Account allegedly run by a recruitment boss appears to have mined LinkedIn to dox diversity hiring leads

The Guardian's evidence linking Watson to Big Time Charlie comes from the same kind of public trail the account is said to have mined. Archived online records show the account originally bore the name Tom Watson ^[7]. It referred regularly to being in Puerto Rico, where Futura is based according to the firm's LinkedIn page, and to recruiting for technical roles ^[8]. On 20 July it posted that it was in Zurich, with a photo from the grounds of the Vitznauerhof hotel ^[9]. Two days later Watson posted on LinkedIn that he was in Switzerland, with another image taken from the same hotel ^[9]. The Guardian said it approached Watson for comment ^[10].

The account posted the photographs and names of executives said to have been involved in hiring minority ethnic staff, at businesses the Guardian described as big and small ^[11]. The paper's description of how the list was built is hedged: the account "appears to have been using AI to scrape data from LinkedIn and other sites to build a so-called Traitorbase" ^[17]. The report does not say which details came from LinkedIn and which came from elsewhere.

One targeted businessperson spoke to the Guardian. They called the episode "bizarre" and said: "Thankfully it doesn't seem to have led to any problems, but it's not something that you expect to have to contend with" ^[12]. On this record that holds for executives. The harm the report describes fell hardest on activists. Chantelle Lunt said details about her "appeared to be on a spreadsheet which included reference to other people who were involved in Stand Up to Racism" ^[13]. In our view the risk to a named executive comes from the audience she described: "You can see people engaging with it and actively encouraging each other" ^[14].

The trade-off sits with whoever is the public face of a company's diverse hiring. A named owner with a photograph and a LinkedIn history is easy for candidates to find and, on the Guardian's account, easy to scrape into a list ^[17]. One case, in which the one executive quoted reported no problems, supports planning this quarter ^[12]. If a company pulls those names now, its programme has no visible owner next quarter. Keeping them means owing the people named a plan for who watches for their details and who deals with the platform when they appear.

Staff time is the cost the targeted charity described. Its spokesperson told the Guardian that time spent combating misinformation and bigotry is "a distraction from these organisations' programme work here at home" ^[15]. The spokesperson also said: "Social media companies, the media and politicians have a responsibility to clamp down on misinformation and the division it causes" ^[16].