Balaji Srinivasan has vowed a $1000 BTC dividend to anyone who can get Recode’s Kara Swisher to withdraw a story on COVID-19.
Balaji Srinivasan has given $1,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) to the first Twitter user who can get Vox’s technology news website Recode to withdraw a story about Silicon Valley’s ‘overreaction’ to COVID-19 in February.
The former CTO of Coinbase made the offer on Twitter today. He specifically targeted Kara Swisher, the co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode.
Today the past CTO of coinbase made the request on Twitter. Kara Swisher, the cofounder was mainly targeted .
Srinivasan has ensured that he will donate $1,000 or 0.11 BTC at a time, to anyone who is eligible to furnish “a timestamped reply from [Recode] agreeing to correct the piece”
Source of friction
Recode did offer an interview with Srinivasan for the article, but rather than respond he reposted her message to his 226,000 followers on Twitter on February 7, saying he would have been “happy to engage if [he] thought it was in good faith” but was not interested.
In the months following this deal, Srinivasan has begun again his campaign against the media, taking swipes at journalists calling them “sociopaths” and “disgraceful.” New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz claims he always babbled about her online, attacking her education, writing, career, “and worse.”
Polarizing issue
Reactions to the Bitcoin dividend were combined, with many stunned that a prominent voice on Twitter would use a term like “bounty” to describe an action against journalists.
“Are you inciting people to make dangers or something?” user It Is Our Corn said. Others were more direct:
“What psychopath sits there and puts out a bounty for random strangers (potentially violent or mentally ill) to literally harass people? How do you consider yourself at all ethical?”
A few conceded that while the original article had its faults, a bounty was not the solution. “Agree they should issue an apology and retraction over that article,” said Crypto_JoeRogan. “But this is maybe not the best way to go about it.”
