In an ideal world we would have, but hiring a professional would take more money than we have, and speaking to a volunteer would run the risk of doxxing us.
We think the relative downside of posting this speculatively. If it turns out our suspicions are wrong, then it will be easy for someone with a legal background to explain why, and this post will be relegated to a graveyard where it would then deserve to be.
If it turns out that our suspicions are founded, then we believe this is important to highlight, in the context of all the recent discussion about Effective Ventures’s past activities.
As has been noted many times recently, it’s much easier to make anonymous allegations that stick than it is to protect oneself from reputational damage from such allegations. Given this, failing to do basic due diligence to check whether your allegations are founded before making accusatory public posts seems frankly irresponsible to me.
I would guess that if this allegation turns out to be totally unfounded, it won’t stick, and we’ll never hear from it again. If it turns out to stick despite being unfounded, my guess is it’ll be because the concern was substantive enough that cursory due diligence wouldn’t have found the problems with it.
There’s a good chance I’m being naive here, but I think reputational concerns are often overstated.
That said, I agree that making accusatory public posts without basic due diligence is irresponsible; I have a lower impression of the costs than you seem to, but the time and attention costs are certainly still real.
In an ideal world we would have, but hiring a professional would take more money than we have, and speaking to a volunteer would run the risk of doxxing us.
We think the relative downside of posting this speculatively. If it turns out our suspicions are wrong, then it will be easy for someone with a legal background to explain why, and this post will be relegated to a graveyard where it would then deserve to be.
If it turns out that our suspicions are founded, then we believe this is important to highlight, in the context of all the recent discussion about Effective Ventures’s past activities.
As has been noted many times recently, it’s much easier to make anonymous allegations that stick than it is to protect oneself from reputational damage from such allegations. Given this, failing to do basic due diligence to check whether your allegations are founded before making accusatory public posts seems frankly irresponsible to me.
I would guess that if this allegation turns out to be totally unfounded, it won’t stick, and we’ll never hear from it again. If it turns out to stick despite being unfounded, my guess is it’ll be because the concern was substantive enough that cursory due diligence wouldn’t have found the problems with it.
There’s a good chance I’m being naive here, but I think reputational concerns are often overstated.
That said, I agree that making accusatory public posts without basic due diligence is irresponsible; I have a lower impression of the costs than you seem to, but the time and attention costs are certainly still real.