Slashdot Mirror
Forbes Goes After Bloggers
walterbyrd writes "In a recent article, Forbes bashes bloggers big time (forbesdontbug/forbesdontbug)." From the article: "Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat. " BoingBoing has a long post about the article.
Hmmm, have to register to read the article, I hate that.
But, from the slashdot summary, ..., Microsoft has been
hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research
boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite
bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of
other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob
scapegoat...,
As with all sea changes in communications comes (especially early on) a high noise to signal ratio. Hopefully reasonable readers apply reasonable filters to what they read.
There may be incendiary posts, unnecessary posts, and inappropriate post (including but not limited to trolling, flaming, and slander), but in the collective body of blogs are useful nuggets worth mining. Vendors, companies, and individuals benefit if they choose by tuning in to this.
The evolution of airing a complaint has evolved from snail mail (good luck), to phone calls (good luck), and with the internet, to "Contact Us" (hmmm, good luck). None of these in my experience have been as effective as I prefer because the receiving complainant can easily ignore the missives as so much whining, and invisible that they don't have to be responsive.
Not all ignore complaints, pleas for help, etc. Notably (and I'm only picking a couple) I've always received timely and helpful replies from Amazon.com and Thumbnails Plus . These are only two examples, I could cite more.
But with the volume raised, the signal amplified with the more public blogosphere I've seen signs there can be positive outcomes. Again, while some posts are inflammatory only, valid complaints about activities, governments, and companies in such a public forum spur action faster and more effectively than in the past.
And, as with all emerging conduits, mechanisms are being built and refined eventually improving the signal to noise ratio to a much more acceptable number (case in point... you troll or flame too much here, even anonymously, you get shut down until you clean up your act).
I am looking forward to the future that is the blogosphere.
CBS, CNN and ABC News: Big media are lap dogs to the powers that be. To afraid to really speak out for fear of harming revenue, stock value, etc.
And that, as I'm sure you're aware, is precisely what scares Forbes and those of their class. Traditional journalism is a tamed parrot which only says what its' owners have trained it to say.
They needed be afraid though; history has shown that independent social movements and forms of communication remain independent for a very brief period of time before becoming absorbed into the tame and vapid mainstream of social thought and expression.
Blogs scare the societal elites now; but in five years from now they'll be just another corporate form of propaganda, pushing the sheeple in the direction which the top 1% want them to go.
What I find surprising is that nobody has pointed out yet what Dan Gillmore has mentioned: namely, that the article encourages firms to "(f)ind some copyrighted text that a blogger has lifted from your Web site and threaten to sue his Internet service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act".
Geez. Talk about an abuse of the (already abusive) DMCA and the justice system in general. I really lost a lot of respect for Forbes when I read that - going after people who exercise their right to free speech and disagree with you is bad enough, but bringing fraudulent lawsuits against them and their ISPs is, well, criminal. Or if it's not, then it should be.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
That's why AOL/Time Warner is trying to buy into them and regain control of journalism.
Movie News - "Entertainment news, bitch!"
Not terribly responsible journalism by Daniel Lyons. Of course, you may remember the earlier Lyons article in which he defended Maureen O'Gara's attack on groklaw's PJ. He doesn't appear to be an open source enthusiast. For example, in an article on Marc Fleury of JBoss fame, he writes:Memo to Slashdot, and to myself: YHBT.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
This is just more trash talk from Dan Lyons, Forbes own resident pro-SCO, anti-"Linux crunchies" troll. He's apparantly realized that his only hope of keeping his job indefinitely is to convince his bosses that having one's arguments meticulously dissected by flaw-finding weblogs is a meaningless annoyance that happens to everybody, and to dissuade his bosses from ever paying close attention to the flaws found in Dan's own work.
Don't even click the link and give them an ad impression. Unless the man has just lost his mind, the whole reason for writing these shrill rants is to draw more "Slashdot effect" hits. It's quite possible that Forbes is thrilled to see all the attention in their web server logs, not yet realizing they're getting it by driving away the "Wall Street Journal" audience in favor of the more populous "National Enquirer" crowd.
I'm sure Alexander Hamilton said the same Of Ben Franklin's newspaper.http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/pop_apolo gy.html>
Indeed. Should blogger feel the need to respond, they might do no better than Franklin's response to criticism of his Pennsylvania Gazette, May 27, 1731.
He begins:
He then gives 10 things for his critics to consider, among them: