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Intel Employee Caught Running OLPC News Site
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sat Jan 12, 2008 10:48 AM
from the well-maybe-at-least-biased dept.
from the well-maybe-at-least-biased dept.
An anonymous reader noted yet another story about credibility and disclosure on-line. An OLPC news site highly critical of the project was run
by an Intel employee who actually is working on a project that competes with the OLPC. Oh, and the site failed to disclose this pretty serious bit of bias. The article talks about the most extreme interpretation ("Intel secretly bankrolls blog that disses competitor") but even the less extreme version ("insider badmouths competitors anonymously at night") is pretty fishy. Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess.
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Submission: Intel Makes Fake OLPC News Site by Anonymous Coward
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astroturf (Score:3)
Re:astroturf (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll happen about the same time people get tired of porn. That is to say, never. For every article that comes out revealing this sort of thing, how many aren't identified? Obviously it's impossible to say. So it will keep going on.
Parent
Re:astroturf (Score:4, Insightful)
Although these things certainly can bring negative backlash when discovered, part of the problem is that these things do sometimes work. Perhaps we should be asking every website to provide a street address, phone number, and ownership report. That would be very difficult to enforce since some would simply host elsewhere. Perhaps a good start would be to require any site advertising on radio or television to provide that information in the ads. (The text size for ads that maybe be shown on secondary SD DTV channels needs to be bumped up too. Many of those channels seem blurrier than NTSC to me, although part of the problem is use of analog satellite sources)
With elections coming in many areas, I would not be surprised to find a number of front organizations providing misinformation online. I've already seen several of the "forward this to your friends" mudslinging emails around. The combination of semi-anonymous and dirt cheap makes these abuses too easy.
It is a bit surprising to see this sort of thing from a company that's doing pretty well with their product lineup. Perhaps it is more about fighting pressure on prices than about getting the business for low cost machines?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not at all, but it is a reason to require more transparency for people who put up websites which disparage a product, company or candidate.
Some of the most successful online communities have been those that require their members to use real names. There is good reason for certain types of speech to be anonymous of course, especially when criticizing a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For every one on the floor, there are ten in the walls. Slashdot is actually owned by Hormel Foods. You didn't think about spam tha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah but how many people read that blog in the first place? If even 1% of the people who are familiar with OLPC at all hear that an Intel employee is the one secretly behind a well-known blog criticizing it, the PR hit would overwhelm any gain for Intel even if 100% of the actual blog readers remained ignorant.
Soory cmd taco but this is bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
I write of OLPC News. I am not Wayan Vota, but have known him form some months now as we exchange constant emails about subjects. This is a case of real bad reporting on slashdot.
1- Wayan Vota is NOT an 'Intel Employee'. Ok, in some point his company did business with intel, but to call him a paid blogger by intel is a long conspiracy stride by an uninformed net echochamber. He is getting married today, and I think this is not the wedding gift he was expecting.
2 - OLPCnews is not "anti-olpc" or "pro-intel". You have clearly never read o line of that blog. Some headlines:
3 - there is no number 3. Unfortunatley, althought I write for the blog in question [olpcnews.com] my low"Classmate PC: Intel's Two Hour-Long Joke" [olpcnews.com]
"Intel Can't Take the (Low) Heat & Power of OLPC XO" [olpcnews.com]
"Halloween Horror Story: Nigeria Buys Windows XP Classmates" [olpcnews.com]
I challenge anyone to find a post truly complimenting Intel for it's classmate. There are posts criticizing OLPC, but mainly criticizing some negroponte's statements, some of the foundations failures or something that was left unaswered, after all we are an independent news source. But never a post was written against the fundamental idea of one laptop per child and most posts on the XO are clearly praising it.
Alexandre van de sande
blog.wanderingabout.com [wanderingabout.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a quick summary of Geekcorps -- IESC Geekcorps, a $10.5 million portfolio of technology-fo [wayan.com]
I am going to go out on a limb here (Score:2)
If Intel were smart, they'd st
Re:I am going to go out on a limb here (Score:5, Interesting)
The olpc news blog attacked the educational objectives of the project from the start, not by critically assessing the years of research and study that went into the plan rather, by completely ignoring not just the research and study but even the advertised objectives and methods written in plain english on the loptop.org web site. How many times does it have to be explained to these people that its not a laptop project dumping laptops on starving third world children, its about the educational concept of constructionism [laptop.org].
It even continues to this day where he posts "news" that there is no news showing that the kids who have so far received laptops are learning when again if he has been following the real news, you know, journalists and reporters actually out in the field finding out for themselves, the educational benefits are beginning to demonstrate themselves in small ways just as they did in the research.
And even if the blog is not closely followed, this guy is being interviewed and quoted all over the radio, even by NPR, as a source for OLPC news. That would be news about OLPC, not the website olpcnews which is a misnomer. Its disgraceful. Even though I stopped reading the guys web site I still had to listen to his crap on the radio when ever the OLPC project comes up in the real news.
Even though there is an obvious conflict of interest, and his site seems to be very biased, I can still see the possibility that he was just creating a blog about something he was interested in. I don't believe that the XO and Classmate were originally competing products as the target kids and communities for the OLPC educational program were outside the realm of Intel's existing educational assistance programs. The problem is that marketing PR, and in the case of Microsoft politics concerning open source software, drove them to "compete" in the OLPC "market" when in fact there is no market, its a charitable non-profit cause. As things were getting ugly in the media between Intel and OLPC he really should have disclosed the conflict of interest that arose.
Parent
So...... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So...... what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, its exactly that kind of conflict of interest: if a site that purported to be a "Windows News" site, that was highly critical of Windows, didn't disclose that one of its primary writers was a RedHat employee, that would also be an unethical conflict of interest. When you hold yourself out as a news source on a subject, and have personal financial interests that are indicative of a nat
OLPCnews.com much worse than Mike Rowe Soft (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't read olpcnews.com often but I thought it was VERY well written. It took me over 15 minutes to get a nagging feeling that something was very wrong with what I read (and I hadn't heard of the site before, I found it while googling for OLPC; olpcnews.com sounded more appropriate than "laptop.or
The real story (Score:5, Informative)
Christopher Blizzard has posted to his blog [0xdeadbeef.com] that Wayan Vota, a main writer for OLPC news is the director of Geekcorps. That Wayan Vota writes for OLPC news is not a secret (his name is on every post). And a Google search for "Wayan Vota" [google.com] turns up the Geekcorps result as its third hit.
Now, on Geekcorps' website, of one their technology partners [geekcorps.org] is listed as Intel.
I don't know about you, but that's enough to convince me that the black helicopters are involved! What a conspiracy.
BTW, is this the Digg effect? I notice more and more looney conspiracy stories over there all the time. Maybe it's spreading.
Funny thing about conspiracies (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just another OSS vs SCO/MS/Sun type angle being able to OLPC vs OLPCNEW/Intel. I would also not be surprised to see MS in this, but that ha
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, on Geekcorps' website, of one their technology partners [geekcorps.org] is listed as Intel.
competing product.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.geekcorps.org/partners/ [geekcorps.org]
Still confused?
Re:The real story (Score:5, Insightful)
OLPCnews.com was created(whois) in Aug 2006 and is registered to Wayan Vota.
Oh, Mr Vota also owns Wayan.com was created(whois) in March 2000 and nowhere on this site does it say he is an Intel Employee. It does say that he's pretty much a marketing and sales guy.
IMO, after looking at Mr Vota's background and skill set, he's not someone to trust as a reporter, blogger, or speaker for a site with a name(OLPCnews.com) which sounds like it is a common site for general news on the OLPC project. His background shows that the OLPC, in his eyes, is a competitive project to his geekcorps.com and his employer( if he does work for Intel ).
Regardless of there being the ability for readers to dig all this up and figure it out, he is/was deceiving the public and his readers in a marketing effort to disparage the OLPC project. Vota, it's time for a name change buddy. And OLPC should claim the domain name because it was deceptively leveraging the OLPC name for competitive purposes. IMO. Let him purchase ClassmatePCNews.com since it isn't used yet.
LoB
Parent
Believe (Score:5, Informative)
Distortion ... (Score:3, Interesting)
TFS: "An OLPC news site highly critical of the project was run by an Intel employee who actually is working on a project that competes with the OLPC."
TFS: "Just more reasons to never believe anything on-line, including me I guess."
q.e.d.
CC.
The defense from the astroturfer is sad. (Score:5, Interesting)
His argument seems to be:
It is a coincidence that he is working on a competing product to the OLPC.
It is a coincidence that he started a "personal" project slandering his business rival and getting Google links to the OLPC.
It is simply standard procedure that he is buying negative Google ads to promote his personal site. (You know, the way you buy Google Ads all the time for your personal projects.)
His screeching denials are more damning than anything else.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do remember that it was only but a few weeks ago that Intel was on the OLPC bandwagon, is it a conflict of interest then? Prior to then? How about now? So you see, context is important here. Now that Intel is out of favor, suddenly it's astroturfing. This little bit of news has actually been around a while and honestly, I could care less and I still read his site.
Please. There have been numerous stories in the last couple of weeks about how Intel was acting in bad faith through the entire partnership,
Not the $100 laptop (Score:2)
The OLPC News website in the past months has build up a reputation for sharply criticizing the $100 laptop project headed up by Nicholas Negroponte.
Please, please, please stop calling it "the $100 laptop." With the current prices for anything less than a million units roughly twice that figure, it's hideously inaccurate.
When they get it down to $100 and stop charging wildly different prices based on order quantity (a scam since all the tooling is done, and they won't be pla
I can't say I care. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's only a blog. It's not pretending not to have a bias. It's a blog. They're all biassed.
He's allowed to say what he likes. He was critical of the OLPC when Intel were amongst its proponents, so it seems pretty likely that this is his personal opinion. as such it would have been a bad idea to mention his affiliation with Intel since that may have suggested it was the company's views rather than his own.
Re:I can't say I care. (Score:5, Informative)
'Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.'
See the 2nd word there? Sure he can say what he likes, but he needs to disclose this blatant conflict of interest, which renders him very biased indeed.
Parent
Looks like the case of the fake ODF (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks like the case [slashdot.org] of the fake Open Document Foundation, that had nothing to do with ODF itself, and was just spreading FUD (probably trying to get money from Microsoft, in that case).
On the good side, these "schemes" tend to be found and revealed really quickly these days.
plastic colors (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Intel employee != Intel (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And (Score:4, Interesting)
So, where's the full disclosure on this, hum?
Re:And (Score:5, Informative)
They tend to be good stories anyway.
Parent
Today is Vota's wedding day (Score:5, Informative)
Just in case anybody's wondering why Vota hasn't posted anything to explain this... I think he might be a little busy at the moment, since he's getting married today [bellybuttonwindow.com].
Not that that affects any conflict of interest either way, but he is a private citizen who's been running the blog in his spare time for at least a year. Sucks for him that this hits Slashdot today.
For my part, I've been reading olpcnews for a while and I think it's a serious stretch to call it "highly critical" of OLPC. Vota seems to love OLPC in general and has started a forum for Give-One-Get-One donors (like himself) to post hacks, guides, and help for the machines. He's pretty critical of Negroponte, but it seems that that's mostly because he (reasonably) believes that Negroponte's utopian rhetoric harms the project.
I'm not sure I've seen him weigh in strongly either way on Intel, but he's certainly very against seeing Windows on the OLPC [olpcnews.com], and has posted articles from other authors [olpcnews.com] that are quite critical of Intel. So IMO: pro-Intel bias, maybe. Anti-OLPC bias, no way.
Legal liability for trashing competitors (Score:3, Interesting)
You can see these disclosures in scientific journals all the time. I just signed a disclosure form myself, in which I affirmed that I had no financial interests in the story I was writing about.
I admit there are a lot of astroturf publications in which an advertiser can buy a story, sometimes written by a PR firm, without disclosure, but I think most people who read those publications realize what's going on and give them the credibility that's appropriate.
I think the biggest concern is, what happens if you get sued for libel? The American libel laws tend to favor journalists who are writing about public figures, which means almost anybody who is in the news. If I make a mistake, as long as I was acting in good faith, they can't get damages against me.
To win a case against a journalist, a public figure has to prove malice. Malice is a specific legal term which is different from the everyday meaning of the term, but one example of malice would be writing defamatory charges against a competitor.
The worst case I can think of offhand was a TV producer for one of the major networks, who left TV and went into public relations. One of her clients was a bank, which was competing with Safra. The ex-producer got the bright idea of faxing unfavorable stories about Safra to newspapers and magazines, most of them in underdeveloped countries. The stories were anti-Semitic and contained false, defamatory statements about Safra.
When she was working in journalism, she was used to keeping her sources confidential, but in public relations, there's no such confidentiality, especially when people get sued for libel, and lawyers start taking depositions. She was so stupid that she didn't realize that her fax machine was sending her own phone number at the top of the fax and could easily be traced back to her. So she and her banking client got caught. (But they would have caught her anyway, because when lawyers sue somebody for libel, they can force the defendants, or anyone connected with the case, to disclose lots of information.)
Safra sued them, and the bank finally settled for several million dollars, which Safra contributed to charity, as I recall.
But the point is, if you're a journalist, you're operating by one set of rules. If you're getting paid by a company, and acting in their interest, you're operating by another set of rules. If you don't disclose your financial interests in the matters you write about, you're skating on thin ice, and opening yourself to libel. You're also dragging your client into liability for big (multi-million dollar) damages. If they sue you, all the facts will come out.
I expect that Intel will decide that they don't want to be associated with Wayan any more.
Do I have freedom of speech? (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for a major engineering company. My views do not necessarily represent the views of my employer, and I wish it to remain this way.
So, if I personally felt that my employer's project was superior to a competitor's, should I be forced to disclose my employer? What if I felt my employer was following the wrong marketing strategy? Should I disclose then?
The problem, as I see it, is if I disclose my employer, people will associate my opinions with my employer. Or worse, if I am critical of some new technology, will assume that my employer is also critical of said technology. Either situation can damage the reputation and possibly the business prospects of my employer. In light of such, if people knew who employed me, I would be less likely to state my opinion, for fear of the negative repercussions.
Unfortunately, all too many people are willing to discredit others based on their affiliations and associations rather than the strength or weaknesses of their arguments. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone seems to want an unbiased source, rather than dealing with the fact that this is almost impossible in the real world, and rather than evaluating the bias of the debater, we should be debating the merit of his arguments. Sadly, because so many are concerned with the authority and credentials of the presenter, those of us who actually have authority on technical issues are loathe to discuss them in public. I would rather have my arguments evaluated in light of their strengths and weaknesses than whom has chosen to employ me.
And for this reason, I chose not to divulge my employer. I want my arguments evaluated on their merits, without respect for my authority in the field. Too many people have adopted the practice of taking a position in a debate based not upon the merits of the arguments, but rather, the authority of the presenter. I expect people to think; I'm not here to make up your mind for you.
Re:Do I have freedom of speech? (Score:4, Insightful)
People are not as dumb as you might think. If you disclose the potential conflict a reasonable person can evaluate what the potential issues are; if not there is always the question regarding what axe you are grinding. If you disclose a reasonable person would at least feel that he is being told what the viewpoint of the person is.
Senator George Mitchell once said when being evaluated for a position as a special envoy to Ireland to negotiate a settlement between the IRA and British government that the conflicts of interest that you have to worry about are the undisclosed ones.
The fact is that there is no such thing as a completely unbiased observer. The best thing is to know the biases so you can evaluate the work in the correct context.
Parent
You want *negative*???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Jeesh, go visit right now. The lead article's titled "10,000 Give One Get One XO Laptops Going to OLPC Mongolia". Hardly the stuff of astroturfing.
You really want _negative_? Go visit their forums (same site) and read the posts from the hundreds of "Give One Get One" donors who've been out $423.95 for over two months now and still have no XO laptops to show for it, due to OLPC's incompetency and inability to manage the program. _That's_ negative stuff.
Full disclosure: I'm one of those unfortunate donors.
I've been following this conspiracy (Score:3, Informative)
Wayan doesn't carry a intel blue badge (Score:3, Informative)
I also took money from Intel in 2004: they paid my salary for the entire year. Then, when my division was closed, I joined with Nicholas Negroponte to start OLPC. Calling Wayan an Intel employee is like calling me one.
OLPCnews is a great forum for commentary on the OLPC project, they are sometimes critical of OLPC, and like all of us sometimes get things wrong, but they are mostly amazed by and very supportive of OLPC. OLPCnews is certainly helping build the OLPC community that has expanded as a result of OLPC's "Give One, Get One" program.
I think Wayan is doing a terrific job.
- Mary Lou Jepsen
(former Chief Technology Officer of OLPC)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'd think the biggest "clue" might be the datestamp on the article (January 2, 2007 at 09:08 PM). No need to guess.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe mushrooms?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You also have to consider that, even if any criticism given is warranted, a person with bias could purposely omit complimentary information - something which happens a lot in Slashdot summaries.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's why it's the reader's responsibility to consider what he or she is reading, and perform due diligence in verifying what is said.
By due diligence you mean that the reader should check if the author is not working for the competition? I mean, one of the first things I've been told when writing my thesis is to check the credibility of the authors of my sources...
Sorry to put it bluntly, your point is completely absurd, who gives criticism is completely relevant, since their position has a grand impact on how they themselves perceive events.
Re:This is just bad, Slashdot! (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, I don't think the story is wrong:
US Dept of State [state.gov]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, other people do unethical things. That's no excuse to ignore the specific instances of people doing unethical things. In fact, its why it is important to take note of them.
No, undisclosed conflicts of interest are always newsworthy, to the extent that they relate to a subject that is itself a focus of attention in the community in question. The OLPC has been the subject of atte