eBay and its former execs settle cyberstalking case brought by journalist couple
eBay agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by journalists Ina and David Steiner over a 2019 cyberstalking campaign targeting the couple. The settlement includes monetary compensation from eBay and former executives, as well as charitable contributions. eBay said the conduct does not reflect its current culture and has updated its policies.
- ▪The Steiners sued eBay after employees allegedly harassed them following critical articles in 2019.
- ▪Former CEO Devin Wenig and a communications chief were reported to have ordered the harassment, leading to a criminal case where seven security staff pleaded guilty.
- ▪The settlement provides $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from Wenig, $500,000 from Wendy Jones, and $50,000 from Steve Wymer, plus $6 million in charitable donations by eBay.
- ▪Wenig will also donate $1 million in Ina Steiner's name to a First Amendment rights charity.
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Record
| Original publisher | Engadget |
| Canonical URL | https://www.engadget.com/2225652/ebay-and-its-former-execs-settle-cyberstalking-case-brought-by-journalist-couple/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Jul 2026 22:31:41 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-28T22:36:01.639Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-28T22:36:01.639Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | UlAgiqvivwWV · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
News eBay and its former execs settle cyberstalking case brought by journalist couple Ina and David Steiner will receive compensation after a 2019 campaign to silence their critiques of the company. By Anna Washenko July 28, 2026 6:31 pm EST JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock eBay has reached a settlement with a pair of journalists who sued the company after its employees subjected them to a campaign of cyberstalking and harassment. This case may have fallen off your radar, so let's recap the whole horrifying saga. Massachusetts-based David and Ida Steiner run a newsletter and website called EcommerceBytes. In 2019, articles about eBay written by Mrs. Steiner apparently drew the ire of then-CEO Devin Wenig.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Engadget.
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