<story><title>Googlers told to avoid words like ‘share’ and ‘bundle,’ US says</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-09-14/googlers-told-to-avoid-words-like-share-and-bundle-us-says-lmj27bhl</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>steveBK123</author><text>Well put another way - 
It&amp;#x27;s one thing to tell your employees not to break the law.  That&amp;#x27;s good!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s another thing to tell your employees not to use a bunch of words while doing their job which implicate the firm in breaking laws they&amp;#x27;ve been accused of breaking.  It&amp;#x27;s almost like an admission of guilt or attempt to obfuscate.&lt;p&gt;From a bank&amp;#x2F;fund perspective - we get tons and tons of training about how we should not insider trade, money launder, etc.  They have people who have gone to jail come give talks about how it&amp;#x27;s not worth it, it was the biggest mistake of their lives, etc.  Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like &amp;quot;so hey don&amp;#x27;t use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s stupid and hubristic. Just like the other stuff that came out of GOOG execs sending emails telling people not to put stuff in emails, lol.  Cmon guys.</text></item><item><author>jsheller</author><text>For things like this, Matt Levine is insightful:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.bloomberglaw.com&amp;#x2F;securities-law&amp;#x2F;matt-levines-money-stuff-people-worry-about-the-basis-trade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.bloomberglaw.com&amp;#x2F;securities-law&amp;#x2F;matt-levines-mo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summary is that not only can you not say things like &amp;quot;lock up&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;market share&amp;quot;, you also can&amp;#x27;t tell employees not to say those things or you&amp;#x27;ll see headlines like the posted article and have the government claiming at trial that you&amp;#x27;re trying to hide evidence. This feels kind of odd and kind of unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>caturopath</author><text>&amp;gt; From a bank&amp;#x2F;fund perspective - we get tons and tons of training about how we should not insider trade, money launder, etc. They have people who have gone to jail come give talks about how it&amp;#x27;s not worth it, it was the biggest mistake of their lives, etc. Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like &amp;quot;so hey don&amp;#x27;t use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;I got the same takeaway when I was at Google as when I was in the hedge fund space: be careful what you say, regulators and judges might not be very charitable. In both cases, the concept of something you say being in the New York Times was present for me.&lt;p&gt;The Googlewide training and messaging when I was there did focus on not using anti-trust-triggering _language_ over the specific acts, but I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s fair to interpret this as &amp;quot;Violate anti-trust regulations&amp;quot; but rather a recognition that the common fuck-up some random employee can make isn&amp;#x27;t to commit a material anti-trust violation, but to provide nasty evidence by writing a puffy email about &amp;quot;crushing the competition&amp;quot;. Telling people to write emails about &amp;quot;making users happy&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;owning the market&amp;quot; is not telling people to behave badly.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know what you&amp;#x27;re doing in finance, but it&amp;#x27;s my understanding that folks who are actually involved in stuff where their job could look like insider trading probably do get subtler lines drawn than I ever sought (I was in systematic&amp;#x2F;program trading.) Places where doing my job well could be confused for something bad, e.g., tax optimization, we did discuss how to properly communicate in order to avoid misunderstanding if a regulator, court, or journalist ever read our communication.</text></comment>
<story><title>Googlers told to avoid words like ‘share’ and ‘bundle,’ US says</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-09-14/googlers-told-to-avoid-words-like-share-and-bundle-us-says-lmj27bhl</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>steveBK123</author><text>Well put another way - 
It&amp;#x27;s one thing to tell your employees not to break the law.  That&amp;#x27;s good!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s another thing to tell your employees not to use a bunch of words while doing their job which implicate the firm in breaking laws they&amp;#x27;ve been accused of breaking.  It&amp;#x27;s almost like an admission of guilt or attempt to obfuscate.&lt;p&gt;From a bank&amp;#x2F;fund perspective - we get tons and tons of training about how we should not insider trade, money launder, etc.  They have people who have gone to jail come give talks about how it&amp;#x27;s not worth it, it was the biggest mistake of their lives, etc.  Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like &amp;quot;so hey don&amp;#x27;t use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s stupid and hubristic. Just like the other stuff that came out of GOOG execs sending emails telling people not to put stuff in emails, lol.  Cmon guys.</text></item><item><author>jsheller</author><text>For things like this, Matt Levine is insightful:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.bloomberglaw.com&amp;#x2F;securities-law&amp;#x2F;matt-levines-money-stuff-people-worry-about-the-basis-trade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.bloomberglaw.com&amp;#x2F;securities-law&amp;#x2F;matt-levines-mo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Summary is that not only can you not say things like &amp;quot;lock up&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;market share&amp;quot;, you also can&amp;#x27;t tell employees not to say those things or you&amp;#x27;ll see headlines like the posted article and have the government claiming at trial that you&amp;#x27;re trying to hide evidence. This feels kind of odd and kind of unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blindriver</author><text>&amp;gt; Never ever, across half a dozen firms and 20 years, have I had training that was like &amp;quot;so hey don&amp;#x27;t use these terms that are used by insider traders because that would give the wrong impression when you are um.. doing your job and stuff..&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Well, I have.&lt;p&gt;At a large well known tech company I used to work for, we were told not to use terms like &amp;quot;killing our competitors&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;smoking them&amp;quot;, etc. or any words that implied we had any dominance or monopoly in our industry. We even had a &amp;quot;War Room&amp;quot; undergo a name change. The reason is exactly the same as Google&amp;#x27;s, where they were worried about reporters using it to twist narratives or in discovery by lawyers who came across emails.</text></comment>