Technology

Project Include CEO Ellen Pao, who has been working to foster diversity, inclusion and ethics in the tech industry, called out Twitter&public square& model as flawed — and a decision that indicates a lack of ethical consideration, on Twitter part.

The topic of Twitter came up on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019 this morning, when Pao was asked her opinion as to whether Twitter should make exceptions to its platform rules for public figures — like President Trump, for example.

She said doesn&t believe that it should. And not just because the decision in and of itself raises ethical questions, but because of how these decisions can ultimately shape the direction of Twitterplatform as a whole.

&I think ita question of ethics to break these exceptions — because you want to drive this growth that you want to use to fuel your stock price and to fuel recruiting, and to fuel this capitalism — thatdriving all sorts of decisions without thinking about the long-term direction of where your platform is going,& Pao explained.

She also questioned whether Twitter has been successful in creating an online version of the public town square, which is how Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has repeatedly described the social media platform.

&Jack talks about this public square, where you have this digital version of the public square. But people aren&t screaming at you on the public square, they&re not calling you racist things, they&re not throwing pictures of like horrible things…I don&t want to be in a public square like that,& Pao said. &And I don&t want to have a public square thatdigital create these horrible events in real life,& she added.

On Twitter (or really, on social media in general) the hateful words and sentiments can often spill over into real-world action.

&I don&t think thatan ethical decision. I don&t think thata values-driven decision. I don&t think thatcreating a good public square, I don&t think thatdoing a service for your users who are from the groups that are being hated on,& Pao said. &I think you really have to think about your whole community. You have to think about the types of conversations you want to have.&

She clarified that itnot about censoring speech, but the challenges in creating a place where people can actually engage in conversations — even those in which they disagree, and even those where there may be conflict.

Twitterfailure has been not understanding where free speech ends and moderation begins. And this is not a problem unique to its platform. All of social media is struggling with this same issue.

In Paomind, ita question of where meaningful conversation ends and outright harassment begins.

&Using the F-word, and the C-word, and the N-word? Thatnot a conversation, right? Thatnot an exchange of ideas,& she said. &I don&t think people think enough about what they want their platforms to be, what they want the platforms to encourage.&

Former Tinder CEO Greg Blatt has filed a defamation lawsuit against Sean Rad and Rosette Pambakian, seeking at least $50 million in damages and accusing them of having &conspired to make false allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault against Blatt with the specific intent to damage Blattgood name, personal and professional reputation, and credibility.&

In response, Rad and Pambakianattorney Orin Snyder described the suit as part of a campaign &to retaliate against and smear a victim of sexual assault and the person who reported it.&

Last year, Rad (Tinderco-founder and former CEO), Pambakian (its former vice president of marketing and communications) and other Tinder founders and executives filed a lawsuit against Tinderparent company Match Group and its majority shareholder IAC, accusing them of financial manipulation to lower the companyvaluation and stripping the plaintiffs of lucrative stock options.

The suit also accused Blatt (pictured above) of groping and sexually harassing Pambakian at the company2016 holiday party, when Blatt was still TinderCEO. In response to the suit, Match and IAC said the claims were meritless.

At the time, Pambakian was still employed at Tinder. She laterdropped out of the suit due to an arbitration agreement, and was fired a few months after, leading her to claim that Match did this &in blatant retaliation for joining a group of colleagues and Tinderoriginal founding members in a lawsuit against Match and IAC, standing up for our rights, calling out the companyCEO Greg for sexual misconduct, and confronting the company about covering up what happened to me.&

Pambakian is now pursuing a separate suit against Blatt and Match Group, accusing them of wrongful termination and sexual assault.

Blattnew suit, however, claims:

Rad and Pambakian have attempted to weaponize an important social movement, undermining the plight of true victims of sexual abuse by making false accusations in cynical pursuit of a $2 billion windfall … Blatt is expected to be a key witness for IAC and Match in the Valuation Lawsuit. Damaging Blattcredibility and tarnishing his character are important elements of Pambakianand Radlitigation strategy in that action.

The suit also says that the encounter with Pambakian at the Tinder holiday party involved consensual flirting and kissing, but that they &never engaged in any further physical encounters& and made mutual apologies the following Monday.

According to the suit, Rad filed a complaint months later accusing Blatt of harassing Pambakian, and the complaint &was thoroughly investigated by in-house counsel and two outside law firms,& who concluded that there was no harassment or abuse.

The holiday party and Radsubsequent complaint are also discussed in a draft of Blattresignation letter from Tinder (which has been obtained by TechCrunch and other publications), in which Blatt said that after joining a &female executive& and other Tinder employees in a hotel room, he &engaged in some snuggling and nuzzling (I can&t come up with words that better describe what I would call the most superficial of human contact) with the female executive.&

Blatt went on to describe his behavior as &really dumb,& while also insisting that &the snuggling and nuzzling was consensual.&

Blattcomplaint includes an email that appears to be from Rad to his financial advisor, written shortly before Radcomplaint, in which he wrote about Blatt: &Fuck him. We&re at war. We will destroy him.&

The suit also claims that Rad and the firm Bench Walk Advisors offered Pambakian millions of dollars for participating in the lawsuit. (Snyder told The Verge there were no upfront payments for participation: &Theonly payments were triggered by IAC/Match retaliating against plaintiffs by stripping away their hard-earned equity.&)

HereSnyderfull statement in response to Blattsuit:

This is a new low for IAC/Match and their former CEO. They continue to retaliate against and smear a victim of sexual assault and the person who reported it. Their attacks are based on lies and documents that are taken out of context. When all of the evidence comes to light, it will be obvious what happened here. Itshameful that these public companies are continuing to cover-up the truth.

And you can read the full suit below.

2019-10-3 Blatt Dkt 18 Firs… by TechCrunch on Scribd

Microsoft said it has found evidence that hackers associated with Iran have targeted a 2020 presidential candidate.

The tech giantsecurity and trust chief confirmed the attack in a blog post, but the company would not say which candidate was the target.

The threat group, which Microsoft calls Phosphorous — also known as APT 35 — made more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer email accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. These accounts, he said, are &associated& with a presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists and prominent Iranians living outside the country.

&Four accounts were compromised as a result of these attempts; these four accounts were not associated with the U.S. presidential campaign or current and former U.S. government officials,& said Tom Burt, Microsoftvice president of customer security and trust.

The attacks happened between August and September, said Burt.

The threat group tried to obtain access to secondary email accounts linked to a Microsoft account, which they would use as a way to break into the account, he said.

Some attacks involved gathering and targeting user phone numbers.

Burt said the attacks were ¬ technically sophisticated& but attempted to use a &significant amount of personal information& both to identify and attack the accounts.

Out of all those who were presidential candidates during August and September, only President Trump and Mark Sanford are known to use Microsoft as their email provider.

This isn&t the first time Phosphorous has appeared on Microsoftradar. The tech giant sued the threat group, believed to be backed by Tehran, earlier this year to take control of several domains used by the hackers to launch watering hole attacks. The hacker group is also believed to be linkedto former U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence officer Monica Witt, who defected to Tehran in 2013 and is nowwanted by the FBIfor alleged espionage.

In previous campaigns, the hackers have targeted academics and journalists with spearphishing campaigns designed to look like Yahoo and Google login pages but can defeat two-factor authentication.

Microsoft said it has made more than 800 notifications of attempted state-backed attacks against users who are protected by the tech giantaccount monitoring service aimed at political campaigns.