Mission is good, but how do you protect those people who disclose information to you ?
> We may share your data with third parties under the following circumstances:
> During a Change in Control: If Truthwave undergoes a business transaction like a merger, acquisition, corporate divestiture, or dissolution (including bankruptcy), or a sale of all or some of its assets, we will take appropriate measures to continue to protect your anonymity and identity, but may need to share, disclose, or transfer all of your data to the successor organization during such transition or in contemplation of a transition (including during due diligence). (All data categories)
> In fact, we pledge to distribute to tippers $200 million out of every $1 billion we collect.
What? Donating 20% of profits is great, but this sounds very weird. Is the only thing that drives this revenue donations? In which case, why do we need a rent seeking intermediary? Nostr has bitcoin tips built in, and you don't have to pay anyone to send money to whomever you want.
Have you tried actually paying with Lighting and Bitcoin before? You definitely are paying someone a fee for mining / processing the transaction.
For whistleblowing though, Monero would be top tier.
Also I am pretty sure that there are already systems which can give a list of numerous crypto accounts from one thing but still monero would be my best choice for such kind of things tbh given how usdc can still hold/censor your money in a somewhat degree y'know, maybe there are some freedom usd things or something but at that point, having them in monero makes more sense.
These are the few applications of cryptocurrency which can genuinely be used (I am a bit of crypto skeptic because I don't like what the community has become, my only respect is for monero community really and some nano contributors or some chain developers in general but they form a very small portion and the markets don't move because of them and no matter how much trust I have in a project, I don't trust markets and I don't want to play a fool's game compared to stock markets where there is genuine productivity in conservative stock markets generally speaking although that productivity is also de-linking thanks to AI in S&P 500 )
To be really honest, I just don't like crypto personally except stablecoins and that too in just a very small degree, That is my personal experience that I am not going to take part in something which feels like an speculative asset no matter its use-cases as most of these would just converge on one or two and if not, they would have some niche use cases and their use case right now is feeling more and more like a ponzi scheme more and monero is the only one which doesn't feel that way really.
But the team must be known, and the company should be transparent.
> Our founders, who remain anonymous, following in the footsteps of some of our nation’s most impactful justice efforts, understand the inherent challenges faced by those seeking justice on an imbalanced playing field.
OK, seriously, who do they expect to trust them?
Actual prospective whistleblowers, or someone else?
> Once Tips are validated and determined to have a likely positive impact on justice, our whistleblowers receive their initial compensation. Then, based on the ultimate justice achieved, our whistleblowers are compensated again. [...] Earn Big Rewards - Tippers can earn rewards of $1,000,000 or more.
Maybe they only need opportunists and scammers to trust them?
And donors/investors? And corporations with a problem-goes-away cost-of-business budget?
Anecdote behind thinking a bit about this... I was discussing cofounding a startup that incidentally overlapped a bit with this space. One of the very top concerns was that we needed to be seen as trustworthy, to both employers and workers, and that trust would be a significant part of the value that we brought.
Then my prospective cofounder (a real straight-shooter) pointed out that one possible side effect of that trust (if we achieved it), was that workers might come to us with information about a company that we'd be obligated to report to gov't authorities, against the expectations of the worker. It was one of the many things we'd need to be very clear about, in course of earning and honoring the trust that enabled the good stuff we could do.
Don’t let techbros with a snazzy website template do a middle-man act on whistleblowing. Christ. These people just want a cut of the settlement.
I mean, this idea is profoundly dangerous. Every link in a whistleblowing chain increases the risk of someone being threatened, ruined or worse — hospitalised, defenestrated, family threatened -- before they can talk.
If you are going to blow the whistle, be paranoid as fuck. Ask the journalists to describe what assurances they get from their editor and publisher. Ask them to put you in touch with someone who blew the whistle to them and who can safely talk, so you can find out how they handled it. Ask them if they've ever had to help someone get the hell out of Dodge. Don't trust anyone to broker this stuff but yourself.
eg. https://www.nytimes.com/tips, https://www.washingtonpost.com/anonymous-news-tips/
mind-blight•2h ago
It seems like they need people willing to stretch their name to create credibility.
ramon156•2h ago
dns_snek•2h ago
dessimus•2h ago
To pull an example out of thin air, would you risk whistleblowing to TruthWave on Amazon if you knew that the Washington Post was running TruthWave?
tptacek•1h ago
exasperaited•50m ago
This is why whistleblowers now often work with two different organisations with different ownership/politics, or in different branches of media, or with a journalist backed by the ICIJ (e.g. the Mossack Fonseca leak investigation was shared with the ICIJ).
But yes, any generic online whistleblowing broker with dozens of concurrent cases is going to be such an obvious target for state or organised crime interference. Anyone making a business of brokering whistleblowing for a cut of the reward is an obvious risk.
embedding-shape•1h ago
6r17•1h ago
1oooqooq•20m ago
that said, I'd probably still not recommend that site, or billionaires owned newspapers.