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Anonymous Attacks or: How I learned to be an idiot on the web.
Malkor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
John Mackey was your everyday, run of the mill, CEO. He founded Whole Foods Market (a store that sells naturally grown foods) in 1980 for $45,000 borrowed from family. Twenty-seven years and around 200 stores later, he wound up piloting a ship with revenue of around $5 billion USD.
Awesome you say. Classic American rags to riches story told to every good capitalistic little girl and boy to make them work hard and grow our GDP. Heard it a million times, so what's so special about this guy? Well he might lose it all because he spent some time 'maeking poast' on an internet message board.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118418782959963745.html
Under the pseudonym Rahodeb, he went onto Yahoo's financial board and waxed poetic on such topics as life, love, Whole Foods Markets and it's competitors. Apparently a few clever forumers on Yahoo! eventually figured out who he was, and he pretty much admited to it in his last post 1100 messages later. But no one pays attention to a bunch of nerds on the internet and it wasn't 'publicly' known until the FTC published a report on Whole Foods and it's most recent aquisition. I'm not sure how much of an effect Rahodeb had on the stock market, but if even one investor was swayed by his postings then there's a problem especially if the CEOs knowledge was used. Even if his posting didn't have an effect on his stock or the stock of his competitors, should he be punished? I don't know of any specific laws against businesses posting anonymously on the internet, although that might change..
I'm not so high up on the corporate food chain that I can give out inside information that could shake markets, but I am privy to certain practices and technology that I'd feel uncomfortable disclosing. The thought that something I post accidentally or on purpose on a psudo-anonymous message board coming back years later to bite me in the ass is kinda scary, and I think as more people spend more time on the internet, we'll see more of this type of thing happening uh... more often. I made this thread partly because I thought this particular story was funny, and I can relate to the guy on some level. This story also brings up the bigger question of how we handle our anonymity (if at all) on the internet and how it can effect us for good or for bad.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11926670
I heard this audio story when I was stuck in traffic after work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/12/business/12foods.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
So, is this a cautionary tale of woe and happenstance, or the new price of doing serious business on the internet?
Malkor on
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Don't post shit that will fuck you in the ass.
Man, this board is the reason why I will never run for public office.
Its cool man, google doesn't index it :P
I'm pretty sure that there's maybe one thing on the internet that would be awkward to explain if it came out while I was in the public's eye. I have no desire to be a public figure though so I think I'm good. Or I could be like R. Kelley and be all like that ain't me.
I work for a large telecommunications company, and sometimes I have to think about what I post when people have problems with us. On the one hand Mrs. Malkor didn't raise no shills. On the other, I could probably help people out with my massive influence *flex*, more likely though I'd send an e-mail out the the relavent person. I'd be saving my company from potentially losing a customer, and helping somone who might be getting the run around. I think that corporations are going to specifically spell out how much and what type of information their employees give out when they do stuff on the internet in their free time. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already.
Smash the system!
Free drugs for all!
Invade France!
Vote Gorak '08.
I don't blog about my life, although I drop anecdotes here and there, and I try to stay away from any real controversy in case it comes to bite me on the butt in the future. Whether that is related to employment, relationships or whatever, I guess sticking with the old adage "discretion is the better part of valour" is what I try to do.
I don't think anyone from Sony's executive team are on this board or any like it hoping to convince you to buy moar PS3s. They aren't creating threads about the RMA of the Wii and 360 potentially stopping sales. I looked at the Yahoo! message boards. Mackey is the CEO (the authority figure of that company) and went as far as to accuse his competitors of stock manipulation. Anytime someone would say that his company's stock was overvalued, he'd chime in with a well thought out post claiming that there was no reason for the company not to continue growing. Like I said, I don't know if he directly influenced anyone's decisions when buying stock, but he shouldn't be in a position to do so.
Would it have been any different if he had made public speeches with the same content, instead of posting the content anonymously on a message board?
Yes, because he wouldn't have been able to hide who he was then. It's somewhat similar to John Lott putting on cyberdrag and trolling Amazon.com.
Their concern is that anything unusual enough to be worth talking about is going to be relatively easy to trace to an actual person, which is a big risk for them in terms of legal compliance.
Well, if you're talking health insurance, every instance where you talk about a claim is potentially a $25k liability.
Nah, home claims. We don't do much health insurance, just because it isn't very common over here. There's a guide that spells out what is and isn't OK to talk about under the Data protection act and Financial Services Authority rules. Basically, you can tell weird/crazy customer stories, but you can't discuss the details of their claims, whether they're rejected or not.
The penalties are pretty minor for individual employees, but the Information Commisioner and the FSA can do pretty much anything up to and including shutting the company down for violations.
It's too easy to slip something up and that slip might screw you over.
I'm pretty comfortable with it. What's there to make a fuss about?
Like any good forum member, you hope it will be in an Idiocracy-style hunt for the world most intelligent person.
On some boards, I use my real name as my handle. The reason is, I sometimes get too tempted by the superdoubleextrasleazy parts of the net, and avoiding anonymity keeps me honest. I figure if I'd be embarassed to put my name to something, I should either toughen up (and not be embarassed) or just not do it.
This is pretty much how I feel. I won't post something here that I would feel uncomfortable telling to vague acquaintances. Hell my handle is my surname and I'm pretty sure you can find a decent amount about me if you read all of my posts. If somebody won't hire me because they find out I'm an atheist by googling my name then I probably don't want to work for them. Maybe I'm just slightly naive but I really don't understand the paranoia.
There's a difference between shilling to advertise your products and illegal manipulation of stocks. If an exec at a company goes on a message board and starts spreading false rumors about the company collapsing so he can drive down the price to buy more stock that VERY illegal. It's not much different from the guys at Enron telling their employees to buy more stock even when they knew the company was ready to fall apart.
This Whole Foods guy sounds like he wasn't shilling for his company but trying to manipulate his stock since he targeting financial message boards.
In the case of Enron, the advice was made from a position of authority. On a message board, you have none but what the people reading your post are willing to grant you.
Exactly how much authority you can have on a message board might be an interesting topic to discuss. There are a number of people who post in G&T that claim to be part of development or retail companies, and there are almost certainly others that are but don't claim to be. Is there any difference between the two? Are the claims of one group more effective than the other, and should they be evaluated differently?
And also where and how we draw the line between attempting to influence the market and simply discussing the market. I don't know the specifics of what he posted, but given that this was a financial message board, I could see it being a bit of a grey area when it comes to the distinction between punditry and insider trading/market manipulation.
On these boards, if someone volunteers information about the sector they work in, it's usually to give their opinion context and say "this is my experience" as opposed to "this is fact". G&T is more focussed than D&D, but it's forumers are still more representative of consumers than producers so it's a case of giving an insight into how things work rather than trying to influence the way they work.
Note that you don't have to be an exec for this to be illegal. Running around on financial message boards posting all kinds of false information on mergers, buyouts, upcoming acquisitions, stocks about to turn around, etc., in an attempt to inflate or deflate stocks you're interested is fraud and market manipulation no matter who you are.
I think it boils down to intent.
If I made an H&A thread asking about two competing products X and Y, and a poster highly praised X and remarked negatively on Y without mentioning the fact they work for the company that produces X, I'd be rather annoyed. It's definitely dishonest, although not necessarily illegal, and if I found out after the fact I'd assume the advice was given with ulterior motives.
Something like "I actually happen to work for Company X, but I use the product myself, because it has these features" is what I would expect in that situation.
Other than that, I think people mention where they work or what they do to provide context for their experience. Like statements of the "I work in an [___], and I'm here to tell you, stuff like [___] is way [under/over]-reported." variety.
My general rule about maeking poast is to treat it like I'm not anonymous. I may be a little more aggressive than if I were in person, because the fact that I can make sure my info is correct by checking other sources allows me to more strongly defend my positions. I treat the intertubes as if a potential employer would be searching for my name/email address the next day. I might have a few embarrassing posts somewhere, but by and large, posting in D&D will really teach you about good posting habits. There are a ton of people with opposing viewpoints on any subject, and they're willing to call you out on logical fallacies. Seeing opposing opinions presented well is invaluable to learning how to communicate ideas intelligently, and I feel like I'm a much smarter person for reading and posting here.