Not true, there were plenty of people on HN that were upset he was being "given a platform".
People think he should be punished by being ignored by the larger publications or something. He was still giving Twitter interviews with lots of popular crypto people all the time so I doubt it would have done anything.
The NYT profiling him as a well-meaning genius who was so focused on fixing climate change and education that he just overlooked a few things at his company, gosh darn it.
The NYT profiles I've seen is pretty clear that Alameda and FTX were mingling customer funds, that he refused to answer questions about the handling of funds, and that he was under investigation.
> But he would offer only limited details about the central questions swirling around him: whether FTX improperly used billions of dollars of customer funds to prop up a trading firm that he also founded, Alameda Research. The Justice Department and the S.E.C. are examining that relationship.
> Alameda had accumulated a large “margin position” on FTX, essentially meaning it had borrowed funds from the exchange, Mr. Bankman-Fried said. “It was substantially larger than I had thought it was,” he said. “And in fact the downside risk was very significant.” He said the size of the position was in the billions of dollars but declined to provide further details.
> Around the time the crypto market crashed this spring, Ms. Ellison explained, lenders moved to recall those loans, the person familiar with the meeting said. But the funds that Alameda had spent were no longer easily available, so the company used FTX customer funds to make the payments. Besides her and Mr. Bankman-Fried, she said, two other people knew about the arrangement: Mr. Singh and Mr. Wang.
Perhaps you think you're providing evidence of hard-hitting journalism, but it's the opposite. They are framing premeditated, intentional fraudulent activity as a series of mistakes and oversights.
It was substantially larger than I had thought it was -- whoopsie!
the funds that Alameda had spent were no longer easily available (and why is that, hmmm?) , so the company used FTX customer funds to make the payment -- didnt want to, just rearranging some furniture!
I've seen a few people say that was a puff piece. I thought it made him look bad and covered the accusations of fraud. What are folks looking for? A headline directly calling him a villain?
Ha, After typing this I went to double checked my memory of the article. They literally refer to him as a villain in the first paragraph. Even my hyperbole can't stand up.
Always put yourself in 'the other guys' shoes. Imagine you are an editor and, for the sake of argument, you have a singular goal: Make somebody who is decidedly unpopular, almost certainly a criminal, and just stole or otherwise cost millions of people billions of dollars, seem like 'not such a bad guy.' And since you're a smart speaker, your target demographic is not the people who would actively defend him or passively defer to positive messaging, because obviously they already think he's not such a bad guy, but the people who would actively condemn him.
By contrast imagine your motivation is to remain impartial, to say nothing of critical given your long-standing antagonism of billionaires and crypto, and here you have a billionaire player in crypto. Would you do things like press him on the discovered backdoors, where exactly the money went, illegalities of misappropriation, etc? Or would you simply take hand-waving deflectionary non-answers at face value, let alone publish them? Would you invite him to come speak alongside world leaders at an event you are hosting?
I think this might be the confusion between the two parties in this discussion. When people say 'puff piece', they don't just mean that they're engaged in mindless cheer-leading, but rather that they're taking a turd and instead of reporting on a turd, they're reporting on a diamond in the process of being made, while remaining aware of what the reader is going to see when they look at that 'diamond in the making.'
"But he would offer only limited details about the central questions swirling around him: whether FTX improperly used billions of dollars of customer funds to prop up a trading firm that he also founded, Alameda Research. The Justice Department and the S.E.C. are examining that relationship."
Covers the first two. They refer to how intermingled they were several times. Its a major point of the article.
"He lived in a five-bedroom penthouse in the Albany resort’s Orchid building, with Ms. Ellison, Mr. Singh, Mr. Wang and six others. Mr. Bankman-Fried and Ms. Ellison were at times romantically involved, two people said."
This covers point 3
It didn't mention the deleted tweets though but that's minor compared to everything else. Are we talking about different articles? This is the one I normally see people complaining about from them: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/ftx-sam-bankma...
Singer-songwriter, and former free medical clinic employee Charles "Charlie" Manson, who wrote at least one song eventually recorded by the Beach Boys, died earlier today.
Despite not being present at the scene of any of the crimes, Manson, a victim of America's "cradle-to-prison pipeline" starting at age 5 when his parents were both incarcerated, and was allegedly raped at a reform school, was convicted on seven charges of first-degree murder. The prosecutors also conceded that Mr. Manson never directly instructed anybody to commit the murders, yet he was sentenced to death.
Manson, who earned a following preaching a unique, persuasive self-made philosophy based partly on the Bible, Dale Carnegie and the Beatles, has remained as perhaps the most popular and controversial criminal in the United States in the 20th Century.
You might try reading Fox News sometime. It is fascinating to see what they choose to completely ignore, even big news, because it does not fit their agenda. Be very careful getting your news from a single partisan outlet however, if you care to be well informed.
The right has been villainized for a very long time and for good reason. Left-leaning people discovering that their side is just as bad and untrustworthy when given enough power is, I believe, the reason people are pointing it out. The left were supposed to be the good guys. You don't begrudge the scorpion for stinging as much as the frog that promised would lead you to a more fair and just land, only to carry you to scorpion island.
The left (or at least the fairly broad swath I'm acquainted with) has been mostly hostile to crypto and skeptical of "effective altruism" for years. I don't know anybody on the left who would have identified SBF as "one of the good guys" before this all came out; "yet another tech bro who thinks he knows how to save the world" is more like it.
I've only ever heard of left-leaning publications that find excuses for him. Maybe individuals you are acquainted with are as you said but that wasn't what me or parent were talking about
As a libertarian the last two years has caused to be actively stop reading 'right leaning' papers. I remember when the Right made fun of the Left for being the whiny, constantly claiming they're oppressed, do nothing but complain group. Take all that and ad a ton of hate and anger and you get 'news' from the Right today. I had to drop cable to do it though. I could not stop going back to Fox and getting worked up about BS. Then I had to add all my old Right wing websites to NextDNS because I kept getting drawn back. Just like if I was in a cult. I'm so much happier now.
