I know for example SEC has, in the past, used a crypto summit in New York to serve a subpoena to another crypto grifter. [0] I would not be surprised if there is government pressure on NYT to pretend everything is fine to lure Sam Bankman-Fried out of his safe haven in the Bahamas.

[0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/crypto-conference-jo...

What if it wasn't a scam? What if he had actually innovated some way to monetize crypto? Wouldn't that be impressive; the next Gates or Jobs or the like? He certainly seemed aware of how to press those buttons. Perhaps the NYTimes was as caught up in crypto nonsense as anyone else; they saw it as technological magic that they didn't understand, but identified Bankman-Fried as a wizard who did understand that magic and had harnessed it.

>Perhaps the NYTimes was as caught up in crypto nonsense as anyone else

The article about his was written AFTER he lost all his investors' money (a few days ago). The prestigious conference where he is speaking is happening in 13 days from now.

Everyone knows this guy was a grifter, he created and ran an exchange from the Bahamas, he didn't invent the iPhone of crypto or something. I see 0 evidence of any Steve Jobs level innovation.

If everyone knows he was a grifter, then why did people give him money?

People put money in PonziCoin. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225383

Everyone knows he's a grifter now. Some probably suspected earlier. Some of those probably invested anyways on the idea that they could get out before the collapse.

they're talking about now not before FTX collapsed

nobody is giving him money these days

The "investors" didn't invest in technological magic. They just wanted to double their coins. Just ask any crypto investor what was supposed to be the end product out of his investment. Lotteries are a tax on stupidity and the whole crypto mania is just a big lottery run by various individuals!

At this point the story is ongoing, entertaining and the victims are mainly cryptobros. SBF is talking and helping sell newspapers. While I am more empathetic to the victims, I understand the NYTimes strategy here, especially considering he is still talking and saying strange things that he is unaware make him look like a sociopath.

Wasn't he like the second largest democrat donor in the US this year? $39.7 million to federal races. The soft-glove treatment from the NYT is the least he could expect. Maybe he knew what was coming.

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/sam-...

Both co-CEOs of FTX were large donors, one to each party. Neat trick.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-08/ftx-crypt...

> Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, threw more money at Democrats this cycle than anyone but George Soros, according to OpenSecrets data. One of his top lieutenants, Ryan Salame, has been bankrolling Republicans at almost the same pace as Steve Schwarzman and Peter Thiel.

There's a good chart of how the company distributed things at https://www.ft.com/content/428c7800-c72d-4c59-9940-4376fea6e...

None of those politicians are gonna stay bought; no more money is coming. There's no reason to think FTX can exert further lobbying pressure; they're cooked.

Not sure why this was downvoted. Yes, he donated 2/3 to Dems and 1/3 to Republicans. Assumption is for protection, and regulatory direction.

He was only behind Soros in terms of total dollars to Dems.

His mother started a couple of Dem PACs just 13 days before her son became CEO of FTX (imagine the coincidence!). Her money, as far as it is traceable is also very significant.

... This was I suppose part of his "effective altruism" (if you can say that with a straight face). Instead of downvotes, imagine the comments and rage if he had donated to Trump instead.

> Instead of downvotes, imagine the comments and rage if he had donated to Trump instead.

That's what his co-CEO was for; he played the same role with Republicans. $15M to a PAC he controlled (https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?committee_id=C00809020&tw...) that donated exclusively to Republican campaigns.

Yes. Thank you. That is the 1/3 (but actually less since his mother’s the PAC money for Dems and Biden directly is not counted) that I mentioned.

This is also the company that had a round 7 million on their excel sheet for a fund called TRUMPLOSE.

All I’m asking is for your honesty that some people who are looking the other way on this would be appalled. If you aren’t saying that some people would be associating Trump himself to these fraud-derived donations, you just aren’t being honest.

> This is also the company that had a round 7 million on their excel sheet for a fund called TRUMPLOSE.

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/15/analysis-ftxs-tr...

"For those looking for a shadowy tale that involves crypto in the halls of power in D.C., TRUMPLOSE is going to disappoint. It’s not a new world order talisman that shows FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are complicit in laundering money to the Democratic party through Ukraine donations. Rather, it’s one part of FTX’s prediction market it ran during the 2020 U.S. election."

> that shows FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are complicit in laundering money to the Democratic party through Ukraine donations

No one mentioned that. But you’re right. It’s irrelevant that FTX donated to Democrats, Democrats have spent as much on Ukraine since this summer than any full year for the entire US military operation in Afghanistan, and that Zelensky used non-combat US aid funds to invest in FTX.

There is literally nothing there, it’s all true, but it’s not what any conspiracy theorists think it is. I’m glad we have same voices that are here to help us know what to think.

I'd rather imagine a world where Citizens United was decided differently and this donation wasn't legal in the first place.

You're assuming the money wouldn't have gotten there anyway, which I'm not sure is a good assumption.

Also, remember Citizens United was about publishing a movie critical of a political candidate just before the election. I'm not sure a world where the government forbids publishing about political candidates is a great alternate reality, either.

That world isn't imaginary: it exists in plenty of other democracies and they are doing fine. (Candidates in France for example are publicly funded and there are rules about how much can be spent to promote particular candidates).

that's a very incomplete view of Citizens United - the specific issue was not that it was published before an election - it was that paid for by a non-profit organization (Citizens United is a PAC). individuals are allowed to publish a movie, or view on their own w/o prohibition. Corporations and non-profits were not granted that right. Citizens United reversed that law, allowing corporations and non-profits (mostly PACs) to be able to express more political views. It's not crazy to think that organizations are not a person and therefore shouldn't be afforded rights that were intended for actual individual human beings.

It was my understanding that Mr. Zelenskyy is busy defending his country in a war. But somehow he has the time to fly to NYC and brush shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and the treasury secretary. It's almost like this event is a handy excuse for these elites to brush shoulders, broker secret deals, and/or exchange U.S. taxpayer money for institutional clout. Makes you wonder why anyone these days remotely critical of the motives of billionaries and global "changemakers" is branded a conspiracy theorist.

>But somehow he has the time to fly to NYC and brush shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and the treasury secretary.

Zoom.

>Makes you wonder why anyone these days remotely critical of the motives of billionaries and global "changemakers" is branded a conspiracy theorist.

That's only true in their own minds.

> It was my understanding that Mr. Zelenskyy is busy defending his country in a war. But somehow he has the time to fly to NYC and brush shoulders with SBF, Larry Fink, and the treasury secretary.

Are you under the impression he's expected to be out there literally driving a tank?

Flying around the world meeting with government officials and political influencers is precisely what you'd expect someone to do in this scenario. He'll have some staff and a phone on him.

Arguably, that's Zelensky's main strength: he's a comedian and did tours; he's a showman, a diplomat, a talker.

His primary role viz-a-viz the war is going around talking, doing meetings, and drumming up support. Get him on a 12 city tour, except instead of cross-dressing and telling jokes he's cutting deals for aid.

He's no general, and it's likely he doesn't know jack about actually fighting a war. Nor does he need to: he's got actual generals for that, ones who have been fighting w/ the Russians on and off since 2014, on top of real-time intelligence and assistance from the 30 -- say it again, THIRTY -- countries of NATO.

The NYT often has an editorial bent which makes them write flatly false articles. It's been rather odd, and a clear point of divergence from other US newspapers.

For example, the NYT was very pro the Iraq USD argument

More recently, they kept going on about Clinton's emails, while ignoring much larger security breaches from Trump's side

More recently than that, they kept saying coronavirus reinfections would be impossible

They also have been producing an endless string of anti-tech articles, but pro-crypto articles

In each case they had some clear editorial directive: "Bush good", "Clinton emails bad", "Coronavirus immunity persists (whether natural or vax)" "tech bad" "SBF good, crypto exciting"

You might agree or disagree with these positions and so that effects your reading of what I'm writing. But the point is they had an inflexible position on these issues. By contrast, a paper like the FT or the WSJ or the Washington Post generally tends not to have a monolithic party line on the points above, and would reports points on the issues above with nuance, mentioning evidence in favour or against the positions as it came out.

NYT does have some great articles but they're utterly unreliable if you don't have enough background knowledge of an issue to parse their party line.

I'm not going ask you to back up your assertions but that really hasn't been my impression of NYT's editorial positions.

Edward Bernays, pioneer of PR, wrote about how half of NYT's frontpage articles were literal propaganda. In 1928.

I think we would be naive to assume anything has improved in the past century.

> I think we would be naive to assume anything has improved in the past century.

What a naive assumption.

Okay, I'll bite. What has materially improved with regards to corruption and transparency in journalism in the past century?

Can you find any contemporary articles from the periods discussed which show facts contradictory to those positions in the NYT?

For example, an article in 2003 pre-invasion skeptical of the WMD claim

An article in 2016 putting the email server in context or comparing it to Trump's own level of scandal

An article this year critical of Sam Bankman Fried

A single article positive on tech in past few years since their editorial position change?

An article from 2020 suggesting immunity might not be permanent for most?

Matt Yglesias deleted his tweet, but he basically said the NYT had a well known inside journalism policy of "never say anything positive about big tech co's": https://twitter.com/kelseytuoc/status/1588231892792328192

https://archive.ph/8Kzmy - this references many articles skeptical of WMD that ran in the relevant timeframe. The paper clearly had a bias that rose to the level of scandal, but even here it wasn't a lockstep situation. I doubt any of your other examples are/were either.

This was the print era. The honest stories were buried or delayed. This is what you’re referencing/

“ Some of The Times's coverage in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq was credulous; much of it was inappropriately italicized by lavish front-page display and heavy-breathing headlines; and several fine articles by David Johnston, James Risen and others that provided perspective or challenged information in the faulty stories were played as quietly as a lullaby. Especially notable among these was Risen's ''C.I.A. Aides Feel Pressure in Preparing Iraqi Reports,'' which was completed several days before the invasion and unaccountably held for a week. It didn't appear until three days after the war's start, and even then was interred on Page B10.‘

Nowadays you can link any story but back then position mattered enormously.

Timing too. A key report after the war matters much less

You're moving the goalposts though - you said to cite any articles at all, which I did, and now you're complaining about their positioning in the paper. As I said in my original comment the coverage was slanted to the point that it was scandalous (look at the link!) but there was still a lot of content that wasn't "on message". The NYT fucked up but it wasn't pure propaganda.

Fair enough, I intentionally was a little hyperbolic to see what the strongest evidence against my position was.

>but there was still a lot of content that wasn't "on message".

I do not, however, think this is true in the case of the Iraq War. Once we get into quantity rather than mere existence, we have to consider positioning in the case of the print paper. It may as well not have existed given the positioning and delay. The editorial team buried their reporters' work when it didn't agree with their slant

Where do they say he's a great guy? The article is quite factual, citing his words and actions and providing context without injecting much in terms of emotion.

He also hasn't been charged with any crimes yet.

I don’t see a real issue with the article, but it is worth pointing out the article completely ignores the many victims of SBF. If I were a victim of SBF, the article would be a bit insulting.

Yea, I don’t find it flattering at all. In fact, it lays out a bunch of pretty ugly details about the arrangement with Alameda.

This seems like an ideologically driven comment, since the NYT is reporting on the FTX bankruptcy in a v clear way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/ftx-bankruptcy.h...

I don't have any ideology driving my opinion, or at least I don't think so, I read these pages by the NYT and was surprised that he is being treated so nicely given what happened and compared to similar situations historically.

I mean, in the speakers panel he is listed along side Mark Zuckerberg, Volodymyr Zelensky, Janet Yellen, etc. Comparing what he did with what he others in the speakers panel have done I get some cognitive dissonance.

OK. There have been about a dozen pieces written about FTX on the NYT in just the last few days. Most have not been soft balls like the interview-based piece. I apologize for accusing you of being driven by ideology. I didn't understand why you would choose those two links when the coverage is much broader and more critical:

https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=FTX

What exactly did the investors invest in?

They arranged those speakers long before the collapse. I doubt he'll voluntarily set foot in the US until he figures out whether or not he'll be immediately sent to jail.

They're not actually. That story broke one of the most damning pieces of information in the whole ordeal, and just casually snuck it in without further commentary. The whole thing was a hit piece disguised as a puff piece.

https://twitter.com/WClementeIII/status/1592289824542949376

Many people would not consider NYT a high quality news source, starting from many years ago.

In any case, I would suggest to never trust any news source nowadays and always supplement with your own research.