An Aristocrat who didn't have to worry about money? ;)

Ads really would probably generate enough, and then some, revenue -- plus all the connections, etc. that they can use, regardless of whether or not this group stays. Just sayin'. It's got a good google presence.

Apparently, Borat didn't know the site was hacked before when I asked him about user info security. — Thorongil

I saw that. But it wasn't Porat who replied to you. It was the other guy, Nik. He seems to be more savvy in general.

I was operating under the theory proposed earlier that these are all socks of the same guy. Could be true. Either way, maybe Borat can be the name for the collective, like the Borg from Star Trek.

Yes, I'm making a distinction now though because Nik seems to be saying and doing all the right things over there (not that I trust him at all) while Porat is kindly doing his best to drive people out of his hands and into our warm embrace.

Good cop, bad cop tactics are used towards the same outcome.

Yes, I'm making a distinction now though because Nik seems to be saying and doing all the right things over there (not that I trust him at all) while Porat is kindly doing his best to drive people out of his hands and into our warm embrace. — Baden

It didn't take Porat to force me into your warm embrace.

No, the chloroform hankie seems to have done the trick.

He meant to keep me on as an admin from the start, but he failed to communicate it and I assumed the opposite.

Pretty sure Nik is a real guy, not a sock puppet. Mr. Porat's company supposedly has 7 employees according to something somebody found.

As for the deleted threads, I've let Mr. Porat know that I feel he's failing to understand PF's culture of transparency of moderation and is endangering his investment by such actions. But he feels he's being slandered. Will have to wait and see if he can be convinced to address his past productively.

I see no record of anybody being banned by the new management. All bans this month are by StreetlightX. Who do you think has been banned?

@Paul
If you look in deleted posts there's a banned person. That was my concern, there is no record of it.

Please tell me the username so I can check it out quickly. I'm doubtful they have the technical skills to rewrite my forum script to remove the ban record.

Ah, you mean VM.US. That account was deleted, not banned. Deletion doesn't leave a record.

I'll wait until he deletes an account that wasn't created specifically for the purpose of criticizing him before I draw any conclusions. At any rate, I get the feeling that Eric is just a business guy who won't be around much once people stop talking about him and Nik will be the one interested in running PF. That would be a good thing.

Ok I couldn't tell that it was a newly created account. Yeh I figure things will blow over pretty quick and return to normal there.

But he feels he's being slandered. Will have to wait and see if he can be convinced to address his past productively. — Paul

He's not being slandered. He already admitted in the ShoutBox he was the same Eric Porat as the one in the Digital River incident. He then deleted that shout along with several others.

As I said in the mod forum, if he keeps this level of censorship up, he should be consistent and change the guidelines. Although you may be right and he may be smart enough to back off.

I'd suppose that from his point of view it's slander to bring up an incident for which he was found not guilty to make the implication that he was guilty. I doubt that it qualifies legally as slander, of course, as long as nobody actually outright says that he was guilty.

I'd suppose that from his point of view it's slander to bring up an incident for which he was found not guilty to make the implication that he was guilty. I doubt that it qualifies legally as slander, of course, as long as nobody actually outright says that he was guilty. — Paul

A problem I've had is that I don't understand what their business plan is. Of the possibilities, the one that's criminal makes the most sense to me. His response to the question about his past reinforced suspicion.

A different bidder, who didn't win the bidding, told me that he felt PF would make $350 a month from a single banner ad per page. The site gets a lot of traffic, advertising is a very practical plan. If they market the site better than I did (not hard) and grow the traffic, that number would shoot up. If you look at his linkedin page and his company, advertising is what he does so obviously that's his plan.

Frankly there's a lot more money to be made honestly with PF than dishonestly -- the user data has negligible marketing value except for maybe the posters who used their real names as usernames. And if he were able to get the passwords (which he can't) it would be stupid to use PF's database for hacking people when that makes it much easier to trace back to him and costs a great deal more than if he hacked a database or purchased a black market database. Hackers do not purchase websites, they don't need to.

VM something. And I don't think he/she was banned in the normal way, I think their account was entirely deleted.I think that he/she was a problem so the new owners made that problem dissapear.