Antone Johnson, Author at Tech General Counsel: Startups, Transactions, Social Platforms - Bottom Line Law Group - Berkeley, San Francisco, Santa Monica

“AirB&E” and Crisis Management for Consumer Internet Companies

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

Much has been written about the cooperative nature of Valley culture, and Airbnb itself was an outgrowth of the idealistic “couch surfing” movement. As with any online community, well-meaning early adopters arrive first, and if all goes well, a culture of respect evolves that keeps behavior within relatively civilized boundaries. The trouble comes when a site becomes wildly successful, going from 1,000 closed beta members to 1,000,000 users. As it grows, any service will come to resemble a diverse cross-section of the general population, with the full range of human misconduct represented. Continue Reading

Silicon Valley After the Dot-Com Crash of 2001

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

After the last ops and engineering staff were laid off, I remember wandering through the cavernous, deserted NOC, strewn with assorted equipment that was left to be carted off to auction, looking up at the huge projection screens that forlornly flickered “No Signal.” It felt downright post-apocalyptic, with huge diesel generators out back standing ready to provide backup power to a NOC and data center that no longer needed it. Continue Reading

Web 2.0 Summit 2010 – Thought Leaders Ponder the “Battelle” for the Network Economy

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

This week, industry leaders, pundits, journalists and assorted hangers-on are gathering in San Francisco for the annual Web 2.0 Summit, one of the online industry’s most influential events. John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly moderate conversations with a long list of Web luminaries, including Eric Schmidt, Carol Bartz, Marc Benioff, Reed Hastings, Peter Chernin, Tony Hsieh, Evan Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Pincus, Ron Conway, John Doerr, and Fred Wilson. Continue Reading

Social Media Trust & Safety: “If you build it, they will abuse it”

“If You Build It, They Will Abuse It”: Social Media Trust & Safety, Risk, Fraud and Abuse

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Antone Johnson • 4 Comments

As a completely made-up statistic, assume that 0.01% of users are sociopaths or predators who cause serious damage to the community and its other members. With 10,000 users, that’s one guy. With a million, it’s a hundred people. With 100 million registered users — the scale at MySpace when I left — it’s ten thousand. That kind of math illustrates why every major consumer Internet company has an abuse team that serves as the first line of defense against all kinds of ugliness. Continue Reading

Angelgate: Valley Insiders, Anonymous Quorans, and a Vast Angel-Wing Conspiracy?

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Antone Johnson • 1 Comment

My particular interest in Angelgate relates to the role of anonymity in social media, its facilitation of information flow in a way never seen before, and the fragility — under some circumstances — of that anonymity. Allowing users to log in via Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth or Google Apps makes it easier than ever to unmask anonymous posters when a site owner is required to comply with a subpoena or search warrant. Continue Reading