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Notes -
It all seems very dodgy, and I think that the company was one of those set-ups that many people encounter at least once in their working lives: very extrovert/charismatic boss, who spouts a lot of the right stuff about ideals and appeals to better nature, and convinces you that working with them is going to change the world/improve the lives of many.
When you're young and inexperienced, you're vulnerable to all this because you don't have enough time put in to know what work is like. And the use of unpaid interns and so forth is common in all kinds of businesses.
So in this case - were the people volunteers, travelling on their own dime along with the Interlinear people, and getting room and board and expenses with an allowance on top, or were they employees? Since they don't seem ever to have been formally employed or given contracts, it sounds like the 'volunteer/unpaid intern' type of taking advantage.
If I take the initial story on face value, the Interlinear lot are EA-adjacent, swimming in the same waters, but sharks not dolphins (or behaving like sharks, at least). The kind of exploitative set-up that, as I said, most of us hit up against at least once when we're out there working for a living, but covering it all over with the language of volunteering and idealism and changing the world, etc. It's possible that Interlinear aren't that bad, but it's also possible that this Emmanuel guy is that sort of charming psychopath that top management roles attract. And the mess of overlapping romantic/family/employee or pseudo-family? who knows? roles didn't help.
Then the sort of people who are in the EA bubble are exactly the over-sensitive, rather credulous, inexperienced sorts who believe all the clap-trap about idealism and also expect a ton of accommodations for their lifestyle choices (e.g. veganism).
Put the two together, and that's putting fire and tinder together.
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