Fowler's next tweet emphasizes that she doesn't know who is doing the digging. She doesn't accuse Uber, and it might well be someone else.

But given that Uber famously threatened to spend a million dollars digging up dirt on critics, and Fowler just wrote critically about her experiences at that company, its hardly surprising that people jump to the conclusion that Uber is doing what they once threatened to do.

If there's one thing I've learned about these types of stories in general, it's that there is no benefit to jumping to conclusions until all the information is in. I was also shocked by the sheer audacity of the behavior described in Susan Fowler's blog post, but the "good" news about her story is that pretty much all of the incidents can be backed up by either an extensive paper trail or numerous other witnesses or victims. All of that data should come out in short order.

I have personally witnessed (and have evidence to support) Uber being extremely heavy-handed in response to valid allegations about them. My experience was they absolutely have people standing-by to research and goto great lengths to undermine negative truths that arise about the company.

Can you provide your evidence? Who are the people that they have standing by?

I wonder if it would be possible to convince those people to support a better cause. There's a dire need for some good investigative journalism right about now.

I actually described the issue in question on HN in the past which promptly led to Uber threatening the employee who leaked the details to me. He was so scared that he asked me to reach out to YC and have the original post deleted.

I wouldn't hesitate to share the evidence with a journalist with a publication backing them though as that would be a more appropriate venue.

Have you reached out to anyone? https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/news-tips/ would be my first place to go. It even specifically calls out "Here is proof that this company is conducting itself unethically" as an example, and asks for evidence corroborating the story. So if you have it, that would seem to be the place.

Having said that, I was more wondering if the people doing the threatening could be turned to better use. They surely aren't in it for the warm fuzzies, and if they're good at digging perhaps they could be convinced to do it for the good guys.

Sigh, that's swinging the pendulum too far the other way friend. Serious public accusations like that only 2 years into her career is a pretty silly way to get popular. If they turn out to be untrue she's unlikely to ever work in the industry again. It makes so little sense that it's easy to give her the benefit of doubt on her original accusations. It's also easy to understand that she may be paranoid of retribution and overreacting about a smear campaign. Or maybe it's true, we're talking about Uber after all.

I'm simply pointing out that her tweet is not enough evidence of fault to start another round of bashing the company as if it is true.