C4 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2019 LATIMES.COM/BUSINESS
allegedly pinned Pambakian
to a bed and began “forcibly
groping [Pambakian’s]
breasts and upper thighs,
and kissing her shoulders,
neck and chest.”
Blatt’s defamation suit,
filed in U.S. District Court in
California, presents a differ-
ent account of that evening.
According to Blatt, he and
Pambakian flirted over the
course of the party, culmi-
nating in a consensual kiss
in a hotel room.
The suit argues that
Blatt and Pambakian had a
close and mutually admiring
relationship both before and
after the holiday party, say-
ing “a flurry of friendly mes-
sages exchanged the next
morning between Pam-
bakian and Blatt in which
they joked about their hang-
overs belie Pambakian’s as-
sertion that she believed she
had been assaulted by Blatt
just hours earlier.”
Noting that Pambakian
herself never formally re-
ported the incident, the suit
alleges it only came to light
thanks to the efforts of Rad,
and only after negotiations
over the valuation of Rad’s
Tinder stock options fell
apart. Rad reported it to
company officials a week af-
ter telling his financial advis-
or, in an email about Blatt:
“We are at war. We will de-
stroy him,” according to
Blatt’s suit.
An internal investigation
after Rad’s formal com-
plaint found that Blatt had
not violated the law or com-
pany policy.
According to Blatt’s suit,
“[t]he board did, however,
agree with Blatt that he had
exercised poor judgment. As
a result, the board deter-
mined that an appropriate
reprimand was to cancel an
option grant Blatt had been
scheduled to receive in early
May worth millions of dol-
lars. Blatt accepted his puni-
shment without objection.”
Blatt left the company at the
end of 2017.
As evidence that Pam-
bakian had a financial mo-
tive for misrepresenting the
incident, Blatt’s suit points
to an unusual litigation fi-
nancing agreement between
her and Rad that promised
her upfront and contingent
payments totaling millions
of dollars in exchange for
participating in the lawsuit
over the valuation of Tinder
and including her harass-
ment claim in that suit. Blatt
alleges this agreement was
Rad’s strategy for damaging
his credibility as a witness in
the valuation case.
“In essence, Rad was will-
ing to pay Pambakian out of
his own pocket in order to
convince her to join the valu-
ation lawsuit,” Blatt’s com-
plaint says. “This arrange-
ment only made sense from
Rad’s perspective if he be-
lieved that Pambakian’s
participation would in-
crease his chance of victory
in the suit.”
Snyder, the attorney for
Rad and Pambakian, has
said the payments were
compensation for the value
of Pambakian’s stock op-
tions, which Match Group
canceled after she joined the
lawsuit.
Blatt’s defamation suitjoins a flurry of legal actions
surrounding Tinder’s corpo-
rate practices, none of which
involve current employees or
managers at the popular
dating app company or its
owners, though several tar-
get the company itself.
In the central $2-billion
lawsuit against the com-
pany, which is working its
way through the courts in
New York state, Tinder co-
founder Rad and a number
of former Tinder executives
claim that IAC and its dat-
ing app subsidiary Match
Group (which also owns
Hinge and OkCupid) pur-
posely undervalued the
company in an effort to
avoid paying out billions in
stock options to the original
team that developed the
swipe-to-match dating app.
Pambakian initially
made her sexual battery
claims against Blatt public
last year as part of thatlarger suit, but withdrew af-
ter finding that she had
signed an arbitration agree-
ment with the company.
Tinder fired her in
December; the stand-alone
suit against Blatt and the
company that Pambakian
filed in August alleges, in ad-
dition to sexual battery and
harassment, that her firing
was retaliation for her par-
ticipation in the stock pric-
ing suit. (Match CEO Mandy
Ginsberg has said it was nec-
essary to terminate Pam-
bakian because the public
nature of her involvement in
the lawsuit clashed with her
duties as a public spokes-
woman for Tinder, and be-
cause she insisted on com-
municating through her law-
yers for work-related mat-
ters.)
In September, the Fed-
eral Trade Commission filed
suit against Match Group,
saying it deceived users intobecoming subscribers by
promoting the activities of
what it knew to be spam or
fraud accounts.
Match says the FTC
“misrepresented internal
emails and relied on cherry-
picked data to make outra-
geous claims.”
Match has also engaged
in litigation against Bumble,
an online dating start-up co-
founded by Whitney Wolfe
Herd, an early Tinder em-
ployee. Wolfe Herd filed her
own high-profile sexual har-
assment claim against Tin-
der after dating and break-
ing up with co-founder
Justin Mateen.
In 2018, Match sued Bum-
ble, alleging intellectual
property infringement, and
Bumble sued back, claiming
Match fraudulently elicited
trade secrets under the
guise of acquisition talks.
That dispute remains in
progress.Ex-Tinder CEO sues accuser
[Tinder, from C1]
TINDERco-founder Sean Rad, left, with former Match Group CEO Greg Blatt, center, and OkCupid co-
founder Sam Yagan in 2015. Blatt has filed a defamation suit against Rad and a former Tinder executive.Andrew BurtonGetty Imagestop court gave people a so-
called right to be forgotten,
allowing them to ask Google
to remove European links to
websites that contain out-
of-date or false information
that could unfairly harm a
person’s reputation. Still, in
contrast to Thursday’s judg-
ment, the same court de-
cided last month against re-
quiring search engines to
scrub links globally.
“What might be consid-
ered defamatory comments
about a politician in one
country will likely be consid-
ered constitutional free
speech in another. Few host-
ing platforms, especially
start-ups, will have the re-
sources to implement elabo-
rate monitoring systems,”
De Posson said.
Platforms such as Face-
book and Google’s YouTube
won a nod of approval from
the EU this year for tackling
hate speech posted online as
part of a code of conduct
signed with the commission
in 2016. The companies
vowed to tackle online hate
speech within 24 hours, once
made aware of it.
Facebook said the ruling
goes beyond a process it al-
ready follows to “restrict
content if and when it vio-
lates local laws.”
The judgment “under-
mines the long-standing
principle that one country
does not have the right to
impose its laws on speech on
another country,” Facebook
said in an emailed state-
ment. “It also opens the door
to obligations being im-
posed on internet compa-
nies to proactively monitor
content and then interpret if
it is ‘equivalent’ to content
that has been found to be il-
legal.”
The EU court decided
that in some cases platforms
can be ordered to remove
not just identical content
but also posts that are
equivalent to such hateful
and illegal ones. According
to Facebook and human
rights group Article 19, this
risks trampling on people’s
fundamental rights.
“Compelling social media
platforms like Facebook to
automatically remove posts
regardless of their context
will infringe our right to free
speech and restrict the in-
formation we see online,”
said Thomas Hughes, exe-
cutive director of Article 19.
“The judgment does not
take into account the limita-
tions of technology when it
comes to automated filters.”
In contrast to the U.S.,
where freedom of speech is a
constitutional right, Europe
has traditionally placed
more limits on what people
publish, forbidding Holo-
caust denial in Germany, for
instance. That chasm is
widening as Europe is be-
coming more aggressive in
combating hate speech on-
line to prevent violent at-
tacks against groups, such
as the terrorist shootings at
mosques in Christchurch,
New Zealand, in March.
Despite the platforms’ ef-
forts, EU officials have been
mulling over new bloc-wide
rules, building on existing
legislation in Germany, that
could hit big tech firms with
fines if they fail to remove il-
legal hate speech quickly
enough. The discussions fit
into broader plans by the EU
to overhaul liability rules for
platforms.
Austria’s Supreme Court
last year sought the EU
judges’ guidance in a dis-
pute between Facebook and
Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek, a
former Green member of the
European Parliament, who
was the subject of a number
of offensive posts on a Face-
book user’s account. She
asked for an order against
the company to block any
further publications of pic-
tures of her if the text along-
side them included similarly
offensive content.
The Austrian court also
asked whether under EU law
companies could be forced
to remove any content from
its platform “with an equiva-
lent meaning” to illegal in-
formation it has been made
aware of. Lawyers said this is
an issue also faced by copy-
right owners on platforms
such as YouTube and Insta-
gram, where uploads of pre-
viously taken-down copies
keep popping up online.
“We hope the courts take
a proportionate and mea-
sured approach, to avoid
having a chilling effect on
freedom of expression,”
Facebook’s statement said.criticizes
ruling by
EU court
[Facebook,from C1]home address.
With Markley’s permis-
sion, I did just that. It was,
to say the least, a surreal
experience.
The call was answered by
someone identifying himself
as Mark. He sounded like a
nice enough fellow.
We engaged in a little
chitchat about how cool it
would be to win the sweep-
stakes. Then Mark asked
me which credit card I use
most. He gave me a list of
magazine titles and asked
me to pick two.
When I selected Esquire
and GQ, Mark compli-
mented me on my good
taste. But there was some-
thing strange about the way
he spoke.
Even though he respond-
ed to routine questions,
such as where he’s based
(Largo, Fla.) and whether
he’s a real person (he said he
is), he didn’t seem to be
actually listening.
Mark started repeating
some of his answers when I
pressed him on the current
weather in Largo and asked
what two plus two equals.
He kept insisting that I
provide the authorization
number from the letter.
I finally did so. Mark was
pleased that it checked out
and asked me to hang on for
a supervisor.
A woman calling herself
Betty came on the line. She
was indisputably human.
After trying to duck a
direct answer, she acknowl-
edged that Mark is in fact a
robot — or as Betty put it,
“an assisted technology.”
“Mark” is among the best
voice recognition programs
I’ve encountered in a com-
mercial setting. It even
includes stumbles and
embarrassed laughter. It’s
easy to see how effective the
program must be at steering
the unwary to a human
being.
Betty’s job is to close the
deal.
She added Men’s Journal
and Conde Nast Traveler to
my growing list of magazine
subscriptions. She told me I
qualified for a free diamond
watch.
All I had to do was agree
to pay $1.29 a week, which I
could do through a bewil-
dering array of payment
plans.
Each time I balked at the
terms, Betty came back
with a new variation — four
easy payments over 48
months, six easy payments
over 36 months, six easy
payments over 24
months.
No matter how much I
resisted, Betty instantly
responded with a different
deal. She was determined
not to let me off the phone
until I disclosed my credit
card number.
National Magazine Ex-
change is run by a Florida
company called ThinkDi-
rect Marketing Group. I
tried, but I couldn’t get
through to anyone at the
company except “Natasha”
in customer service, who
grew increasingly irritated
that I was wasting her time
with nonsubscription ques-tions.
According to Florida
regulatory filings, ThinkDi-
rect is owned by its chief
executive, Dennis Cahill,
and by a Maryland invest-
ment firm called Black-
street Capital, which says it
invests in companies “that
are either in transition or
are somehow misunder-
stood.”
A call to Blackstreet
revealed that the firm’s
voicemail box was full and I
couldn’t leave a message. It
hung up on me.
Cahill’s bio on ThinkDi-
rect’s site says he sits on
Blackstreet’s Investment
Committee. His prior expe-
rience includes stints in
videoconferencing and
dental insurance, and as
executive chairman of
American Combustion
Industries, which provides
“a full range of mechanical,
electrical and plumbing
services for commercial and
industrial facilities.”
ThinkDirect’s site says
the company has openingsfor supervisors — the same
job Betty holds.
“This in-bound sales
position introduces you to
the caller as a ‘Supervisor,’ ”
it says. “Your closing skills
walks them through the
magazine package sales
process & helps you achieve
all your goals — Financial &
Personal!”
Supervisors can work
from home or at ThinkDi-
rect’s “ ‘state of the art’ call
center in Largo, Florida.”
“Top performers can
earn over $22 an hour and
do it with no cold calling. We
generate all the leads for
you!” (Thanks, Mark!)
Qualified supervisor
applicants are “well spoken,
organized, self-motivated,
ambitious and like to make
money.”
I can’t speak to Betty’s
moneymaking desire, but
she fit the rest of the bill.
There wasn’t an answer I
could give that she didn’t
have a response to. She kept
sweetening the deal and
requesting my credit cardnumber. She was relentless.
After about 20 minutes of
her backing me into a tele-
phonic corner, I easily
understood how some peo-
ple — particularly seniors —
might just throw in the
towel and agree to the mag-
azine subscriptions.
Maybe that’s the end of
it. Or maybe your contact
info will be shared with or
sold to other businesses,
which is common in the
direct-marketing world, and
you’ll have more “Marks”
and Bettys breathing down
your neck.
Betty’s final offer was six
easy payments of $11.18 o v e r
12 months.
By this time, she’d pre-
sented so many different
options, I couldn’t keep
them straight — a strategy
perhaps intended to accom-
plish just such a state of
bewilderment.
It’s worth noting that the
$67 sought by National
Magazine Exchange for four
annual subscriptions is
considerably more than
you’d pay on your own.
I visited the websites of
Esquire, GQ, Men’s Journal
and Conde Nast Traveler.
One-year subscriptions to
each magazine would run a
combined $52.
I told Betty I needed to
think things over. I thanked
her for entering me (that is,
Markley) in the sweep-
stakes and asked whether I
could still get the diamond
watch. She said no, not
unless I subscribe.
Stokes at AARP advised
recipients of lottery or
sweepstakes letters to con-
tact the FTC if they’re sus-
picious.
And if you get on the line
with “Mark,” and he can’t
solve a simple math prob-
lem, that’s another good
reason to disengage.David Lazarus’ column runs
Tuesdays and Fridays. He
also can be seen daily on
KTLA-TV Channel 5 and
followed on Twitter
@davidlaz. Send tips or
feedback to david.lazarus
@latimes.com.Sales call for magazines is just surreal
NATIONALMagazine Exchange offered annual subscriptions to four magazines
for $67, considerably more than you’d pay by subscribing directly on your own.Justin SullivanGetty Images[Lazarus,from C1]