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LinuxToday Editor Apologizes For Astroturfing
Posted by
Hemos
on Wed Aug 08, 2001 01:25 PM
from the have-to-come-clean dept.
from the have-to-come-clean dept.
Thanks to Dean Pannell (and Paul Ferris for the initial head's up) for pointing out the apology and statement of fact from Kevin Reichard, the Executive Editor of LinuxToday. I think the argument that people would know that "George Tirebiter" was merely a contrivance is weak, but whatever. You can read the previous stories in the astroturf [?] ing saga.
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Unix Toady's ironic disclaimer (Score:2, Funny)
Linux Today is not responsible for the content of the message below.
Maybe they should clearly label the astroturf articles written by their own editors differently:
Linux Toady is responsible for the content of the message below.
-Don
Linux Toady
Main Entry: 1 toady
Pronunciation: 'tO-dE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural toadies
Etymology: by shortening & alteration from toadeater
Date: 1826
: one who flatters in the hope of gaining favors : SYCOPHANT
synonym see PARASITE
====
Didn't this guy use more than one alias. (Score:2, Insightful)
How about mentioning the fact that he's been doing this for years, or that he caused others to be fired when they complained. Maybe he could talk about this being common practice in the industry. Links to every single false post would have really shown some remorse.
Seems to me that this is an attempt to wind down the negative spin, without really understanding what has been done wrong, or really wanting to/feeling the need to apologise. As my mum always said, if your not really sorry then apologising is worse than saying nothing.
If he had posted this on /. and I had mod then I'd be modding him down for facuous statements and insincere apologies.
Astroturfing? This is normal practice. (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of my job description as the maintainer of a chunk of the site hierarchy was to use a whole stack of pseudonyms and basically wander around doing just this in the interest of generating page views, responses, and "positive" discussion for advertisers and reviewed products in a number of areas. This was not optional, it was expected.
I'd be surprised if this is a rare practice.
Re:Astroturfing? This is normal practice. (Score:2)
Still not accepting responsibility (Score:2, Interesting)
He is trying to blow this off as a misunderstanding between a well-intentioned editor trying to liven up the site and a few stodgy killjoys who didn't get the joke immediantly. He seems to think this is like some practical joke that went awry and that a smirking apology will fix the situation.
He still does not understand that deception has no place in responsible journalism.
Has anyone at SLASHDOT ever ASTROTURFED? (Score:2)
Bit of a problem here (Score:2)
Re:Has anyone at SLASHDOT ever ASTROTURFED? (Score:3, Funny)
A-ha! I've caught Taco astroturfing slashdot!
To sum up.... (Score:2, Funny)
This is an editor? (Score:2, Insightful)
> "I participated in Linux Today talkbacks anonymously in the past using a pseudonym."
> "It is too important you can trust what you read here."
Judging from the reaction at Slashdot, you went from simply evil to under-qualified and evil.
Wrong type of apology, bucko (Score:5, Insightful)
I sincerely apologize to those of you who were offended by my actions.
Mom: Now Kevin, apologize to Suzie for what you did!
Kevin: I'm sorry that you don't like your pigtails dipped in permanent ink, Suzie.
He's apologizing that we were offended by his actions, not for his actions themselves. Big difference there.
Re:Wrong type of apology, bucko (Score:2)
Yes.
That's probably the position Kevin was in :) ) while he wrote this apology. :-)
A real shame there was no webcam pointed at Kevin (Reichard, not Kline
Dodging the real point (Score:4, Interesting)
LinuxToday used to have value because they posted *everything* and you could go there to quickly find anything going on in the Linux world. Now that's no longer the case.
Not surprisingly Internet.com has ruined them, and just about every other Linux property they touched. Reichard should be promptly fired, but instead he'll probably stay there until Internet.com folds or does away with the Linux channel. I hope this indiscretion travels with him so no one else is foolish enough to hire him.
Interestingly, the apology is under "normal news" so they don't even seem to consider it important enough to put at the top of the site.
Re:Dodging the real point (Score:2)
I'm not surprised. I don't think internet.com wants you outside "their channels". If that's their thought process, he really has nothing to apologize about...from their perspective. The anonymous LT stuff is another issue, and smells worse for them, but everyone wants to keep you inside channels.
Hell, at the new media company where I was Chief Editor [totk.com], I got pressure from our Publisher not to link to stories that I commented on. That fact frustrated me greatly.
I recognized this one fact: we [in the corporate sense] were never going to be a single source for everyone. Point to good [or bad, to suit your purposes] content and amplify [or refute, TSYP] the points made there. If you amplify it, people will go, "Gee, I want to see what Geof has to say about this ESPN.com piece. He's written on this before..." If you refute it, people will also want to see what you have to say.
Come on, you know that you [in the /. Cabal sense] wait to see who responds first to M$FT FUD, and then you read the followers-on [notably RMS, if he didn't get FP on the FUD] to see what they amplify and what they don't. It's human nature to want to find someone to agree or disagree with. If new media companies will recognize that people will want to spend more time online reading content and might--GASP--pay for it.
Considering (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering THIS post, to the LT talkback:
Thank you for the apology. Here is one reader who appreciates it and will continue to recommend Linux Today as _the_ premier news site for all things Linux.
Cheers,
Caleb
How much do you want to bet Kevin Reichard is still posting under assumed names? I mean c'mon, at least be more subtle!
Re:Considering (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh-uh, sure. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, since I went to high school with a guy named Mike Hunt, a name would have to be extremely obvious, much more so than "Tirebiter," to make me suspect a fake-that's-obviously-fake name. (His full name was Michael Steven Hunt, and he went by Steven.) There was also a family at a different school with the surname Homo. There are many, many interesting and different names out there, and as always: Ass-U-Me.
I swear on a stack of bibles.... (Score:2)
George Tirebiter (Score:3, Insightful)
In RealSpace, he was "the doughty unofficial mascot of USC (Univ. South. Calif.) athletic teams in earlier times, renowned for his devotion to attacking the spinning wheels of large American automobiles...."
In the Firesign Theater world, he's the Everyman protaganist of the comedy album "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers" (which appears to be out of print, although I found a cassette in a local record store). It's high comedy from Firesign Theater, a team that was known for a counter-cultural radio program in the sixties. It's very funny, but requires FULL attention, a strong liberal arts background, and occassionaly several listens, to get a large percentage of the jokes.
Check out the entry for DWARF [earthlink.net] to get a feel for the humor.
That said, even though I got the reference, I don't think seeing a post under the name George Tirebiter would make me think "Oh - It's the editor!" or "He's just joking!". I would instead think "This guy is a pretty poor satirist - it's like posting under 'Chaucer'".
Contrivance? Sure. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I could see "George Tirebiter" being a contrivance. It's about as blaringly screaming "ignore me, I'm a mo-ron" as "Anonymous Coward". But for someone in charge to be doing it...guh.
A few years back when I worked for TOTK.com Sports, I had a fellow staff member fake some email [or so he thought] from the current President of the United States. It sounded just a bit too much like this one guy...and when I traced it out, it was him. I "fired" [in the sense that I never let him write again] him on the spot. Though we were "new media", I wasn't going to put up with pointless bullshit. Scary to think that a college sophomore [at the time] had more balls than a "major new media company" like internet.com does at present.
Oh well, I never read LT much anyway. This just assures that I never will.
Re:Contrivance? Sure. (Score:2)
so (Score:3, Funny)
apology accepted! (Score:5, Funny)
-Kevin Richard... I mean, uh Ben. That's it. Ben.
Re:apology accepted! (Score:3, Funny)
that forced sound (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus it contains grammatical mistakes, which looks kind of bad when your job title includes "editor".
Re:that forced sound (Score:4, Funny)
Nod a nissue, far Linux-friendly geek cites.
Parent
Serious matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serious matter (Score:2)
Re:Serious matter / Something weird (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, I noticed Kevin Reichard seemed to be having some really weird friends posting under his Talkback [linuxtoday.com].
A certain Mike Moore posted this under the subject of "Excellent [linuxtoday.com]", A couple of posts below that, Eric Kiersky writes with subject "Kevin shouldnt apologize [linuxtoday.com]", At first look this all seem to be optimistic well wishers giving their support to Richard. But if you ever visted the Borg [microsoft.com], you might wonder why those names seem so familiar.
Well, it just so happens that Kevin has some very good friends working backstage [microsoft.com] at one of the best authorites on Austroturfing [tuxedo.org].
With friends like that who needs enemies? Now, I wonder how far deep the fangs of corporate monopoly sinks in our community....
Parent
Re:Serious matter / Something weird WOW (Score:4, Interesting)
So you've now publically admitted impersonating people in public and making libellous comments about me and other community members. Can you clear up one detail - why are you still working for internet.com/linuxtoday ?
Alan
Parent
Re:Moore == Kiersky == ??? (Score:2)
Dude. His name is Reichard. Slashdot and almost everyone here seems to be mis-spelling it.
His e-mail address taken from the signature of his apology: kreichard@internet.com [mailto]. See? Reichard not Richard.Doesn't sound like much of an apology (Score:4, Insightful)
There are good reasons to post anonymously under some circumstances, but I don't think he gives any here. How would the debate have been any less "lively" if he had acknowledged the source of his comments all along?
Please think of the children (Score:4, Funny)
Excuse me? (Score:5, Insightful)
As if we should believe him? I'm well aware of the current state of today's media. Journalistic integrity is a word that most media reporters and editors seem to have forgotten.
However, this is totally out of line, even by today's standards. Someone looking at his apology would think that he had just committed minor infractions. No, he was busily posting nastygrams about competitors and rivals [linuxjournal.com].
He should just resign and get the heck out.
'crow
Never again, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Heh.
I've said something similar to my wife more than once. I wonder if LT readers are sharper than she is...
Slashdot would be Immune to Astroturf like this (Score:3, Funny)
A Slashdot editor would be easy to identify from the spelling and gramatical errors.
Reichard should be fired. (Score:5, Insightful)
This speaks for itself. I have no respect for this man, or how he has behaved on their forums. Internet.com should fire the man posthaste.
--Maynard
Re:/. does this too (Score:3, Interesting)
This does undoubtedly happen. It's referred to as the "bitchslap," and consists of an editor automatically moving a comment to -1, no matter what its previous rating. I remember this happening a long time ago with pb's "Will the Real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up" post - it was rated up to 5, Funny, bitchslapped by an editor down to -1, and then rated back up to 4, Funny, where it was left.
They also often downrate posts that criticize their editorial practices - for example, the first draft of the Slashdot story on the OSDN router outage contained a comment by CmdrTaco about how they waited for knowledgeable support to show up, and "when she did, she was much less knowledgeable than we had hoped," or something to that effect. This was quickly removed from the story, and when people in the comments reposted the original text of CmdrTaco's story, noting what had been removed, all those comments were immediately rated down to -1; much faster than any users could have done.
So it's pretty clear that the Slashdot editorship rates down comments themselves, and are not up-front about it.
Re:No apology from Internet.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As if a /. editor has ANY room to talk (Score:2)
>post pointing out their flaws down into the nine
>realm of hell - but its bad that this LT guy
>astroturfed?
The really sad thing is of course that this is completely true, as has already been demonstrated. (you're at 0, Troll at the time of this posting).
The Somethingawful debacle is another nice example. Everything that remotely indicated slashdot could have done something wrong was -1 within seconds.
'We are slashdot. We are hypocrites'
--
GCP (come on, mod me down, see if I care)
Circular reasoning anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
ahem. Basic logic please.
It does not follow that, because moderators have moderated the parent to your post down to zero, that those moderators were slashdot editors. Far more likely that slashdot readers with moderator priveleges modded the post down as the flaimbait it certainly appeared to be (to me at least, although I do not have moderator priveleges right now).
The slashdot editors are the ones who decide which stories get posted (decisions I disagree with as often as not BTW), not those readers who happen to have moderator priveleges at a given moment.
Parent
Slashdot editors do a good deal of moderation (Score:3, Interesting)
thank you (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully the
Re:Circular reasoning anyone? (Score:3, Informative)
And yes, they do moderate: I remember Hemos telling [wpi.edu] the WPI ACM [wpi.edu] that they spend time moderating down the trolls after a story goes live.
Re:As if a /. editor has ANY room to talk (Score:3, Interesting)
Every post which said something about this was modded down instantly, and the front page claimed
'link removed because people were being redirected randomly'.
Randomly eh?
--
GCP
Re:As if a /. editor has ANY room to talk (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As if a /. editor has ANY room to talk (Score:2, Funny)
Gam
"Karma Hell Here I Come"
Re:Brainwashed? (Score:2)
2) The editor at a publication intentionally deceived many people about a range of different matters, frequently to his own benefit, and to the detrement of others.
3) The editor at a publication published without identifying himself as an editor.
4) The editor at a publication (allegedly) censored user feedback to make his posts look more supported by the community than was in fact the case.
I submit that when a new site publishes without regard to the truth, then it should cease to be considered a news site.
Warning: IANAL
To the extent that money was paid, this appears to me as a form of fraud. Actually, it definitely appears to me to be fraud. To the extent that money was involved, it looks legally actionable. The question is probably, who had jurisdiction and does anyone who paid want to make their association with this explicit. So he probably won't be charged.
Re:George Tirebiter (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt anyone thought George Tirebiter was someone's real name...
Nobody cares that these troll posts were made using an alias, per se, they care that the person using the alias to post trolls was also an editor. The name he used, and its ability to be easily recognized as a pseudonym are totally irrelevant.
Re:astroturf[?]ing ???? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is their site and therefore it is NOT up to MS (or SmartTags) to modify