Slashdot Mirror
CEO Questionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online
jpallas writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that court filings by the FTC about Whole Foods' plan to acquire Wild Oats reveal an unusual detail: The CEO of Whole Foods regularly posted to a Yahoo! stock bulletin board under a pseudonym. His alter ego was feisty, to say the least, and regularly disparaged the company that he later decided to acquire. A former SEC chairman called the behavior 'bizarre and ill-advised, even if it isn't illegal.' This certainly raises questions about online rights to free speech and anonymity, especially when the line between free speech and regulated speech depends on who is speaking as much as what they are saying."
Posting anonymously under a pseudonym, bah. Gill Bates.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why would you expect that anyone posting to a stock message board did NOT have some stake in the game? I don't see how or why you would differentiate the CEO from any other stakeholder who chooses to post for his own self interest. Does the public in general use their real names?
It certainly reflects poorly on the him, but only insofar as he's just another lame schmuck posting propaganda on the message boards. Maybe I'm missing something but I wouldn't expect to find unbiased opinions there.
go
Doesn't exist. Someone will hold it against you. This is why the more polite a society gets, the less it tolerates or even cares about truth, and the more its science gets politicized.
Free speech, like world peace, unconditional love, and true happiness in life are misnamed goals. They are symbols, not reality. Of course, some of this could be changed, but it would require getting over the aforementioned taboos.
technical writing / development
Don't we usually call this Astroturfing?
They should ban pseudonyms and anonymous posting to forums
with his time? Hell, for half what he is making I'll sit around and post random disparaging remarks on blogs all day.
Yeah, Mrs. Butterworth sucks, did you know that? Terrible product, and even worse management. My money is with my Aunt Jemimah! Now gimme gimme gimme!
Monstar L
A friend of mine who used to shop there called the store "whole check" for obvious reasons.
It think that such behaviour is smarmy but not worth much attention.
The guy is essentially just another anonymous poster. Even if his intended goal was to somehow affect the price of the company he was buying, as an anonymous poster the impact of his statements should be close to nil. If they were not nil, then the problem is with society taking the word of anonymous posters seriously, and the cure is not some sort of extended regulation, but for society to learn to think more critically.
They say freedom isn't free. Well, this is a perfect example of a trivial cost that society should bear in order to assure freedom of speech for all of us.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"This certainly raises questions about online rights to free speech and anonymity, especially when the line between free speech and regulated speech depends on who is speaking as much as what they are saying."
No it doesn't.
The CEO is getting drilled because he acted unethically and possibly illegally (see comments posted about stock price and speculation with involvement in a buy out).
The FTC was investigating the acquisition BEFORE this began (for anti-competitive actions); the stupidity of the CEO's postings only worsened the problem.
"Rights" are about the ability to say what you want not removal from any and all consequences.
From TFA: "No company would want to buy Wild Oats Markets Inc., a natural-foods grocer, at its price then of about $8 a share."
.... "
/. news submission for making me laugh so hard. It's like it's right out of The Onion.
Next paragraph: "[Wild Oats management] clearly doesn't know what it is doing
And paragraph after that: "Earlier this year, his company agreed to buy Wild Oats for $565 million, or $18.50 a share."
I thank this
More Twoson than Cupertino
Are there any idiots who gets his stock advice from anonymous posters on a forum? So he posted those and what? People bought Whole Foods stocks? People should be smart enough not to care about those postings.
Sincerely,
Gill Bates.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yeah, yeah, freedom is a bitch.
Unfortunately freedom of speech can't be selective, or else it will eventually select wrongly.
It's a bitch, but it's freedom, dude, freedom of speech.
Let it regulate itself.
1. talk negatively about company on quote.yahoo.com message boards
2. watch their stock price go low...low...low
3. buy company at low stock price
4. profit!!!
You think a stock will go down. You think a company is shitty. You express you opinion, which also may happen to fullfill your own prophecy. I think shorts are pretty scummy, but hedging your bets ain't illegal. And telling the world that you think a company is shitty shouldn't be illegal even if convinicing someone to sell helps a short.
Now on trying to talk down a company you might be accquiring, it gets a little iffy for me. I guess no one is going to post opinion that makes a purchase more expensive for themselves, but engineering a pesonality to talk a stock down when you may be buying is in a grey area. Trying to legislate this shit is going to be complicated.
In the end, people who make market decisions based on message board postings deserve the poverty they will be living in.
Actually, the CEO Unquestionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online.
The questionable part was the propriety of him doing so.
Carry on.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
So the guy posted to a forum. Big F'ing Deal.
If he didn't do anything illegal, why does anyone care? He wasn't manipulating prices or public perception... so what's bizarre about it? Perhaps his forum postings were is personal feelings about things, rather than his "official" feelings as the CEO of Whole Foods.
Last time I checked, that was the entire reason people use anonymous "tags" online, rather than their real names.
I have no idea why people have a problem with anonymity, but feel perfectly comfortable with the endless soup of shell companies created by corporate America (especially all those shell companies which, combined among 3-4 parent companies, own about 95% of all our nation's media outlets).
Why should he be fired?
Even I as a lowly employee know that under no circumstances should I be posting on any share trading site about my company, without having discussed the situation thoroughly with our legal department first. Under no circumstances should I do anything that could annoy the SEC; and in one employment contract I was told that I am not even allowed to do anything that might _appear_ to be illegal or that some people might believe to be illegal.
Now I am not employed to run my companies' business, and I still have to know these things. As the CEO of the company, posting on a share trading site marks him as an outstanding idiot, bringing his company in disrepute, and possibly opening it up to severe penalties. That is grounds for immediate termination of his contract.
The last place I'd ever take advice is from the Yahoo Stock message boards. Everyone is a zealot for one stock or another there. Who cares if people are dumb enough to take investment advice there. I suspect anyone who actually knows anything about the market and Yahoo stock message boards knows this. I suspect anything he wrote had little if any effect on the performance of the stock.
It's completely wrong. At the very least, would I want my company run by a CEO that is so immature, so stupid that he think going on Yahoo message boards actually does anything?
At the worst, it really sounds like fraudulent behavior, trying to decrease the stock price before he begins purchasing it. His judgement is obviously faulty, he's willing to cross the line to get what he wants.... I really hope he suffers for this ridiculous behavior.
please?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Unbelievable!
/.'ers fail to understand how much money he stood to make if the price of Wild Oats shares were lower by a dollar or two. Easily worth the effort. Easily.
A. The guy couldn't come up with another way to kill Wild Oats? He should hire some of the scumbags running HP. They've got plenty of dirty tricks and know how to give their CEO plausible deniability.
B. The SEC in general would frown on this kind of activity from a CEO. In theory, they are held to a higher standard. Since it's a public company the likes of Albertson's would love to see disappear, no doubt more non-stories like this will appear.
C. The job should be left to underlings. Contracted underlings like they do in *every* other industry.
D. Most
E. The simple fact he couldn't pay off enough people in D.C. to force this one through is also quite enlightening. The telcos have enough budget for bribes. I guess Whole Foods doesn't.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
I've always wondered what sort of loser has nothing better to do with his time that troll the internet. Now I know--it's CEOs. Perhaps this is what the ones who don't play golf do while the rest of the company is working
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Your insightful comment will fall on deaf ears since the words "free speech" were mentioned in the article summary -- the discussion will be co-opted by idiots who think this is a free speech debate instead of unethical CEO behavior.
Somebody with money did something stupid. We need a law to protect us from doing stupid things, and I'm sure someone will enact just that sort of law.
Ibid.
This really is quite silly. If you're listening to stock message boards for your advice on what to buy, then you really need to find yourself a living, breathing broker. With all the spam I get on nickel stocks, schemes to make thousands of dollars a day, etc a message board is just more crap to filter through. Why would I want to read one? More so, why would I want to post to one?
-50 DKP for lame post!
Posting anonymously under a pseudonym, bah. Gill Bates.
He generally pays people to do that or to be Apple switchers, outraged voters and Slashdot posters. At the same time, you have to wonder how much of his "email time" is actually ... Slashdot time.
Liberate your code, Bill.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Someone going the the pen name eht asks:
If you're not willing to take a stand for what you say, why are you even bothering to say it?
Because the truth is more important than taking credit for it. Often, the credit is punishment and the anonymous accuser always runs this risk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Read this story, and regain your Friday cheer: http://www.siliconglen.com/jokes/tandemstory.html
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I mean... that's pretty cool. He didn't hire PIs to stalk his foes, "pretext" their private records, bribe our elected leaders, or even bully his interns into doing it and cutting them and their "independent actions" loose when the investigation came. No. That man sat himself down, got on the internet, and told some lies.
Hands-on kind of approach. I like it. I don't think even the SEC can really complain about people believing anonymous internet posts.
(I also propose Slashdot rename "Anonymous Coward" to "John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, Inc." for the week, but that's because I don't believe in letting him off scot-free either.)
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
What I want to know is how did the FTC find out it was him? People are saying he is lame and has to much time on his hands, but look at the FTC. I mean trying to stop this merger is silly as its a small niche market in a large industry where they barely own a piece of it. Doesn't the FTC have better things to do with their time than release information trying to make Whole Foods and Mackey look bad? And more importantly how did they prove this was Mackey posting this stuff? Disclaimer - I am a shareholder who is angry at the FTC, but I'm not John Mackey ;).
The message board in yahoo financials for SCO has some regulars that IMHO seem like they would be people of interest to the SEC.
http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/mb/SCOX
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I've seen him on TV from time to time. He comes across as an ideal CEO, refusing a salary and expecting his execs to live on less than usual. He seems really enthused about his products, his employees and the mark he is making on the economy of food.
Could he have totally fooled me and others? If so, he should run for president.
...omphaloskepsis often...
And as a friend of mine who had dealings with them points out: the SEC make the CIA look like nice, friendly people.
Hello FTC, SEC, etc. How is this not illegal?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
and profited from it?
A CEO would be differentiated because...well..he's a CEO, and has a HIGHER stake in case his agenda is out to acquire the company.
One could argue that the little guy doing the same is committing a violation also, just to a much lessor extent. However, this guy is *paid* to select companies for his employer, while Joe Sixstock is not. Thus, it is a level higher.
Now that I think about it, I own a bit of stock in database companies, and also regularly bash OOP (which I generally consider conflicting with or a competitor to relational). Thus, in theory my OO bashing could be seen as boosting the stocks I own. But it is also the case that I picked the database stocks because I beleive in the technology. In other words, a chicken-or-egg delema. My anti-OO website is even cited in an O'reilly database book.
Table-ized A.I.
If your stock tanks because some pseudonymed troll bad talks you on a forum, it's time to take a good hard look at yourself.
Yeah, Mackey's actions were kind of creepy, but so it yelling "Snow!" in a crowded theatre.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
IANAL
Its another question of ethical behavior versus legal behavior
If he posted stock information, company information, predictions based on inside information - that sounds illegal to me
If he posted about "WHOLE FOODS RULEZZZ, OATS SUXXX", he's just another idiot online
By posting these messages, it doesn't sound like he was violating any laws by interfering with another business. Standing outside a Wild Oats B&M store with a sign that says "Go to Whole Foods", qualifies as a civil offense (tort?).
The best legal recourse OATS or whoever might have is a libel suit - and they would have to show how the posting negatively affected their business, and exactly what wasn't true.
He hid his credibility along with his identity. It is a self-correcting situation. A major CEO disparaging another company might actually attract an audience, this is a public figure with some sort of reputation.
His alter ego is basically the equivelent of an AC and his statements must stand on their own. The only way the comments would make a difference is if they ring true with others reading the posts. If that is the case then it really doesn't matter who is saying it.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Which CEOs are posting here on Slashdot? Is that you, Steve Ballmer?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It has ZERO to do with the acquisition of another company and the FTC knows it.This is typical Bush Administration crap to justify an ad hoc regulatory decision after the fact, a decision that appears to be based on the lefty politics of the two companies involved. These guys always have the same M.O. They relentlessly take politics into consideration whenever they have to decide in an official government capacity who to help or hurt. Help goes right and hurt goes left. My guess is, this was basically all the dirt that opposition research could find on Whole Foods. A bunch of stupid posts from a CEO at home.
How were these posts even found? If a CEO posts as an AC, what databases (secret or otherwise) would contain this information? How would the FTC even know to look for something like this? Did they find his home IP and do a wide search for it in hopes of fishing something up? (I imagine the information path was NSA-DHS-FTC-WSJ.) Are they looking for posts from CEOs of other companies that merge, or just this one?
There is simply no basis to the argument that Whole Foods' acquisition of Wild Oats should be called into question because of stupid online posts from a CEO. If SBC and AT&T want to merge, that's OK. If the nation's largest hog producer buys the second largest, that's OK too. But a less than 1 billion dollar merger between Whole Foods and Wild Oats, well we can't have that because then yuppies will have no place to go to get their overpriced fruits and vegetables!
Americans have no free speech rights. The U.S. supreme court already said we can't have "bong hits 4 jesus" posters out
even when displayed by a student in a public space who wasn't at a school sponsored event. After all, the poster was
troubling to Justice Roberts. This person shouldn't assume he has freedom of speech either anywhere within the U.S. of A.
The U.S. Supreme court has a majority of retards but thats the system we unfortunately live under.
-- If there's one thing i can't stand, it's intolerance!
"even when displayed by a student in a public space who wasn't at a school sponsored event"
Stop f*cking lying. It was a school sanctioned event during school hours that students were let out of class to attend. Hence he was at a school sponsored event.
Ask the old widow "Silence Dogood" aka Benjamin Franklin.
Google it, you're obviously ignorant of the history.
Anonymity is critical to democracy.
Smarmy means "unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech." This kind of behavior can't reasonably called "unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating."
It could, however, rather fairly be considered "scummy."
I'm guessing you're a 'glass if half-empty' kinda guy, huh?
Hey, just learn to accept that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It doesn't matter if the posts were influential or not, it matters what he ATTEMPTED to do and what his intent was.
Just because it was gloriously ineffectual doesn't remove the fact that it was unethical and possibly illegal.
That sure sounds impressive. How much did he cut it, and how prescisely did the employess benefit thereby?
Article states he cut his salary to $1. Since CEOs make the majority of their money from other sources (especially those who found the company and have an enormous share of the stock), I'm guessing he cut his pay by 2 or 3 percent. Might be as much as 20 or 30 percent if the company had a bad year, though bad years rarely affect the execs compensation.
I'm sure his total compensation is in a report somewhere.
Ceo makes observations offers to purchase and direct company, asks for a fair price by pointing out items obvious to him, uses arguments and experience to negotiate fair price. Its questionable using Yahoo for research so long as that it is the only research he did. Forward thinking CEO looks at what people are saying about his company and the competition, and believes his experience would benefit others, puts money down on table.
Can we do more stories on Capitalism at work and how trade and mutual self interest can benefit both/all participating?
I have known QUITE A FEW CEOs who do this kind of thing... And usually they do it in amazingly transparent and retardrd ways... Oh, your name is Micheal Downer? I wonder if those brand new user accounts, the ones that are all parrorting each other in style and content, oddly enough saying EXACTLY what YOU would say, given the chance, you know "md0503", "MrMichDo", "M_D_HOT_NESS_4", and "MsMichelleDonning" who all post at the same time of day from the same IP address, one after another, are in any way related to you? Naw, just a coincidence. Idiot.
Slashdot: Old and busted
Digg: The new hotness
You'll never figure out who posted this, st00pid Slashdotters!!!!
Signed,
Ekvnroise
Is that yahoo outed him because the wall street journal said they knew who it was.
Yahoo definitely breached its terms of service.
This isn't about free speech.
It's about disclosure, and when it is or is not a duty.
The issue is not whether he's allowed to say that Wild Oats stock sucks. The issue is whether he should disclose that he has a special stake in the Wild Oats stock price. Strict ethics says yes. If he had disclosed his interest in the stock price, he'd have been screwing his own company, so you can see this ethically a no win situation.
Legality I think we must leave to the lawyers for the most part. But common sense also tells you that under the circumstances what he was doing was very risky. Since he is negotiating to acquire the company, he may have knowledge of a sensitive nature. If he disclosed any of it, or even hinted at it, he could open himself and his company up to a serious lawsuit.
If I were a major stockholder, I'd go over all his postings and if he even hinted at something that was privileged information, I'd have my lawyers nail him and his company to the wall.
Now to the issue of whether he should be allowed to speak his mind: free speech doesn't protect you from having to repair or repay damage done to private parties by your speech. If you libel somebody, you pay. If you disclose information you have a duty to protect, you pay. If you lie in order twist a business deal in your favor, you pay. If you screw up a deal for your employer because you blabbed, you pay by losing your job.
The best you can say for this guy is that the way he did it, nobody should have paid too much attention to it. But it was a stupid thing to do.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How do we know you yourself aren't the CEO, promoting your own stores? Hrm?
This sig left intentionally blank.
This might not be illegal but it's highly unethical. It's clear he was trying to "dump on" the corporation he wanted to buy in order to drive interest/stock price of Wild Oats down. I sure hope he gets punished in some way, shape or form. CEO's should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us since they have an inordinate amount of power in the business world ala athletes & celebrities in pop culture.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. -Mahatma Ghandi
So it matters who is speaking does it? Then I assume you have found a method to confirm the identity of a poster on an online forum.
Oh wait. You don't have that method yet? Well when you find that method get back to me and we can fix this situation up perfectly. Until then, do what I've always been told to do. If you read it online, assume you don't know who posted it, because you don't.
Online personal identity doesn't exist. It never did. So it can't matter.
Anyone can screw up, I believe that. But this seems like a lengthy campaign to smear the reputation of a competitor in subtle, not so noticable ways in order to drive down the future purchase price. I would not have expected this from a company like Whole Foods. It just smacks of slimeball tactics to eliminate fair competition in the market.
I don't think this story will just go away any time soon. The typical WF customer is well read enough to make informed decisions about what they consume, its likely they will be aware of this story as well. The 'natural' image the company projects is antithetical to this type of predatory behavior, and will turn away many customers. It will hurt the company in the long run.
and I didn't comment on no stocks!
/joke
Damn people using my name in vain, when will it stop!!!
... just to illustrate its point ;-) But do read it.
;-) himself, saying he owned shares, not that he was a director.
;-)
We have no direct evidence - yet - that his comments influenced the price of his rivals' shares, or his own; what we can say is that other members of the forum appear to at least cared about what he has to say. He wasn't posting anonymously (e.g. AC), he misrepresented (he would say "partially represented", probably
His comments probably had less effect than he thought he would. An experienced trader would probably expect another trader with lots of such shares to only say good things about the company anyway
Slashdot provides a mechanism for dealing with the noise that comes with free speech. More such mechanisms are needed; simple as that
It sounds to me like the CEO's behaviour was bizarre and ill-advised. It was also legal. I don't see a problem. In a free country, we're allowed to do lots of things we shouldn't do. We still shouldn't do some of those things.
-Rich
Whole Foods has refused to pay for a shipment from a nonprofit. http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/news.htm#FRESH
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
While not doing your job is unethical, I don't believe there's any problem with browsing online boards while at work. It really depends on context. If I'm in the software industry, I'm going to keep abreast of the latest news & uninformed opinion on Slashdot. If I'm a trader, investor, or senior manager, why wouldn't I read Yahoo! finance or Motley Fool forums? It's a way of keeping a pulse on a widely diverse cross-section of people.
-Stu