[tomschlick]

Singer clarifies in the later follow up to say he was referring to the people at Basecamp, not in reference to the whole country.

> To which Singer responded: “I said we have different ways of framing … If you want to debate whether it exists anywhere, then yeah. But not here at this company, not with the people I associate with.”

Edit: to add quote

[ashtonkem]

Sorry, I think he’s lying here to cover his own ass. Especially if he’s been in the habit of quoting Breitbart, him pulling the “actually racism against whites is the real issue” is entirely believable.

[chris11]

The article asked Singer for a comment, and printed his full reply.

> I objected to an employee’s statement that we live in a white supremacist culture. White supremacism exists, and America’s history of racism still presents terrible problems, but I don’t agree that we should label our entire culture with this ideology.

His reply was focused on white supremacy in America, he didn't mention a misunderstanding about referring to just the company. There's that other quote from him, but it's strange his entire reply focused on the country if he was just referring to Basecamp.

[Igelau]

> The article asked Singer for a comment, and printed his full reply.

And in the meantime his interlocutors have acted to remain anonymous... I grant benefit of the doubt to Singer.

[ashtonkem]

I’d remain anonymous too, I wouldn’t want to be harassed by the Breitbart crowd who’ve picked their sides on this one.

[eloff]

That's not what he said though.

[ashtonkem]

> I don't believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.

So yes, the article does claim that he said this. Obviously he contests this, but it appears to be just his word alone against other people who were on the call. The balance of evidence does not appear to be on his side, here.

[Igelau]

Except none of them are stepping forward from what we can tell. It's all an anonymous patchwork of he-said-she-said except for Singer. His evidence is the only evidence because the rest is completely unverifiable.

[ashtonkem]

Feels a bit too close to “fake news” for my comfort.

Anonymous sources are the norm in all kinds of reporting; there is no real reason to be surprised that no ex employee is volunteering for the kind of harassment that signing their name to this story would draw in, especially now that Breitbart and a variety of alt-right grifters have decided to take big, public pro-Basecamp and anti-“woke” worker stance. It’s easy to say “if it’s real they would say so publicly”, but honestly the vast majority of us here, myself included, would not do so if it meant getting harassed by the Breitbart crowd.

This of course does not mean that this is real. Just because I could imagine myself being an anonymous source in such circumstances does not mean that such sources exist. But in this case we can be savvy media consumers and look at the official pushback from Basecamp and those named, and the pushback is incredibly small in the number of contested details. Singer corrected literally one quote on the record. This implies to me that Newton is largely on the money in terms of factual events.

Also, the flip side is also true; we don’t seem to have a lot of current of former Basecamp employees coming out to defend the company and decry these articles as being wrong. Instead we have ... silence. Now everything I said above about wanting to be anonymous is still true for these hypothetical people as well, but if you’re going to complain about the lack of people on the record attacking the company, then surely the lack of people defending the company (executives excluded, natch) on the record should also be a data point, should it not?

[DiNovi]

Yes it is a common tactic to back away from an initial claim and pivot after people call you out, but he already let the genie out the bottle.

[tomschlick]

Its also common to not to explain things you think are obvious when initially talking but when someone asks you about it you clarify your position.

[ashtonkem]

He also has every single motive to lie here.