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Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

From the article (TLDR: the author has a financial interest in seeing their stock decline)

> Initial Disclosure: After extensive research, we believe the evidence justifies a short position in shares of Backblaze (NASDAQ: BLZE). Morpheus Research holds short positions in BLZE, and Morpheus Research may profit from short positions held by others. This report represents our opinion, and we encourage all readers to do their own due diligence. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report.

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Sure, but I’d more worried that the founders and management seem like they are short. The CEO left, announced a big stock sale, cancelled it, then dumped a bunch coincidentally when the CFO left (but before disclosure). Then the company hired an MLM CFO.

Oh, and the finance employees refused to sign off on the books and a few are suing the company.

It sucks, but Backblaze is cooked.

Sure, I agree.

But this is a hit piece. For any hit piece, I think it’s important for readers to know the motivations of the author, regardless of the validity of the claims.

That's basically how every short report works. Finding corporate malfeasance and writing a report costs money, and Backblaze isn't famous enough that journalists from the new york times or propublica would go after them. So the only people with incentive to expose such corporate malfeasance are short sellers.

And contrary to popular opinion, Taleb thinks that you should put more weight on such opinions, because they have skin in the game and are willing to back their beliefs with money. Short selling is not risk free, if they are wrong, they will get burned.

I mean, just read the article - if half the stuff stated is true its pretty bad, though its interesting how much of the drama is centered around 2022.

If half the stuff stated is not true, he’ll assuredly be facing a lawsuit.

And writing articles like this makes it more likely they become right

Well yeah, when people find out that someone is stealing from them, they tend to not want to do business.

That is how short selling works. Do lots of research, find some fatal flaw in a business model that everyone else has missed, and put money on the position. The final step is you have to advertise your findings, otherwise you are sitting on secret knowledge which the market will not price appropriately.

I would have appreciated seeing this at the top of the article.

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