Noel Biderman, former head of the Avid Life company, was asked to step down as CEO in the wake of the Ashley Madison database publication. On the bright side, this will give him more time to explain to his wife and two children why his name was in the database. I’m sure the reasons are excellent.
Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison CEO, steps down
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| Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison CEO, steps downNoel Biderman has stepped down as CEO of the Toronto-based infidelity website AshleyMadison.com and its parent company. The move comes amid a hacking scanda… | |||||||
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Ashley Madison, as probably everyone now knows, had over 30 million names in its databases and its reason for existence was to give people a discrete way of committing adultery.
In the light of the publication of the database at least two suicides resulted and the rest of the damage has yet to unfold.
The revelations have also made the Ashley Madison IPO in London something which will have to happen later. If ever. The company will have to wait for its $200 million.
The revelations have also compromised the business model itself. After a little bit of sleuthing an intrepid investigator estimated that the Ashley Madison website only had the names of 12,000 real women. The rest were not really there at all.
Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Database Ever Used the Site
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| Almost None of the Women in the Ashley Madison Databas…When hacker group Impact Team released the Ashley Madison data, they asserted that “thousands” of the women’s profiles were fake. Later, this number got blown up … | |||||||
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That works out to about three women for every 7,750 men.
General responses have been mixed. On one side we have all those “we must not be judgemental” people who are busy saying things like “this is the sort of thing that happens all the time and it’s none of anyone’s business anyway so why are we upset?”
On the other side is “it serves them right for cheating and trusting the privacy of the internet”.
What nobody seems to be asking is what the Ashley Madison website itself really represents.
We have laws prohibiting the sale of alcohol to minors. We have other laws banning the sale of certain drugs to anyone at all. Some places have laws against parachuting from the tops of high buildings. Some of these laws are designed to prevent people from hurting themselves. Motorcycle helmet laws. Seatbelt laws. And so on.
Most societies are inconsistent in the sorts of activities which are banned in order to protect people from themselves. Most societies are equally inconsistent about banning activities which have a negative impact on the community itself.
Nobody has asked if sites like Ashley Madison are harmful to the community.
Nobody has asked if we need to add another line to the definition of “pimp”.
pimp – definition of pimp in English from the Oxford dictionary
| pimp – definition of pimp in English from the Oxford dictionaryA man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking a…. Meaning, pronunciation and example sentences, English to English reference content. | ||||||
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There are many things we can say about the Ashley Madison debacle.
But none of those things is good.
Unjustified Margins 