Last night, long-time Seeking Alpha contributor Montana Skeptic posted what appears likely to be his final comment on our site.
If you haven't read it, the crux of the matter is that by leveraging doxxing efforts of others, from different sites, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk contacted the author's employer and threatened to engage counsel and sue our pseudonymous contributor. I will leave it to others to opine on the priorities of this entrepreneur and what lessons investors might take from it and will focus this brief article on the issues most pressing to Seeking Alpha: our commitment to providing a platform for vibrant investment research and discussion, and our respect for the privacy of our contributors and users.
Seeking Alpha is the pre-eminent platform for crowd-sourced investment research. This isn't hubris, it's fact. Since its launch, Seeking Alpha has enabled thousands of contributors to share their research with millions of users, many of whom enrich that discussion in comments on our news and articles. We believe that the investment landscape is richer for that, but this turn of events could make it tempting to rethink our approach.
That will not happen.
In fact, on behalf of Seeking Alpha leadership, I want to state clearly that we are more committed than ever to providing the soapbox for bulls and bears on this, and every, stock. We want every writer to share their research and to analyze the allocations of capital (intellectual, financial, and otherwise) by all corporate leaders so that investors can be better informed and make their own capital allocation decisions accordingly. We firmly believe in the benefits of free speech and open discourse.
Our strategy enables robust debate on myriad topics and brings new voices to the fore, just as Mr. Musk himself did on Tesla's most recent earnings call when he spent approximately 30 minutes engaging with a Seeking Alpha contributor who is bullish on Tesla. Isolation never works, multiple insights do work, and we will always favor providing investors with more information.
Regarding the violation of this person's privacy, here is Seeking Alpha's policy on doxxing on our platform: Zero Tolerance. Anyone that participates in doxxing on this site is blocked, immediately. The risks to personal safety are too great for there to be exceptions, so be aware that if you share an individual's private information on our site, you will be blocked.
To all of our pseudonymous contributors, please know that our policy remains the same. You must tell us who you are, and when you do that, we will zealously protect that information. The investment landscape is made richer by the outstanding contributions of our entire community, which is why, as was eloquently stated in 2014 by our CEO, Eli Hoffmann, we embrace pseudonymity.
Finally, thank you Montana Skeptic for 138 articles and more than 10,000 comments on Seeking Alpha. You have been a great friend of investors with your insights and the generosity of your time. We wish you well.
Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
