For those who don’t know the back story: under some kind of investor-level pressure, I was banned from Quora on September 4, 2015. No valid reason was given. I was a “Top Writer” and Quora frequently published my answers to venues including Fortune, Time, BBC, Forbes, and The Huffington Post. Some people (including me) believe that it’s connected to the feud that Dan Gackle and Paul Buchheit started with me last month, involving direct pressure either from Y Combinator (an investor in Quora) or people purporting to act on Y Combinator’s behalf.
I’m really sick of tech beefs, and I assume that my readers are, too. I’m not going to talk about the feud. These things are just so fucking stupid, I can’t stand to be in them anymore.
I’m going to talk about what Quora’s recent action means for everyone else, because this isn’t about just me.
Of course, I could still be wrong in my model of what happened. If Quora reverses the ban and attributes it to an embarrassing bureaucratic or technical error, I’ll accept that resolution, and consider it likely that they are being truthful in the assertion that it was a glitch. It isn’t too late to undo the harm. I don’t fault Quora, at least not until I know more, for its role in this.
So, everything I’m going to write assumes that my sources of information are correct. We’ll know which explanation is right by Tuesday or Wednesday– I don’t expect anything to change over the weekend– based on whether or not Quora un-bans my account. Given the morale problem that my banning has triggered internally at Quora– I’ve gotten to know several Quorans personally– it seems reasonable that Quora will reverse the ban in any scenario except for an existential threat to the company in the form of investor-level extortion.
I find no fault in Quora, at least not now. When faced with the decision between banning one user and having to fire 115 people because of a fundraising problem, the choice is obviously the former. So I have nothing negative to say about Quora. This is about the venture capitalists who chose to extort. Why did they sink so low?
I’ve been in technology for long enough to know that there are some sleazy people in it, but I’ve never seen sleaze hit the product level. For example, many technology companies stack rank their employees, and investors screwing founders is an old a game as empire, but tech companies don’t often use intentional, bad-faith product failures to punish users. For example, Google and Facebook don’t allow their employees to stalk their ex-significant-others, and will fire someone who tries to do so. That was the world we were used to: one where products weren’t intentionally let fail to punish users, because companies and investors knew that users’ faith in the product was more valuable than settling some silly feud.
Here’s what September 4, 2015 means (or, at least, seems to mean). It means that VCs will threaten hundreds of jobs to settle a minor score in a feud that the other side (to be honest) wasn’t even taking entirely seriously. (I found it hard to believe that “Don’t Be Evil” Paul Buchheit would condescend to feud with me, so it was more of a fun joke, that I wanted to see if I could keep going, than a serious beef.) It means that, due to the importance of social proof and “signaling” in Silicon Valley, a single influential investor can pressure a company into bad-faith uses of its product. If you piss anyone off, no matter how silly your slight is, you can’t trust anything that the Valley has built. If you challenge an overfed three-digit millionaire to a stupid rap battle, you might face a defamatory user ban on an unrelated Q&A forum.
What happened last Friday, itself, doesn’t matter. I’ll find other uses of my time. Far more interesting is what this says about Silicon Valley and the fundamental brittleness of everything that it has built. If investors are willing to forcibly compromise the ethical integrity of a billion-dollar company over a goofy feud, then what happens if the stakes are higher?
Brittany Smith
It’s November 8, 2021, five months to the day after 25-year-old Brittany Smith, a former associate at a venture capital firm, was awarded $6.3 million at the end of a lawsuit against her billionaire ex-boss, Tom Smyrr, for sexual harassment. It was an obvious, open-and-shut case, even with Mr. Smyrr’s expensive legal team. In February 2020, on a trip to New York– a one-party-consent state for audio recording of conversation– he threatened to fire her, and ruin her reputation within Silicon Valley, if she didn’t perform a sexual favor. She said “no”– and her phone, recording everything, saved her career. She lost her job, and couldn’t get another one, because Tom Smyrr had slandered her throughout the industry, so severely that even her ex-boss’s enemies wouldn’t hire her. The past summer’s victory in the courtroom was the first step toward clearing her name, and it seems to have worked. Today she had her first interview! It went well, she thinks.
It’s 6:45 pm. It’s dark, rainy, and cold outside. Brittany’s exhausted from the interview and wants to get back to her hotel as quickly as she can. Not knowing where to find a cab in this strange city, she uses the new ride-hailing app, Vyper. Three minutes later, the driver arrives: an unsmiling man, with dark shades. She asks herself: is it even legal to wear sunglasses and drive at night? Eh, whatever, she thinks. She just wants to get to the hotel and go to sleep.
It’s 7:09. Brittany notices that she’s crossing a bridge, and it’s one she hasn’t seen before. Where am I? She checks her location on Loqate Maps. For twenty minutes, the driver’s been going the wrong way! Her heart starts pounding. This isn’t right. “Excuse me, sir,” she says. “This isn’t the way to my house.” Must be an honest mistake, she thinks. Or is he going to rob me? she wonders. “I’m sorry,” the man says. “It’s that damn Loqate bug. It’s sending me on a bad route. I’ll get you out of here.”
The Loqate bug. That was fixed 15 months ago! Why is this man running outdated software? No, she says to herself, don’t judge. Not everyone keeps current with software updates. “I just started driving for Vyper this week,” he says. She calms down a little. He’s an older man, with a gentle and intelligent aura about him. Ten minutes of conversation with the man leaves her feeling relaxed. Okay, not a robber, not a creep, just a new driver. She’s absolutely miffed about a 15-minute ride taking half an hour (and counting) so the driver assures her that her ride will be uncharged.
It’s 7:26. Brittany looks out the window. She’s in a deserted, industrial, unattractive part of town, with dilapidated warehouses on both sides. This guy is terrible at route planning. Whatever, she thinks, he said he’s not charging me so there’s no meter to worry about.
She hears a “ping!” on her phone; her boyfriend shared a news article. She reads it. She’s too tired to find it funny and quickly finds herself (almost by force of habit) thumbing through her backlog of TechPress posts. July… not much worth reading. August… nothing. September… same-old stuff. October…
October 3, 2021: Billionaire Tom Smyrr invests $320 million in Vyper at $1.1 billion valuation.
I’m in a Vyper, Brittany realizes. Unease rises. That pressure behind her head, that throbbing in her neck, that sudden full-body sweating… are all new sensations to her. The driver is a hit man! Her eyes hit the speedometer. 18 mph. Seatbelt off, she pulls the door handle. Locked. Ok, that could be a safety measure. Most cars auto-lock at 10 mph, she reminds herself. Maybe this is what a panic attack feels like. She’s shaking, crying, banging on the door. Or maybe he’s going to kill me! Full-on panic. She screams, “Stop the car! Stop the fucking car! Now!”
(To be continued?)
We are in new, weird, scary territory. I don’t like it.
