What's the eBay response to 60 minutes segment on harassing journalists for trying to do their jobs?

[peszar-0]

This is SICK tactics by eBay to try and bring down a journalist who is trying to bring to light a crackdown on 2nd Amendment rights. And the CEO exits with a golden parachute. **bleep**!!!!!!

[donsdetour]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@vintagecraze50   Ride into the sunset is exactly what they might do. Then again, some say revenge is sweet, and the Steiners might feel that way. Only time will tell.

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How is a financial pay out on a corporation that very likely had nothing to do with the actions of a few be "revenge".   While they are suing some of the individuals that were involved in this campaign of terror on the Steiner's, Ebay is likely the one with the deep pockets.

Now I say that not because I don't believe the Steiner's have every right to sue, because I absolutely believe they have that right.  What happened to them should have NEVER happened.  But I'm also a firm believer with putting blame where blame is due.

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Since a corporation is classified as an individual< blame lies with eBay.

[coolections]

I would love to see Ebay countersue them for defamation and as many other reasons for hurting Ebay's business and reputation. Maybe that can offset the amount Ebay will be forced to hand over to them.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mam98031 I don't work at ebay. As a non-employee , I have no real idea what the work culture is like today, or what it was like when all this happened.

No where I have said ebay is responsible. I have said that this is an ongoing case, and we won't know whether ebay ends up being held responsible until the case ends or a settlement is reached. I don't know why you insist I have some sort of view on that subject. Frankly, my view matters not at all, and neither does yours. If there is a jury trial, the only views that will matter will be the jurors' views.

Unlike some here, I don't pretend to know just what happened---or what didn't happen---at ebay.  I don't pretend to know what Wenig knew or didn't know. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@mam98031 " But I'm also a firm believer with putting blame where blame is due."

My guess is, so are the Steiners. And the reason they are suing ebay and Wenig is because they believe they share in the blame. So far, NO legal determination has been made on that issue. It is obvious that some on these Boards have made up their minds on that issue, but that's not the same thing....only time will tell. 

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I think it's likely that the goal of pushing this as far as they could would be because they want everyone who is responsible to be held responsible, and the lengths will go as far as the responsibility goes. We'll likely never know how far it truly went.

Putting myself in their shoes, I'd certainly think the person who made the command to "take them down" and approved it from the very top should be held responsible. And I don't believe that's unreasonable to feel, as the people at top DO share the responsibility, despite if it was pushed further than they intended or not.

It has been proven (especially recently) that the justice system is about more than simply justice, especially if you are wealthy and well connected.

And in terms of Wenig, well make a blog post somewhere on the internet and hook up Google Analytics to track the IP's that come to visit you. Watch how when you speak about Wenig in public, you get eBay IP's on your site immediately, and within hours Thomson Reuters IP's begin showing up on the post. That speaks for itself. Especially if you consider how integrated in the legal world Thomson Reuters is, and that they're still following his tracks and cleaning up his mess even though he hasn't worked for them for over 10 years.

[chapeau-noir]

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@coolections wrote:

I would love to see Ebay countersue them for defamation and as many other reasons for hurting Ebay's business and reputation. Maybe that can offset the amount Ebay will be forced to hand over to them.

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Seriously?  It's just a blog and I doubt they've "hurt" eBay with their little articles - that's why this entire response on the part of some eBay employees was so ridiculous.  

[coolections]

Do you know how many millions or thousands of viewers read that hateful blog ? Do you know what percent of the people who do read it leave thinking Ebay is a place someone should never buy or sell on? I am not advocating for those who did what they did not get punished but want people to know that couple seems to have had a vendetta for years about Ebay. I still wonder if they got booted and that is what started it all.

[chapeau-noir]

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@coolections wrote:

Do you know how many millions or thousands of viewers read that hateful blog ? Do you know what percent of the people who do read it leave thinking Ebay is a place someone should never buy or sell on? I am not advocating for those who did what they did not get punished but want people to know that couple seems to have had a vendetta for years about Ebay. I still wonder if they got booted and that is what started it all.

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They've been writing the blog for a long time and it covers more than eBay. There is nothing this little blog is going to do that should even matter to a huge multinational corp like eBay, it's not going to upset thousands and millions of people*. It just mattered to a couple of immature snowflakes at eBay and off they went.

*I doubt such large numbers even read it.  As a matter of fact, this will probably do more damage to the Steiners than it would ever do to eBay insofar as direct impact.  Alarmists aside, save for what these individuals at eBay did to the Steiners, it's a tempest in a teapot.

[maxine*j]

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@coolections wrote:

Do you know how many millions or thousands of viewers read that hateful blog ? Do you know what percent of the people who do read it leave thinking Ebay is a place someone should never buy or sell on? I am not advocating for those who did what they did not get punished but want people to know that couple seems to have had a vendetta for years about Ebay. I still wonder if they got booted and that is what started it all.

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The thing is, there are hateful blogs on every subject under the sun and on every public figure and private enterprise on the planet, and most of the people who read the blogs already share the hatred of "X" with the blogger.  They flock to blogs that confirm / vindicate their own hatreds, to blogs where the moderators are happy to let them be hateful. 

I don't know what per cent of people think badly of eBay after reading the blog, but I'll wager that 90 per cent of them thought badly of eBay before reading it.

And I'm with you in using the term "blogger" rather than the OP's "journalist," by the way.

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[zamo-zuan]

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@coolections wrote:

Do you know how many millions or thousands of viewers read that hateful blog ? Do you know what percent of the people who do read it leave thinking Ebay is a place someone should never buy or sell on? I am not advocating for those who did what they did not get punished but want people to know that couple seems to have had a vendetta for years about Ebay. I still wonder if they got booted and that is what started it all.

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There's far more hate in eBay's internal messages than in their blog. And people who go to that blog typically would already have experience on eBay, hence seeking out publications outside of eBay.

It's pretty odd to compare the hateful aggression that eBay's reps had, to bloggers and/or people who post on those blogs that are giving feedback. Negative feedback does not equal hate.

Ironically your (mis)interpretation is the same that led to the harassment. By interpreting coverage of issues and/or presenting negative feedback as a malicious attack. 

Here is the current list of articles on the page, what is wrong or "hateful" with any of these?

[chapeau-noir]

Also, the articles in the blog are simply coverage.  The comment section is where all the vitriol is - they need to get a hobby if they're still banging on about eBay and they don't even sell here anymore. And it seems to be the same few people, though there are a few good posts I've pretty much stopped bothering with it.

I get caught up on news for Etsy and Amazon on that blog, as well as any other selling sites up and coming, most of it just notices about fee changes, restructuring, new initiatives, etc. 

ETA:  Oh yeah, and the comments sections are where that one commenter wrote who also tweeted and which the individuals with eBay were trying to expose and seemed to trigger. 

[bonjourami]

"Ironically your (mis)interpretation is the same that led to the harassment. By interpreting coverage of issues and/or presenting negative feedback as a malicious attack. "

I read that blog,if that wasnt malicious,I dont know what is.Hardly was 'interpreting the issues'. Radiated hostility and yes...hatred.

[valueaddedresource]

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@albertabrightalberta wrote:

I thought I read that the 60 million was an amount ebay "set aside" to allow for payment of a potential payment or settlement.

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@albertabrightalberta  - the exact info about what has been set aside for "pending legal matters" can be found in eBay's most recent 10-K filed with the SEC on February 23, 2023.

https://investors.ebayinc.com/financial-information/sec-filings/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?Fil...

Importantly - it's not *just* the civil matter for which funds are being set aside (either to cover costs of litigation or possible settlement/judgement).

Funds are *also* being set aside because the US Attorney's Office is apparently considering possibly pursuing the company criminally and there could be fines and other expenses if USAO finds the company criminally liable.

Text below, emphasis mine.

The Company is also responding to inquiries from the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts regarding potential criminal liability of the Company arising from the stalking and harassment in 2019 of the editor and publisher of Ecommercebytes, a website that publishes ecommerce news and information.

Six former Company employees and one former contractor have pleaded guilty to crimes arising from the conduct. The Company has begun discussions with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which discussions include a potential settlement.

We expect any such settlement may include fines, other payments, and non-monetary remedies, such as additional remediation, compliance and reporting requirements. Although the Company has concluded that losses in the U.S. Attorney matter are probable, we are unable at this time to estimate the losses that may be incurred because the matter is still under investigation and involves open questions relevant to the Company’s potential liability for conduct of its former employees.

The editor and publisher also have a pending civil action against the Company, which seeks unspecified damages arising from the above-described conduct. In connection with the government matters and civil action described above, the Company to date has accrued for probable losses of approximately $64 million in the aggregate.

Given the uncertainties involved, the ultimate resolution of these matters could result in additional losses that may be material to our financial results for a particular period, depending on, among other factors, the size of the loss or liability imposed and the level of our net income or loss for that period.

[valueaddedresource]

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@coolections wrote:

I would love to see Ebay countersue them for defamation and as many other reasons for hurting Ebay's business and reputation. Maybe that can offset the amount Ebay will be forced to hand over to them.

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@collections If there was anything for that to stand on, I imagine it would have already been done.

There are multiple court documents in the various cases involved that show multiple emails from eBay's legal department (including Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber) stating that there was nothing legal could do about the perceived "problems"....that should have been a good indication to everyone involved that taking action outside of that would be ill-advised to say the least, but here we are.

[zamo-zuan]

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@bonjourami wrote:

"Ironically your (mis)interpretation is the same that led to the harassment. By interpreting coverage of issues and/or presenting negative feedback as a malicious attack. "

I read that blog,if that wasnt malicious,I dont know what is.Hardly was 'interpreting the issues'. Radiated hostility and yes...hatred.

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This would be an easy one to prove if true. Why not share anything that is even remotely comparable to what we can see in eBay corporates text messages then?

[retro_entertainment_collectibles]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

Do you know how many millions or thousands of viewers read that hateful blog ? Do you know what percent of the people who do read it leave thinking Ebay is a place someone should never buy or sell on? I am not advocating for those who did what they did not get punished but want people to know that couple seems to have had a vendetta for years about Ebay. I still wonder if they got booted and that is what started it all.

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They've been writing the blog for a long time and it covers more than eBay. There is nothing this little blog is going to do that should even matter to a huge multinational corp like eBay, it's not going to upset thousands and millions of people*. It just mattered to a couple of immature snowflakes at eBay and off they went.

*I doubt such large numbers even read it.  As a matter of fact, this will probably do more damage to the Steiners than it would ever do to eBay insofar as direct impact.  Alarmists aside, save for what these individuals at eBay did to the Steiners, it's a tempest in a teapot.

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Well according to my new web traffic monitoring venue basically they barely exist which is rather surprising given how long been out there and their bounce rate is crazy terrible.  Bounce rate is basically visits that hit the site and leave rapidly.  Site has a horde of unknown "bot hits" which basically tells me they dont understand the technology as likely content spidered then a translation engine shifts things to other languages then changes attribution and reprints.  Been happening for ages on the web now, basically theft of content so be some sites in China and all over the globe that steal the content.

Qualified traffic is less than my eBay impressions by quite some measure no less.  It's far short of millions, far short of hundreds of thousands, qualified traffic even short of hundred thousand with a bounce rate of over 70%, that's unbelievable.  Bet $ to donuts the stat package they review is provided by the webhost and perhaps by the blog software, both ALWAYS suck in huge fashion.  Webhosts stat packages love to inflate reality as it keeps webmasters buying in so they don't filter based on any realities and blog stat software likes to count crap that's just that, crap.  I can sit just pinging and they'll both happily count up.

Some folks for example will use monitoring service make sure their web doesn't go down so service actively ping every 30 seconds or minute and meantime the statistics software be going, "Hit, page view..." "Hit, page view" as the webmaster never had the strudel to filter the IP ranges out.  It's common,  Generally speaking unless a webmaster knows what's what its very common looking at stats to think things are swimmingly well.  Reality is just like here when eBay filtered off Bot views... So if a site shows lets say 200,000 monthly views its likely more like 2,000-5,000 of qualified human beings, bounce rate of say 50% mean more like 1,000-2,500 of anybody every looking at much anything.

With an interactive web like a blog or forum post rate tends be in 2-10% range qualified traffic depending on topics.  For example a game blog or Cannabis forum likely be more on the high end these days than say a place talking about old forms of advertising when drawing and lithograph was used.  Tell-Tale in interactive webs if one doesnt care pay properly for accurate statistics which doesn't necessarily correlate to making a place more visible or used is to look at the total stat on the webhost.  For example if an interactive site webhost stat shows say 500,000 views (not hits as hits often mean, oh this image and that one in addition to, every http request is a hit) upon the site as raw data and you look at you're blog.  At 500,000 raw views, take about 75% off that as its just gonna be automations, indexing or harvesting (theft) of content if not filtered off.  So we're at 125,000 do the 2% low end of activity which is 2500.  That'd mean we're having about 2,500 posts a month or in case of blog comments.  Now here, we've 70% bounce rate and you can see how impactful that be!  If we take 70% of our fictional 125,000 we're that means 87,000 are just popping in and out.  Now we're at 38,000 ACTIVE readers.  2% of that is 760, so if we are performing at the low end, we've 760 interactive comments or forum posts per month.  If we are less than that, we are underperforming on epic scale. We're bouncing 70% of prospect folks off before they even really began.

All quite common as people think, "I make it and they will come," but the statistics they look towards are essentially a complete fabrication and have been for over 20 years.  Webhosts love it as it keeps people paying for their hosting thinking we're doing when in fact we're not doing.  Same happens with folks who set up their own webstores via a hosting company, the stats are like, "Geee... Look at that!  But how come nothings selling?"  LOL.  Same figures apply, in commerce call it conversion rates, in interactive media its now called "Engagement rates" (used to be called capture rates).  Just like with eCommerce, 2% is the low water mark, 10% is wonderland and anything over that is just dreamy!