

Can we trust Michael Arrington? (AngelGate) - BenSchaechter
http://derekandersen.me/2010/09/23/the-case-for-michael-arrington-angelgate/

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wolfrom
I think "black and white" is a problem here... I see no reason why Arrington
can't be right while McClure can honestly believe that there was nothing wrong
with the meeting.

Conspiracy theories grow on the basis of black and white, good vs. evil, etc.
Outside of programming, aren't we all used to varying shades of gray?

~~~
sprout
If Arrington is right McClure is wrong, regardless of what he believes. Just
because you believe it's legal and moral doesn't make it so. (More so on the
former than the latter.)

~~~
mattmanser
wolfrom said Arrington right and McClure honestly believe.

Believe is very different to wrong. If Arrington is right, McClure is wrong in
his belief. He can still honestly believe it though.

One, or all, of Christians, Muslims and Atheists are wrong in their belief,
but they can all honestly believe.

I'm not being pedantic here, if you read wolfrom's statement with the correct
meanings you'll see how wrong your comment is, even if you honestly believed
it.

~~~
danielnicollet
I agree and I think the best approach here is to assume that you should never
"trust" Arrington or any other business person (especially media) but that you
should constantly read, listen, compare, and assume that you will have to make
an educated guess. Chomsky, a staunch critic of the media, is very good at
explaining how trust vs. conspiracy theories is never the choice when looking
at the media. The issues is that the media may believe what they say but that
they may not see the whole truth. It's for you to make your own best educated
judgments. And best judgments are usually made by listening to all possible
angles, doubting everything you hear, and staying positive in believing that
this process will produce good educated actions in your own life, business,
etc. That is if you have time to read it all ;-)

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grellas
Blogger and witness are two entirely different roles.

Witness: I can to the lunch uninvited, people squirmed, a couple of the
participants later told me they were uncomfortable with the tenor of the
discussions. (From a witness perspective, first-hand facts based on personal
knowledge are _everything_ \- anything beyond this is hearsay and not to be
credited).

Blogger: These are the top angel investors in the Valley; I heard second-hand
from a couple of the participants that they are upset about valuations, are
looking for ways to cooperate to bring them down, and are also looking for
ways to cooperate to freeze out VCs as co-investors and to limit the impact of
rogue operations like Y Combinator; I checked with my lawyers (and am myself a
lawyer) and I can tell you that this stuff, if true, is blatantly illegal and
I speculate that this is why everyone was squirming.

This latter stuff is the blogger, _not_ the witness, drawing inferences,
putting glosses on the limited known facts, speculating, etc. with an
overriding goal of making a story significant, newsworthy, and even
sensational. This is a legitimate role of a blogger, and is a big part of what
makes TC and Mr. Arrington himself sometimes insightful, sometimes arrogant,
sometimes maddenlingly infuriating, but almost always interesting to a general
readership that takes an intense interest in the subjects being covered.

One can "trust" the witness aspects without necessarily giving credence to the
blogger glosses that are put on the facts. Mr. Arrington appears to be a
straight arrow when recounting facts but watch out for those glosses: they
might easily have an agenda behind them as to which the simple facts
themselves are secondary (this doesn't mean they can't be true, only that they
need to be considered cautiously in light of possible underlying motives).

~~~
ryanholiday
Is it a legitimate goal of a blogger? What do we, as the audience, get out of
it other than a hazy pseudo-reality? I see what MA gets out of it...

------
bkrausz
"If you’re an entrepeneur you believe Arrington."

I disagree, I personally think Arrington made a bit too far of a stretch.

Did a bunch of super angels get together and talk shop? Definitely. Are they
talking about how high valuations are right now? Probably. Once you get into
the "concrete plans for how to control the world" it gets a lot sketchier.

There's a strong difference between someone saying "company X is raising at a
really high valuation, you shouldn't stand for that" and "company X is raising
at a really high valuation, don't take it or there will be consequences".
Startups talk about investors all of the time, why should the investors be any
different?

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aspir
Whether Arrington was right or wrong, there's probably some truth that angels
hate YC. It's based on the whole premise that VC's and angels aren't all their
cracked up to be. It would make sense that these "superangel" gatherings would
discuss their slipping hold on power and how to get it back.

------
ryanholiday
This looks at the wrong metric. It’s not whether his sources are typically
accurate but whether he is generally good at correctly inferring from vague or
uncertain evidence. In my experience, analysis is unquestionably the weakest
part of TechCrunch. They aren’t bad at getting the facts but when it comes to
telling us what those facts mean the wheels come off.

If you’re looking to confirm that the people were all in a room together than
I guess the little breakdown works. If you’re looking to to see if it adds up
to collusion or some Valley equivalent to The Council there are some other
factors to weigh.

------
powrtoch
Surely it's worth noting that the cases he offers as evidence are cases in
which _we expect eventual proof_. The "AngelGate" as he describes it is
illegal and if it were true would necessarily go on behind closed doors.
Everyone involved would have a lot to lose from any proof getting out that
they were involved or that it was even happening.

In short, the previous cases made _falsifiable predictions_. Arrington had
strong incentive to report accurately on them because if he was making them up
_he would eventually get caught_. AngelGate does not share this property. If
it isn't true, thanks especially to the vagueness of the story, what evidence
would be _likely_ to turn up? What if were true. What _likely_ evidence then?

It's not a question of whether to believe unverifiable claims. The question is
"why pay attention to them at all?" Until one or more angels comes forth and
admits the conspiracy (very unlikely, even if true) or Arrington comes forth
and admits he made it up, the whole issue is just noise.

------
ErrantX
last.fm scandal -1 (although I'd award him more than -1 for that :D)

Point is, someone else could probably cherry pick situations that make him
look wrong.

Everything Arrington writes should be taken with a large dose of salt; because
he is, essentially, a gossip journalist. And even before the internet you did
not believe every word a gossip journalist speaketh :)

Often he is right. Sometimes he is spectacularly wrong. Sometimes, and I think
in this case, he gets a rough truth and then tarts it up to make a bigger
story (either deliberately or subconsciously, I couldn't say)

Bottom line is; there is no point to this post.

~~~
shadowsun7
I think in order for this argument to hold true, you'd have to go back for
four months (or longer!) and do the exact same thing that the OP did. That is:
pick every single article where Arrington has predicted something based on an
anonymous source and award points based on whether it was true or not.

Doesn't appear to me that the blogger was cherry picking in any way.

------
cletus
One needs to apply the Arrington filter, which is a little complex.

For example: I immediately thought the Facebook phone story was link bait (and
I still do). However, it seems there was more truth in it that I would've
credited (based on a subsequent interview with Zuckerberg). Such stories drive
page views but they bring Arrington's credibility into question, leading to
debates like this ("do we believe him?").

With this story, the fact that the meeting happened I think is undisputed.
Rather than more typically quoting an "anonymous source" he staked his
_personal_ reputation and used his own eyewitness account. So I don't doubt
that part at all.

After that, it gets murky. Arrington's claims of collusion and price-fixing
are probably a stretch based on the evidence but it has touched off McClure,
Wilson and others. So there is _something_ there. In the very least both sides
(entrepreneurs and angels) are sensitive to the issue.

I also don't believe this is a binary problem: one of McClure and Arrington is
right and the other is wrong. They can both be right, both be wrong or, more
likely, both be somewhat right and somewhat wrong.

For one thing, people can believe they've done nothing wrong when they really
have (note: I'm not claiming the super-angels have done anything wrong).

This is somewhat reminiscent of the DoJ investigation into anti-poaching
agreements: both that and the angel collusion allegations seem motivated from
cooperation but that doesn't mean they did nothing wrong.

TL:DR Arrington's observations are believable. His conclusions are premature.

~~~
Herring
_> His conclusions are premature._

I think he even says he consulted a lawyer. I'm not sure what else you want,
short of the feds getting involved..

~~~
cletus
Let me put it this way: if this story came from the Washington Post, New York
Times or Wall Street Journal it would a) be more measured and b) have a higher
standard for making what is a serious accusation.

~~~
shadowsun7
Let's put it this way: Arrington may be right.
<http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/23/ron-conway-angel-email/>

------
mattmaroon
Well by that logic the Facebook phone (conveniently ommitted) should be
launching any day now.

~~~
bmelton
Here's the interview where Mark Zuckerberg admits that they're working on a
social phone layer: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/22/zuckerberg-interview-
facebo...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/22/zuckerberg-interview-facebook-
phone/)

------
sinzone
The hackers real-time debate here:
<http://office.mashape.com/question/debate.html>

------
aberkowitz
Michael Arrington is a writer, not an oracle of truth. Regardless of whether
he gets it right, people are still going to go to his site. In fact, the
further he spins the story, the more people he gets to visit TechCrunch.

------
chaostheory
history is a good predictor of the future...

------
jasonwatkinspdx
No.

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
To elaborate further: Mr. Arrington has a history of making character
disparaging claims without providing any supporting evidence what so ever.

I personally lost all respect for him as a journalist when he decided to
publicly blast Blaine Cook while knowing no facts other than that Mr. Cook had
left twitter.

~~~
bl4k
You talking about this post? [http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-
over-at-twitte...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-
twitter/)

Blain having a slide at a conference saying 'Scaling Rails. Its Easy. Really',
_before_ they had all those problems, was, well, sorta asking for it.

And anyway it was 2 years ago, could he have learnt from it? This is, after
all, a new medium etc. etc. so a bit of trial and error is expected. As this
post points out, the hit rate to date this year is almost perfect.

(edit: I just re-read that post and boy it was a bit harsh, the comments are
terrible (from both sides - a lot of grudges are being held over this, I
feel).

Doesn't convince me to write-off any trust in TC though, especially not two
years later. If I ignored every source that wrote a bad story I would be left
with nothing atm).

~~~
jasonwatkinspdx
That's one of a series of posts Mr. Arrington made. They also fit in a general
trend of manufacturing a dramatic store with no source and no supporting
evidence.

Blaine's slide was perhaps poorly chosen, but it's also entirely correct:
scaling the rails portion of twitter is trivial, just as it would be with php,
.net, or countless other technologies. The stateless tier isn't interesting.
But for whatever reason, the meme was never "mysql can't scale at twitter",
but rather "rails can't scale at twitter", even though the app server stack
had little to do with it.

Also, those of us who've been through the pain of a rapidly growing startup,
even if it wasn't growing as fast as twitter, understand that the real
challenges are people, politics and vendors. Rarely is there a deep
technological problem that requires a novel solution. Typically the fight is
over getting the things you need to implement a well known solution.

In particular I had a few calls with early twitter folks at the time and know
first hand that the people involved were not clueless. They were quite humble
and helpful in providing frank discussions of vendors and technologies we were
considering.

Just because it's a blog doesn't mean it's a new medium or that bloggers
shouldn't expect to be challenged on the accuracy of their claims. I don't see
any reason that the expectations I'd have of reasoned discourse in person, by
phone, video or print don't also apply to the techcrunch blog.

~~~
bl4k
Yes it is hard, but Twitter was down a lot. Was Blaine fired? I met netik at a
conference just before he was hired by Twitter - great guy, knows his shit.

I am not saying that they shouldn't be challenged on the accuracy of their
claims, I am saying that they are learning as they go. That post was a bit
personal, the next one won't be.

Judging by the hit rate outlined in the post above Arrington seems to have
learnt a lot about how to handle sources, stories etc. But ignoring him
completely based on a few examples from years ago seems wrong.

By your reckoning I seriously would have nothing left to read atm (especially
the NYTimes) - I still read it all though because I take everything at face
value.

I am not going to exclude myself from an entire slice of online media just
because 2,3,4 or 5 or 10 blog posts out of thousands that provide me so much
information and value.

------
brudgers
The goals of a business are to maximize returns and minimize risk.

Drinks and casual conversation are not a particularly efficient way acomplish
that.

Though maybe the Boy Scouts offer a Gangsta' merit badge.

~~~
swombat
_Drinks and casual conversation are not a particularly efficient way acomplish
that._

Probably north of 50% of the sales of most enterprise software companies
happens over drinks and casual conversation. And probably over 90% of business
development deals happen in similar circumstances.

~~~
brudgers
Yes, and in those cases it isn't about the drinks and the conversation isn't
really casual.

What do you call ten competitors doing business development together?

