Troy Davis

➡ Join me on Mastodon: @[email protected] ( @tacoapp, @simpleoptout, @seattleix. ex @papertrailapp. 9600 8-N-1

[Troy Davis @troyd]

from Mastodon (https://t.co/MUUl7DtUVV):

do you receive spam SMSes or robocalls? I explained how to find the carrier where a phone number is routed - including 10DLC A2P SMS sources and robocall callbacks. that's where your abuse report email should go: https://t.co/q3uJ04HnVr

[Troy Davis @troyd]

.@jasongorman Heads up that someone's plagiarizing your blog posts and re-publishing them, back-dated, on a new Wordpress site: https://t.co/vONC5FUqAr

This person has done it before: https://t.co/HtHTT78Gn7. Substack kicked them off, so they moved to @wordpressdotcom.

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@loganb @MartinGTobias yep, this is your best and only option: https://t.co/epgABmNk81

[Hacker News 20 @betterhn20]

Report Phone Spam – Shut down robocallers and text spammers https://t.co/xMEjYca6kl (https://t.co/EMkEwDu6e9)

[Troy Davis @troyd]

Here's how to shut down robocallers and text message spammers: https://t.co/epgABmNRXz

Don't just block them – report the abuse to the spammer's telecom provider and get their phone number disconnected. In 90 seconds, you can stop a spammer: https://t.co/epgABmNRXz

/cc #privacy

[Tyler Tringas @tylertringas]

My company, Calm Fund, has a big problem and I need your help. We are being sued by SureSwift Capital over the @FounderSummit event series we put on over the past few years. The main issue we have is the impending massive cost of doing discovery in a modern remote company that uses a lot of software, but first here is some context:

SureSwift is a PE fund that acquires software companies. We signed a lightweight joint venture agreement to collaborate on the Founder Summit which was an IRL event in Mexico City, an online community and another event in North Carolina. After the final IRL event we terminated the joint venture. The events were by all accounts a huge success, and all in the joint venture posted a small net loss.

Then we announced our intention to host our own slate of events in 2023, but ultimately had to cancel those due to budget constraints and reducing our team size. Then SureSwift sued us claiming that we had misappropriated the "intellectual property" and "trade secrets" like the "business model" and "virtual network connections" of the new-terminated Founder Summit JV for the now-cancelled Calm Summits. The suit is a matter of public record and I won't speak about it much further except to say that we deny the allegations and it is my strong belief we would win in a trial.

The issue is that we are about to enter the phase pre-trial procedures called Discovery (or eDiscovery) where each side is obligated to share with the other side provide all sorts of their own documents and communications that could be relevant to the case. The big problem is that with modern remote companies using many collaboration tools to create emails, slack messages, docs comments, notion databases, etc the volume of data and the cost of discovery (collecting, reviewing, filtering and processing all these files) seems to have exploded.

I've been hearing estimates of hundreds of thousands or more than $1m in costs just to comply with eDiscovery for a single case. That's an insane amount of money, especially relative to the stakes we're talking about in this matter. It puts a huge amount of pressure on folks like me to just settle since its not worth it to go to trial, spend even more money on pre-trial, and still have at least some small % chance of losing.

As best as I have learned, in Delaware Chancery court it is also very rare to get your attorneys' fees reimbursed or be able to countersue for the costs when you win. So basically, the status quo situation in the American legal system is that if someone is willing to sue you and willing to spend a boatload of money themselves, they can force you to spend a boatload too (potentially all the way into bankruptcy) with no real defense or recourse unless you settle on whatever terms they dictate.

When I asked my LPs for feedback or advice on this topic I was shocked by two things:
1. How many of them had dealt with a bogus lawsuit.
2. How essentially nobody had heard of any good ways to resolve it except paying out a settlement, even if you did nothing wrong.

This is a totally insane state of affairs and has been eye-opening for me. Its also a huge risk for early stage founders who simply can't afford a big pay off settlement.

I don't see any way I can bring myself to pay a settlement just because its cheaper than litigating the issues. Once you open that door, how do you avoid just becoming a piggy bank for anyone and everyone willing to bring a lawsuit against you?

So I'd like to tackle this issue head on and try to find an affordable way to comply with eDiscovery so we can get to a trial and resolve the actual question. The reasons eDiscovery is so expensive don't seem intractable to me and there has got to be a way to do this that is at all proportional in costs to the actual matters of the case.

But I need help.
1. Founders (or anybody really) if you have dealt with this issue before and found any kind of good solutions or can point to any good resources please reply below and amplify 🙌

2. I'm looking to collaborate with counsel or firms that have experience tackling this issue or want to. I know a big problem with this whole situation is that nobody on the legal side is particularly incentivized to help reduce costs on this matter, but believe me the entrepreneurial community will be forever grateful for help on this 🙏

[Peter Livingston @unpopularvc]

Just posted our Q2 LP update. Sharing it here for anyone else who would like to read it too.

Thank you to everyone in the UV community for your continued partnership!

https://t.co/4CiYtT9E70

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@FTC @amazon apparently @FTC agreed with my assessment of these #darkpattern screenshots. today: https://t.co/a0RdiW2Jea

FTC press release and complaint: https://t.co/VoN355w2BF

[Troy Davis @troyd]

by hiding the $99/year fee, Amazon's #UX darkpattern seems to violate @FTC's https://t.co/Rt6ssWOXFn ("reasonable consumer" & "fine print")

[benmaritz @benmaritz]

If the goal is to quickly increase Seattle housing supply, the single best policy to do that will be to a) eliminate parking minimums and b) increase Multifamily zones to 85’ height. This is because:

[Tom Whitwell @TomWhitwell]

Fake all the way down

[Tom Whitwell @TomWhitwell]

I searched my local area for locksmiths on google maps mobile, immediately found two obviously fake but worked on businesses: fake addresses (136c = actually local Tesco), photos, video, logos, fake reviews from fake people: https://t.co/xGab6jICgd https://t.co/dsLviIcr5d

[Troy Davis @troyd]

If any consumer finance reporters are looking for a story… buy services from the fake businesses in https://t.co/51XzUVeVE4 and see what happens.

Who shows up to do the work? How'd they get your lead? Who owns the fake Google biz profile?

/cc @ConsumerReports @CaresseJ @CFPB

[HN Front Page @hn_frontpage]

A large network of fake Google Maps comments/reviews and fake businesses
L: https://t.co/j11tKQBzlu
C: https://t.co/A44fJEzZj6

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@sawickipedia yup. some are pretty thorough, too. just this 1 name has ~50 fake businesses across 2 states: https://t.co/Cry5CjjqCI

there's nail salons, HVAC contractors (under multiple names: "Mini Split AC Installation," "Heating and Cooling Repair," etc.), and lots more.

[Troy Davis @troyd]

what happens when scammers can create not only fake @GoogleMaps reviews, but entirely fake Maps businesses?

this happens: https://t.co/DPzkuBmmwA

that one network encompasses hundreds of Google accounts. it's touched or created hundreds of non-existent and real Maps businesses

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@Llarian @googlemaps I was just using Google Maps. I happened across one of the places or reviews and it looked a bit off to me. when I tugged on the thread, it kept coming 🙃

and I may be under-estimating the size. this one network could be thousands of businesses and accounts, but I can't tell.

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@SimpleDSAR hey Doug, I run https://t.co/27nxmFl0Lp. seems like there's a very high likelihood of confusion with your product. how about choosing a clearer name so there's no confusion? don't need to create unnecessary problems 🙂 feel free to DM me if you'd like to chat

[Troy Davis @troyd]

@Thought_Amp FWIW, I run https://t.co/27nxmFl0Lp. you may want to choose a clearer name so there's no ambiguity.

[NBER @nberpubs]

Teen suicides plummeted in March '20, when schools shut due to COVID. Returning from online to in-person schooling was associated with a 12-18% increase in teen suicides, from @benconomics @SDSUCHEPS and Schaller https://t.co/A4PrL7UmoX

[Troy Davis @troyd]

For all in this world that's uncertain… 

One thing is clear…

We don't have to go home…

But we can't stay here.

https://t.co/eDUECpxV1s

[Troy Davis @troyd]

imagine you're a 12th grade English teacher who has tried ChatGPT.

knowing how to produce coherent written work is a key outcome of your class. as @coffinlifebuoy wrote, many students can't do that on their own.

should you introduce GPT and spend a day teaching prompts?

/@ncte

[Troy Davis @troyd]

"But if most contemporary writing pedagogy is necessarily focused on helping students master the basics, what happens when a computer can do it for us?"

or: as of this week, LLMs empower everyone to communicate reasonably well in writing. now what?

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

What ChatGPT can produce right now is better than most of the writing seen by your average teacher or professor, @coffinlifebuoy writes. https://t.co/zaP8oEPXU3