Slashdot Mirror
HP Deletes Negative Corporate Blogger Comments
Thomas Hawk writes "HP has recently been making the rounds promoting their new company blogging efforts. Nora Denzel, HP's senior vice president and general manager of HP's Adaptive Enterprise and Software Global Business Unit has started a podcast and a number of new bloggers including David Gee, the head of worldwide marketing for HP's management software business, have also started company blogs. So imagine my surprise when I tried to legitimately leave a comment critical of HP at David Gee's HP blog and had my comment quickly erased and my HP passport (required to leave comments) revoked. Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?" Update: 05/07 04:24 GMT by Z : Indeed, "Update: It would appear that David Gee has changed his mind and has
reinstated my comment along with a comment from him saying he would pass
the feedback along. A good first step. I've asked for an explanation as
to why it was removed and hopefully will hear back soon."
Sounds like they admitted what they did. Did it take a bunch of bad PR for them to have a change of heart?
"Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it."
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
They have no obligation to host data on their servers that doesn't benefit them. If you have something negative to say about HP you have every right to publicize your message. HP doesn't have to pay for it, though.
Update: It would appear that David Gee has changed his mind and has reinstated my comment along with a comment from him saying he would pass the feedback along. A good first step. I've asked for an explanation as to why it was removed and hopefully will hear back soon.
Did you think you have the RIGHT to post something on their site and have it published continuously? It's their server, they can do what they want. Publish your own freaking blog. Your Rights Online, indeed.
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corporate blogs are just another arm of their public relations department, everything needs to be positive, big whoop. Once in a while they might include *insider* information, but thats usually sanctioned..
Really, find a way to blog anonymously and rip your company to shreds. Fucked Company or whatever is probably a good way to go about it.
You made a jackass comment that was neither well written nor respectful (as you described it in your own blog post) on a company blog. I'm surprised they even put it back up.
Back when I worked for Bell Atalantic DSL Support a customer, disatisfied with his DSL service, created an Anti Bell atlantic DSL website, after which time a flag was put in his file to not speak with him.
Yer free to speak, and the truth shall make yee fret.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
Some Japanese thing saying "If you believe everything you read, you shouldn't read."
I like screwing with people. I like managing a webserver. I'd give someone free hosting for their blog and change all kinds of stuff on them, bofh style.
Who cares, really? What if I wanted to say wh ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT nd that was on here for example, you don't think they'd edit it, do you?
FLR
It would be one thing if HP called the site a Postive Comments Only Blog, or something like that. But they call it a blog, a term that means one thing - a site for public news and discourse. Then they try to make it something else that suits their PR.
Either have a blog, or don't. That's their right, as it is their servers. But if you ask for feedback from the community, and you give the appearance of being impartial - deal with the consquences.
jh
HP, of course, associated with these people (read: they pay them to blog). The blog is meant to get them attention, and free advertising. Posting thoughtful comments is really not what they have in mind: they want "HP Goooooooood" comments on the site. Naturally, someone being critical of the company that is hosting such a site will be silenced.
Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
"No. Because you're free to set up your own site and comment. Why the hell should they allow you to post whatever you want on their resources: get your own site."
/. to let others know. The blog they got going is a PR marketing tool and a new one at that. Deleting negative posts has a negative effect on that PR. If their only way to deal with negative comments is to delete them that speaks volumes of their ability to handle it in a PR kind of way.
Sure, that is one answer. Another is to use a site like
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
"Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?""
Slashdot is wonderful! OSTG is great! No I'm not being paid to say such things
HP's stated intention on that blog is to have an open dialogue with customers. That *implies* both good and bad comments. It does not explicitly say that they are going to publish anything, but there is an expectation that they will publish negative comments as well. To do so reduces the blog to another advertising avenue, which is fine except if they admitted that then no one would go there.
So basically HP was intellectually dishonest about the intention of the blog, and if you read the rest of the comments you see they are almost all a bunch of ring-kissing cheerleader posts. The fact that they re-posted the comment is not impressive at all, it just means they aren't completely incompetent at damage control.
Personally I have nothing for or against HP, but this blog doesn't really seem worth the time or effort to look at, and the people involved with it have lost my trust.
By revoking a comment simply because it was critical they showed they cant be trusted. Since HP is a big company and not just a 4 year old, saying "I'm sorry, and wont do that again" isn't good enough.
They need to provide something to gain peoples trust back, which will either be very creative or take a immense amount of time. This move alone is just PR, and probably doesn't indicate anything. Even if it does, HP will still have to work for years to gain peoples trust.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
There have been a number of comments here saying that you are not obligated to host what you don't want to. Makes some sense. But...
Are you obligated to route stuff you don't want to? If I'm Quest or Verizon or somebody, and my router sees a packet coming in that contains the plaintext "Verizon sucks," am I obligated to route that?
What if I have routers and I'm the Chinese government?
Very regularly. Try going over to http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ and entering something which departs from the party. Then count to ten...
Not respectful, not on topic, not even clear what the complaint is.
e nt%20Screenshot-2005.05.06-08.19.47.jpg for screen shot.
If I were HP, would delete it simply for incoherence.
See http://thomashawk.com/hello/305309/1024/HP%20Comm
In Customer Intimacy:
/. story rightly believing he was censored)
<May 5, 2005 2:26:43 PM PDT> thomashawk complained about the media center pc support
(Tom's post disappears, Tom writes a
<May 6, 2005 4:14:43 PM PDT> D Gee responded and apologized for tom's bad experience
<May 6, 2005 4:41:33 PM PDT> thomashawk replied, saying: "Thanks for responding David. Can you explain why my initial comment was deleted and then reinstated? Thanks, Tom"
<May 6, 2005 6:23:53 PM PDT> D Gee informed him: "Tom - you can see my response in my entry "Taking it on the chin""
(Friday May 06, @07:24PM PDT, Slashdot post hits frontpage about HP censorship)
We had no effect on this. They changed their mind BEFORE they got publically shamed for it. Not that I'm agreeing with them removing the comment in the firstplace, but it's interesting.
For context, click Parent.
taking a punch and dealing with it instead of whining and crying about it. basically admitting you've made a mistake...
Gekido's Lair
I was on The Daily Kos, they posted about how a Conservative Republican was acting like a terrorist, I posted on how some other politicans who were Liberal Democrats who also acting like terrorists, and my account was "anonymized" in that the post was deleted and my account was no longer able to post or create a diary.
I heard The Free Republic does that to people who hold different views too, but I am not on there to confirm it.
Same thing with Kuro5hin, I had a different point of view than some editors there held, and I was "anonymized". Lots of users got "Anonymized" as I recall. Many signed back on with new accounts, protesting their rights being taken away.
Apparently the freedom of speech does not apply to blogs. None of them, apparently, support the freedom of speech to one who posts a negative comment or a different point of view.
On other forums, like IWETHEY, you will get flamed for having a different opinion than the groupmind.
Apparently this is abuse from those who hold a majority point of view, editor, or administration access of a blog or forum. Fascism, Communism, it don't matter, because your right to post your opinion is taken away without even a warning or reason why it was taken away. If not, you are personally attacked until you are forced to leave.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
but its also our right to discuss their policies, and not respect them as a company as a result of them.
They now have a PR fire to put out. They can get the lawyers if they want... but they will need years to put this one out.
They are now known for silencing anyone who disagrees with them among the tech community.
Personally I don't censor anything on my blog unless it's: illegal, obscene (and I'm rather liberal about this one), racist, etc. I don't really care about critical comments. I just don't want people to read and be offended by what they read in my visitors comments.
HP's going to need a lot of PR to undo the damage this slashdot story will do to it.
Sorry HP, you blew it. Go ahead, for now on, your blog community is useless as a PR tool because nobody trusts it. Even Business Week realized how important blogs are to business. And you managed to ruin your blog presence. Bravo.
If I were a VP at HP, I would seriously consider terminating who ever made that policy decision. That easily costs millions in PR (the fact that it ruined the "blogs as PR" strategy). You can make a mistake at work, but one one that ruins a marketing strategy of such large size.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is HP is not just going to read this slashdot article and ignore it. Heads may turn, they may lash out at bloggers who comment on it, and try to scare them... but they will respond.
Lets just hope they learn something, and other companies get the idea: silence customers, and they ruin your business.
Back in 1999 I had problems with the Rockwell modem in a new HP Pavilion desktop that I bought. The modem would dial and connect but could not maintain even a 28.8 connection on the admittedly noisy POTS line that I have in this older neighborhood. Every other computer in the house, including a Toshiba PII laptop had no trouble connecting and staying connected for hours. I went to the HP discussion forums for my model and posted questions. I called tech support and got a the news that it was a fine modem and that it was my phone line in spite of telling them that all other modems worked fine. I saw a post from someone else that had the same problem...and the next day it was gone. I posted my comments outlining the situation above and my message disappeared by the next day.
I wrote to the CEO, whoever that was before Carly, and pointed out the situation and mentioned that I run a discussion forum site of my own that gets around 75,000 visits a month and that my next step was to post a serious discussion about the modem and how I was treated on the HP forum. I mailed from Illinois on a Thursday. On Tuesday I got a call from a staffer at the CEOs office telling me that if I'd go buy whatever kind of modem I wanted and fax them the receipt, they cut a check for that amount and mail it the same day. I went and bought a US Robotics USB modem, the latest greatest, for some $239.00. I faxed the receipt, didn't even open the plastic wrap on the modem and returned it. By this time I'd already bought a Zoom external for $99 anyway. I got the check in 3 days and have lived happily ever after.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
How did he get the before photo? I don't know about you, but I don't go around taking screenshots of my desktop randomly... Did he start with the assumption that HP is evil and would therefore delete his comment and thus need the evidence?
So it's friday night and i'm spending it reading the posts around the public discussion i had with Tom http://h20276.www2.hp.com/blogs/gee/2005/04/12/111 3321761000.html which started in earnest today. to be honest, when tom posted yesterday, i was travelling back west from the east coast and didn't know his post was removed until i got into the office this morning PST and reversed the decision which is being so passionately debated here.
We run a commercial enterprise which lives and dies by our ability to build and deliver value to our customers from the largest enterprises to the home user - whether they be printers, PCs, servers, storage, services and of course management software. There are tens thousands of hard working people at HP, just like me who show up every day driven by this passion to deliver customer value. We may not be perfect, but we strive to do what's right.
Yeah, this is definitely HP's style. After the uproar that they had decided not to offer a windows mobile 2003se upgrade for their PDAs (even though they had already developed the upgrade and had shown it at a trade show, and I used this info when I decided on my purchase of a 2210) so that they could make way for their new lineup of PDAs using 2003se. The massive uproar in the forum was very well controlled, nonetheless, it was moderated, and eventually, the entire thread regarding the subject was closed, and the topic was forbidden for discussion, and people were stopped from even viewing the thread anymore. HP's got a bad habit. Try not to take anything they publish on faith, be critical.
TV used to have fantastic credibility, back in, say, the 1950s. Now, whenever a commercial comes on, people automatically zone out. Most commericials are irritating because they are not entertaining, not realistic, and not honest. Blogs may go the same way.
This doesn't have a thing to do with having the "right" to decide what material should be on their server. They're trying to convince people that they're genuine. Now everyone sees that they aren't. They blew it.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I agree with the guy who said you can't treat a company as a single entity. This was plainly an error of judgement by one guy who decided to pull a comment he didn't like on his blog. The error was compounded because he didn't consider at the time that it could end up somewhere like Slashdot where it would be viewed by thousands of net users, many of them HP customers (or potential customers).
But what happened next? The comment was restored and a speedy and (fairly) humble admission was given that a mistake had been made.
Personally I don't have a strong opinion either way about HP (other than that Carly Fiorina was a mistake). But it seems to me that one guy (albeit the Worldwide Head of Marketing) made a misjudgement and then corrected it. Big deal - this happens in business every day and I'm surprised it's even considered newsworthy. Actually for standing up and admitting his error, Gee has more respect from me than he did before; although that's primarily because I didn't know who he was!
I personally don't like this Thomas Hawk, from this whole thing.
1) If you read his blog about it, he insults ALL IT professionals and tech support people in particular.
2) His post on HP's site was not well written.
3) He then expects slashdot to rally behind him.
Sure, Slashdot didn't post it before it was changed back, however he sought this avenue before that point.