Hilarious Conference Scandal
Hilarious Conference Scandal
A scandal and dumpster fire happening on Twitter with some guy who is running a conference. I’ll leave the threads here because it is just a wild ride.
[Ed: this was too long to include in the daily newsletter, so I’m sending it as a small standalone piece.]
Details!
Basically, the organizer of DevTrinity conference is accused of adding fake female speakers to the website to make it appear more diverse.
The instigator thread:
Imagine a tech conference having no CFP, as they reach out to speakers directly. They successfully attract some of the most heavy hitter men speakers in tech, and 3 women speakers.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 24, 2023
Now imagine my surprise that 2 of those women are FAKE profiles.
They do not exist.
Nada.
@thegrugq Hi! here is your unroll: https://t.co/izl1MKHomx Have a good day. 🤖
— Thread Reader App (@threadreaderapp) November 27, 2023
The rebuttal
The organizer claims several things: 1. Those are real people 2. The fake persona is a default demo 1. Removing the default demo was super hard so he procrastinated 3. This is a one off minor mistake (the demo persona)
Dear Reader,
— Eduards Sizovs (@eduardsi) November 25, 2023
If you know me well, you know that I have high standards of work and professional ethics. You know that DevTernity has been my life's work, and DevTernity is the event that I love and deeply care about. We've always delivered on the promise, and the event has been…
Dear Reader,
— Eduards Sizovs (@eduardsi) November 25, 2023
If you know me well, you know that I have high standards of work and professional ethics. You know that DevTernity has been my life's work, and DevTernity is the event that I love and deeply care about. We've always delivered on the promise, and the event has been…
The flameout
The defense statements are hard to take seriously. Firstly, because this is the third year in a row with fake female speakers.
So now I’m the bad guy for calling out your your conference had fake women profiles in 2021, 2022, and now, in 2023?
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 25, 2023
This is not a one-off. Here are fake women sneakers from 2021.
Ethics matter. https://t.co/Xmu2qmN7Md
DevTernity has had fake women speakers listed for years.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 25, 2023
Here is fake Anna Boyle’s “colleague” fake Natalie Stadler claimed to be at Coinbase (no such person ever worked there ofc - I checked).
She “spoke” in 2022 there as well.
Just incredible.https://t.co/q4mpwrw3ym pic.twitter.com/2sdhEcuORc
And secondly because the actual claims are contradicted by the evidence. Deleting the persona takes a second:
Small addendum: you wrote "I noticed the issue in October, but my busy mind suggested delaying the fix until we finalize the program because 1) it was not a quick fix"
— Raphael Wimmer (@RaphaelWimmer) November 25, 2023
You might want to attend my master class on "Deleting Lines in YAML files". pic.twitter.com/ncSPoaqEEF
And, the nail in the coffin: git logs show that the organizer added the persona himself.
I understand that this is really an unfortunate turn of events for you.
— Raphael Wimmer (@RaphaelWimmer) November 25, 2023
However, I am not sure whether I can trust what you are saying, given that you claim that 'Anna' was an auto-generated "demo persona from our test website version".
Git log seems to say otherwise. pic.twitter.com/CYMyQLFbCE
Addendum
It gets even crazier, of the three fake women speakers at least one of them is an Instagram account run by @eduardsi himself
The conference website is up and fake Anna removed.
— Gergely Orosz (@GergelyOrosz) November 26, 2023
But fake Julia is still there. Listed every year as a speaker, never delivered a talk any year (and “dropped out” this year as well) @lizthegrey did some digging.
A fake catfishing profile, it seems.https://t.co/tVglLiwSFy pic.twitter.com/lqylYQER9P
I have... so many questions.
— shenetworks (@notshenetworks) November 27, 2023
Is Eduards catfishing as an IG tech influencer with... 115K followers?
The first account she follows is Eduards.
The photos go back to late 2019... and the account might also follow the real woman in the photos? https://t.co/mSxHbkIBaM pic.twitter.com/AB6PB1iTLm
And the proof it is definitely him? Bad OPSEC gives it away, just peep the username in this screenshot post:
From an IG post around 2018 pic.twitter.com/Hl1XFMy9Ay
— anosh (@KingNoosh) November 26, 2023