Facebook Admits Hiring PR Firm To Smear Google 172
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."
EverythingNew.net might want to consider... (Score:4, Informative)
...hiring a native speaker to edit their English language edition. Anyone who has successfully completed third grade could help them.
Re:Summary is wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Not if the stories are true.
Re:Ummm, what the eff? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and it should link to the original source of the story, not this crappy write-up on some unknown blog.
Original: [link] [thedailybeast.com]
Poorly written [Re:Ummm, what the eff?] (Score:4, Informative)
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 [usatoday.com] , which lays out the campaign, although doesn't name Facebook)
Put this on pause (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
I was talking to my 23 year old sister about this phone. Not only did she not care about the lack of app store, she saw it as a bonus. It looks like MSFT was definitely listening to a consumer segment when they designed the phone. [slashdot.org]
Given a choice between an EnV or a Kin, the Kin is an easy choice [slashdot.org]
The thing is, not everyone is, and phones like this are going to have appeal to people who are looking one tier below a smart phone. [slashdot.org]
And so on.
Original Daily Beast article (Score:4, Informative)
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/ [thedailybeast.com]
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
What is the difference between a shill and a fanboi?
A shill is paid whether he likes the product or not, generally follows some sort of script and is usually an account manned by more than one person. It's really a coordinated attack on the truth. A fanboy genuinely likes the product and, though extreme, is actually representative of the true fan base. It's the difference between grass-roots and astroturf to use the terminology generally associated with the phenomenon.
Real fanboys don't bother me because it's all in good fun but shills are pure poison and the practical differences are significant as what happened on usenet during the OS/2 NT wars. Say a product comes out and there are 10,000 people roaming around on the internet that actually care about it and post to message boards with a 50/50 distribution of for/against. Then a "relationship management" firm gets in the game with multiple shill accounts on the most important sites, i.e., Engadget, Slashdot, Zdnet, etc. It's not that hard to turn the conversation on its head with a coordinated campaign on a few target sites with the right kind of money in a specific time frame. Those 5000 people out of our hypothetical 10,000 can easily be drowned out by a room full of Indians shilling full time for the company du jour. This happens all of the time and has been going on for a while [catb.org].
Re:Pot Calling the Kettle Black? (Score:4, Informative)
So, why don't you trust Google to hold your data, out of curiosity. I'm biased for various reasons, but I think it's a fair question to ask. I trust my bank to hold my data, even though I'm pretty sure they abuse it (after calling to ask about a refinance of my mortgage, for example, I got 5 cold-calls about mortgages in 2 days). I trust my ISP with my private data even though I'm pretty sure they have a direct tap for warrantless wiretapping. I trust all sorts of entities with my data who I know to be lying bastards, but I've never known Google to be such.
Everyone I know who works for them honestly believes that they try to do the right thing as often as they can. My friends who work for Yahoo! don't say that. My friends who work for Amazon don't quite say that, though they think it's better than most. My friends who work for many large corporations laugh a little or just get real quiet if you ask them that...
So the evidence that I have at my disposal says that:
1) Google's S1 filing [udel.edu] is fairly honest (go read it... it's fascinating)
2) Google is, at worst, an altruistic company that may well change over time.
3) Given the choices that you do make to share personal data (with banks, ISPs, etc.) Google looks pretty good.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
What is the difference between a shill and a fanboi?
The same as that between a whore and a girlfriend.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
And if you click through to the authors' profile page to look at their other comments, they're pretty typical slashdot posters. They comment on space exploration, file sharing, Lord of the Rings Online, and liberal vs conservative politics. If these are shills, they're doing a lot of random blabbing on company time, and not much actual shilling.