this insanely obtuse conversation wasn't going to leak? 🙃 https://twitter.com/...
Tbt to “yesteryear” when journalism was fair and truthful and William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were such well-known exaggerators that everyone believed they started a war with Cuba for content https://twitter.com/...
One of the dumbest things about this is how it utterly misunderstands media in general, but particularly the history of media and how newspapers worked pre-Internet. Lotta tech people in this thread demonstrating that they never read any of these fabled “print newspapers.” https:…
Leaders lead. @hunterwalk you just went up about 17x in my book. We all make mistakes but the shitshow that went on yesterday was just horrifying. It's like we forgot what we teach our children. Kindness does win. On all accounts. 🙏🏼🥰 https://twitter.com/...
As usual, when it's a White girl being mildly inconvenienced suddenly all the tech journalists form Voltron🙄 When an actual woman in tech gets dragged into detention? Defunded, deplatformed? Not so much. https://twitter.com/...
Taylor and I were colleagues at the time. I was impressed by her badassery then and I'm still impressed now. Y'all leave @TaylorLorenz alone. https://twitter.com/...
I hate to see a friend of mine, a kind and insightful reporter who is asking for help to rein in a powerful VC investor's abusive behavior toward her, treated like this. https://twitter.com/...
#CancelCulture may be new, but trying to defeat your personal enemy by inflaming a mob is an ancient con. I admire @bhorowitz's instant recognition of this dynamic in the spat between @TaylorLorenz & @balajis, and his polite but firm refusal to play this NYT journalist's game. ht…
Imagine starting an audio chat room just to criticize a human being. What a bizarrely evil act from people who'll beg for press coverage when they need it, then claim media shouldnt exist when it's inconvenient to them. https://twitter.com/...
Motherboard gets leaked audio: “The call shows how Silicon Valley millionaires, who have been coddled by the press and lauded as disruptors, fundamentally misunderstand the role of journalism the moment it turns a critical eye to their industry” https://www.vice.com/...
Tech leaders have boasted for years about how disruption has destroyed traditional journalism and then when they happen not to like the journalism of the moment they say journalism is too powerful. Can't have it both ways https://twitter.com/...
this is why @balajis is being so obnoxious to journalists lately, particularly female ones, that people are noticing it's organised of course, he's not very bright, so even the super rich guys turn out to be as competent as gamergate mk 1 https://twitter.com/...
The extra crazy thing about this stupid story is I really can't think of a reporter whose work more often shows the positive, zany, unexpected and hopeful effects of tech than @TaylorLorenz — like the whole dumb idea on this call that she epitomizes “anti-tech media” is insane
This was just one hour of what was actually recorded in just one room of the app. Think of what else these people have been on Clubhouse saying and what they're saying behind closed doors. The audio is shocking and everyone should listen https://www.vice.com/...
Not weighing in on tech press v. tech insiders because I already did, 50 years ago — er, 5 months ago, which feels like 50 years ago. The song remains the same. https://500ish.com/...
It's really disappointing to hear the platform has overnight become such a place. As for bashing on tech journalists and the role of the profession, remember that some of the top VCs today came from our industry.