u/L4ShinyBidoof wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
If the blog post does severely misrepresent your actions or have outright lied about you, I do wish you the best in the difficult situation and hope the full story comes out.
u/michaelnovati replied ·
I’ve always tried to be reasonable. I’m not perfect, but I dig and how I’ve uncovered real issues in the past. I’ve received thousands of dollars of legitimate security bounties for finding vulnerabilities, I’ve also helped expose and shut down coordinated Reddit account networks that were misleading people, I helped remove a drop shipper from Amazon taking advantage of people during COVID.
That said, I take integrity and harassment very seriously. It’s absolutely possible to investigate deeply while still being respectful and professional.
If you reach out to someone and they don’t reply, that’s the end of it. No follow-ups. And while looking at someone’s public LinkedIn, GitHub, or Googling their name can be part of basic due diligence, that’s not harassment. The line is clear: no repeated contact, no personal attacks, and no crossing into anyone’s private life.
Even when I’ve been on the receiving end. People blocking and unblocking me just to respond and blocking again. I’ve had to stay grounded in these principles while being still being an imperfect human. It’s the only way to keep my integrity intact.