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Facebook Admits Hiring PR Firm To Smear Google
hasanabbas1987 writes "The clash of the Internet Giants reached new heights after a spokesman for Facebook confirmed to Daily Beast that Facebook paid a high level Public Relation firm to publish and spread stories against Google throughout the media to study various methods to examine the allegations that Google has been violating user privacy."
How dickish.
Is it just me or is the end of the summary not really intelligible?
Facebook didn't hire them to publish stories against Google. That would be libel. They merely hired them to help educate the public about Google's anti-privacy practices that may violate the Consumer Protection Act. That's all. It's just part of Facebook's ongoing efforts to help educate us all and make us better consumers.
And who better to educate us on privacy than Facebook, after all--a company well-known for its respect for user privacy?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Don't call the kettle black, it sounds so much more believable when someone else does! GJ FB
To distract the public from their own misdoings? Where do their business models collide?
...hiring a native speaker to edit their English language edition. Anyone who has successfully completed third grade could help them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The link in TFA, goes to a website's (poor) summary of the original article, on another website. Couldn't the effort have at least been made to link to the original article in TFA? I mean, it was the matter of pressing "source" at the bottom...
Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me!
Did Google pay someone to publish that one?
9 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10 “You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”
Zionists vs. fascists? I dunno what's going on.
This is why the dumbing-down of our educational system is so tragic.
The fact is that we have access to more information than any people in history, but if one is unable to think CRITICALLY about the data, it's almost worse than useless.
Why, do you suppose, Fox News is telling us about Obama's latest gaffe?
Why, do you suppose, a failed presidential candidate makes a movie telling us how the world is going to hell?
Certainly, the basic information could be true or false; more likely it's a careful presentation of the factual or a blend of fact and supposition in order to encourage a specific response in the reader.
Without a good education we're unable to participate as useful citizens, and are merely a remotely-controlled 'demographic' that marches according to what the media tells us to. Sadly, this programming has always been with us and always will. The educational system used to program us to be good, unquestioningly patriotic citizens, but at least squeezed in some knowledge in the meanwhile. Now it programs our kids into reflexive iconoclasts, that they are 'good' regardless of what they do, and that their self-esteem is far more important than any silly facts, particularly if those facts came from dead white men.
-Styopa
...if Mark just created a Google is anti-privacy page on Facebook and paid people to 'like' it.
The summary is hard to read because the article itself is written in very poor English, making it hard to read. When there are two grammatical errors within in the first two words of the blog post, it's not a good sign.
The Daily Beast article is much better written. (It links back to the USA Today article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-05-06-google_n.htm , which lays out the campaign, although doesn't name Facebook)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission.”
Never mind the immediate intrusions that facebook allows by making everything public by default, until you navigate to each individual item's options and raise the security settings to ensure not everyone can see it. But that was 'with your permission' I guess?
But we at facebook who brag about 'the end of privacy as we know it' want to be the ones to pretend to warn you about your privacy.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The reporter "confirming" the story is Mr. Dan "Linux stole from SCO!" Lyons. A stopped clock twice a day and all that, but I wouldn't trust Lyons to report that water is wet and the sky is blue. I'd wait for confirmation from reputable sources before getting on opinion on this.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I'm just going to leave this here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Google - Don't be evil.
Microsoft - Be incompetent.
Intel - Be oligopolistic.
Dell - Be beige.
Acer - Be shoddy.
HP - Be recurrent.
Cisco - Be expensive.
Sony - Be invasive.
Twitter - Terse.
Apple - Be exclusive.
Facebook - Be evil.
... continues to impress.
Google does a pretty good job of making an ass of themselves all on their own, that whole "do no evil" thing Google used to swear by, it is a load of crap, Google is just as evil as Apple or Microsoft or Oracle (their only in it for the money and would stomp on their own mothers to get it.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
so that's good? like really physically smearing everybody & everything in real time, all the time. that's public relations, as we know it.
As a way of deflecting criticism, it is the first bit of rhetoric we all learn in our lives.
And it apparently works in kindergarten, national politics, and corporate PR warfare.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Now, wait a minute, where's darling Steve ?
I think its a smear campaign by a po'd Steve Jobs to entangle Google & Facebook and take some press off iphone location data fiasco.
If only it was real...
I don't trust either pan to hold my data. I might get burned.
Facebook didn't hire them to publish stories against Google. That would be libel.
No, that is not libel. Not unless the stories are verifiably untrue.
Here's a link to the original article if anyone wants to read about it without the inventive grammar and composition of the awful linked blog post:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/facebook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google/
God is imaginary
The last 7 of the 10 commandments are generally enforced by law books in most countries by thousands of laws. The first 3 are the ones that bear direct reference to a religion.
Quoting the last 2 should not have resulted in an attack on religion. They are basic commandments to stay out of the legal system. Violation of most of them even outside the church system is not a good idea.
The truth shall set you free!
"The last 7 of the 10 commandments are generally enforced by law books in most countries by thousands of laws."
Which countries have laws against coveting?
...Facebook is its own negative-PR department.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
This was such a poorly written article I don't know where to begin. The sources are not properly quoted. The grammar and spelling is worse than my own ( which is amazing)... I don't think I can trust the journalistic integrity of the source article due to it's own neglegence.
They called bestiality laws,
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Given /.'s affinity for Dup's... we can be assured that within 24 hours, this story'll be reposted, but with reference to the DailyBeast article. Ain't redundancy great? :D
One man's pink plane is another man's blue plane.
... although "fermented" does work here, come to think of it.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
They merely hired them to help educate the public about Google's anti-privacy practices that may violate the Consumer Protection Act.
Personally I *LIKE* it when Facebook or anyone else calls out another companies questionable privacy policies; even if it comes from one of the biggest offenders themselves. I hope this inspires Google to help call out questionable privacy policies of Facebook too.
It's just like when China and the US point fingers at each other or Human Rights violations. I vehemently disagree with those who say the US shouldn't criticize China until it looks at it's own abuses or vice-versa. IMHO it's good any time such violations are pointed out.
And who better to educate us on privacy than Facebook, after all--a company well-known for its respect for user privacy?
Indeed! You said it jokingly, but no doubt they've given quite a bit of thought to how sleazily they can approach the legal grey areas around privacy; and if they see someone cross a line that even squicked them out, I hope they warn people about it.
I just hope others do the same to them as well.
Linking to a semi-literate blog post that is ABOUT some other article is idiotic. Just link to the original article. Linking to some linkwhore blog that spews up a word-salad ABOUT the article just makes /. into a linkwhore-enabler.
You used to be better than this, Taco.
The USA Today article that first broke the story about the secret smear campaign: http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-05-06-google_n.htm
The Daily Beast article that broke the story that the client paying for the campaign was Facebook: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/facebook-busted-in-clumsy-smear-attempt-on-google/?cid=topic:mostrecent1#
The actual email string between the reporter and a Burson employee that started this whole thing: http://pastebin.com/zaeTeJeJ
-David
david44357.com
All that claptrap about "the free press" and "guardians of democracy" is a pile of cow dung, as anyone who lived through the last 10 years can easily tell. Read your history books and you will see that it has always been thus.
This is true only if U.S. history begins at World War II. In the late 1800s and early 1900s there were labor papers which were mainly subscription supported, with local news, educational articles, and union events. There were many of these, some small, some with a broader reach. For example as late as the 1930s the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, which taught people how to read and think critically, had significant influence.
The media consists almost entirely of hired shills, whose job it is to influence your opinion in exchange for money.
While this is generally true of US corporate news, here are four exceptions: Amnesty International, Christian Science Monitor, DemocracyNow, and Z Magazine.
It's the ad-supported news that increasingly becomes business-supporting news; particularly when the news media organization is owned by big business.
His initial enthusiasm for TSG was all underdog vs. Goliath (IBM) and all that.
Given how few journos do apologize, I actually give him some props.
Why leave it there? It's pointless and irrelevant. It's like saying that because my superannuation scheme has shares in Microsoft and/or Google, I'm personally responsible for everything they do.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
If the notion is so obviously absurd, why challenge it? Let it fail on its own. All you've done now is draw attention to it, inviting others to argue the point.
Here, I'll start: "Follow the money."
From TFA: "For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy"
Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller... Why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah. They were slinging anti-Google propaganda for ICOMP (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), which (scroll down to the very bottom) is a lobbying arm of Microsoft.
BM has claimed that the smear job for Facebook "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies", but it seems to me that it's just business as usual for them. The last time they did this, pitching to business executives that time, they also didn't disclose who hired them ("Others suggested that by not disclosing who Burson-Marsteller was representing, the firm was breaking the spirit of political lobby firms' code of conduct.").
Not only that, but BM also hired Eric Schmidt's ex mistress/fiancée, presumably connected with their ongoing anti-Google efforts. And they were behind the National Smokers Alliance campaign back in the mid '90s. Plus, if this post is to be believed, they were also involved with a number of other very dubious organizations (I didn't have time to run them all down, but the ones I did check into seem true).
The whole "Facebook and Google are having a spat" thing isn't really news, but I find it interesting how such a scummy company can be considered "one of the top international PR firms out there". Also, I regret that I didn't find this Slate article until after typing this post. It backs up the list of clients in the forum post above (but in case you don't want to follow either link: the Argentine junta, the Nigerian junta, Union Carbide, Blackwater, and Nicolae Ceausescu are among the undeniably bad/evil ones).
They deserve each other! Two fascist entities milking a historical right place at right time break to sell out on the biggest scale their newly hired bean counters can imagine, devoid of ethics.
Google has produced worse software than previously conceivable, with their decadent founders fantasizing that a faux open source sugar coating will somehow conceal their fascist soul, as Facebook attempts to catch up to their bigger brother at all costs.
Assange is no doubt accurate that they are fulfilling the most paranoid imaginings anyone ever had about Microsoft.
"Because Slashdot is swarming with investors and stockholders"
That is definitely one way investors get information. They read the buzz on places like Slashdot.
it benefits the ones we call us, lets not make a fuss about it
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Why do you read Slashdot?
Because there is often useful information, even though there are a lot of uninteresting comments. Investors do the same.