Friday, we shared images of holiday parties at Boston tech companies. We didn't know it at the time of the post, but the image DraftKings provided us had been altered.
We found out when we obtained a copy of last year's holiday photo. Both versions of the photo depict people sporting festive garb, but the changes are obvious. A man on the left has been removed, while the faces of another man in the middle and a woman in the lower left-hand corner were replaced with the faces of other people--similar-looking people (sort of), but definitely not the same people.
"It was pretty unsettling to come across," one former employee, who had been cropped out, told me.
So why did the company do it? Sabrina Macias, director of global communications at DraftKings, told me, "We need legal permission from every, single person to use their photos." She explained they had consent from current employees, but not from the people who have since left the startup.
Curious about the changes made to the image? See for yourself. Below, the upper image is the one DraftKings sent us for our holiday parties roundup this year. The lower image is the original, before photoshopping:
