The language you use makes it seem like this guy threatened to physically hurt people's children. That's quite manipulative, especially your choice of emotional words such as "vile" and "terrifying".

His language was indeed a bit hyperbolic. But this doesn't lessen the inherent creepiness -- and sure, let us also say vileness -- of what the Uber executive said in that meeting.

Where does the article say anything about children?

"Over dinner, he outlined the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine."

"your families" = "your children"

> "your families" = "your children"

I don't think that's a reasonable assumption to make. "Your family" could just as easily be referring to adult family members only (spouses, siblings, parents, etc.).

It seems like you're jumping to that conclusion solely because it makes his comments more inflammatory.

It's not the sort of thing you should have to aprse in the first place. There's a narrow set of circumstances in which some family issues might be legitimate to discuss, eg if a journalist's spouse or other immediate relative was a senior officer or investor in a direct competitor - but then you could just say 'we think X is an unethical journalist because s/he has a major conflict of interest which biases articles s/he writes about our firm' because there's plenty of precedent for dealing with such issues in the world of financial journalism.

Vague talk of investigating 'your families' comes off more as an attempt to intimidate; arguably the vagueness is intended to provoke anxiety and worry to a greater degree than a specific allegation (as above) that could be refuted or debunked.

Family refers to all members of a family - adult members AND children. So, by threatening someone's family, one implicitly threatens any members of a family who are children (as well as the other members of a family).

When they're talking about "digging up dirt" I don't see how that's going to apply to children. Context is important, and reducing it to 'threat' is misleading. Even though yes it is a subtype of threat.

Really? You don't know anyone who has a special-needs child? The public at large can be very unkind to any who aren't "normal". And that's leaving alone those disturbed individuals who just like to "break things" and are just looking for a target.

Even simply exposing that information is a threat, possibly causing a chilling effect - which is exactly what this Uber exec wants.

Knowing that a child exists with special needs doesn't hurt the child...

>disturbed individuals [...] looking for a target

What??? Where did you get here from "digging up dirt". (For one, you don't need dirt to post someone's name on /b/ or whatever you have in mind.) The level of hyperbole on this submission is awful and pains me to read.

plus it's much more fun to get all spun up about the most uncharitable interpretation possible. it works for Internet fights, relationship fights, street fights... an amazingly versatile technique for disrupting harmony.

There were no threats. Stop making stuff up.

The comments were about "digging up dirt". Sleazy as that is, it doesn't even require personal contact.

I don't think the comment was made to threaten her children, but any parent who hears those words is going to think about their kids first, and become very defensive.

That's not really a statement that can be defended.

"No, no, we won't look ONLY into your children, we'll ALSO look into your spouses, siblings, and parents."