LinuxToday Editor Apologizes For Astroturfing

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.

Re:astroturf[?]ing ????

[Anonymous Coward]

For this reason I think there should at least be an option for disabling the e2 tags, or the /. editors should leave them out entirely. Just as we an honest person wouldn't want MS's definition of Linux, why should we go to e2 for, say, Microsoft?
Its pushing e2 when I don't particularly want to visit it.
"Smart tags" might be handy sometimes, but not when its an annoying ad for another website disguised as journalism, and dictionary.com has a perfectly good definition of astroturfing that the /. editors don't have an interest in promoting.

Those who would respond "its their website, they can do with it what they want," should ask themselves if the same applies to MS's smarttags.

Re:No apology from Internet.com

[Ghyl]

"You can't tell my thousands of slashdot losers havent tried to start a "web design" company or some such using pronouns like "we" and "us" to make it sound like a company when it was really just one guy..."

That's crap, it was nothing like that at all. What we had here was the editor was pretending to be a reader and trashing open source people and competitors, as well as not linking to information on competing sites. It's hypocritical to criticise Microsoft for astroturfing but say it's OK for linuxtoday. It's like the truism that people get the government they deserve - well, it applies to media as well. If there is a choice between a media site that acts like that and one that is more honest, than I feel I should support the latter one.

Re:Serious matter / Something weird WOW

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan Cox - Subject: Astroturfing ( Aug 8, 2001, 20:13:51 )
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

Still not accepting responsibility

[Mr_Huber]

Anyone notice how he shifted part of the blame on the reader for not seeing the joke in the name? He still isn't completely accepting responsibility for his actions. It is still partially the reader's fault for not seeing through his deception. It is still the reader's fault for being offended by the content of his posts.

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.

Re:Considering

[qslack]

That post could also be from someone who wanted to make you think he was still astroturfing...just a thought.

Dodging the real point

[xonker]

He doesn't even mention the other points, like trying to avoid linking to competing sites.

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.

Considering

[geomcbay]

Considering how tame most of the LinuxToday talkbacks to his apology are, I think its safe to say they plan to continue censoring posts that oppose the views of the editors...

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!

Uh-uh, sure.

[sharkey]

like George Tirebiter which I believed readers would understand was a contrivance.

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.

How E2 Smart Tags would look

[yerricde]

OK, so how should "Microsoft" or "proprietary software" or "DMCA" or "RIAA" or "MPAA" be explained by OSSmartTags?

E2 nodes contain neutral, pro-individual, and even pro-business writeups. If you're not happy, register (only need name, email, and desired login/password, no personal information) and add your own. (If it's not well written, it will be voted down and deleted.) Here's how they'd look:

• Microsoft[?] [everything2.com]
• proprietary software[?] [everything2.com]
• DMCA[?] [everything2.com] and the politics of copy protection[?] [everything2.com]
• RIAA[?] [everything2.com]
• MPAA[?] [everything2.com] mostly talks about the ratings and doesn't even mention DeCSS[?] [everything2.com]
• Napster[?] [everything2.com]
• Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act[?] [everything2.com]

Here's the rule: http://everything2.com/?node=(URL escaped node title)

Contrivance? Sure.

[TOTKChief]

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:As if a /. editor has ANY room to talk

[Skuto]

Slashdot posted a link to a site which already had trouble paying its bandwidth. Of course it was slashdotted into oblivion. The owner responded by redirecting all slashdotters to goatse.cx.

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

What about the censorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a *lot* of acusations of sensorship on the talkbacks. Until now, there's no apologies or explanations. And I think it stinks.

Re:Serious matter / Something weird

[Maldivian]

I agree with the orginal poster, Kevin Reichard, should be removed from Internet.com, that is the only way the respect of this community would ever return to an otherwise good site.

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]",

It takes a lot to admit this. I still dont believe astroturfing is anything to ruffle your feathers about, we all do it dont we? But I salute Kevin Reichard for taking this stance and explaining matters. This shows the maturity of Linux Today and the opensource nature of all their undertakings. Cheers

A couple of posts below that, Eric Kiersky writes with subject "Kevin shouldnt apologize [linuxtoday.com]",

I dont believe Kevin should have been preassured into apologizing about this. As I understand this pressure came from an individual who was fired from LinuxToday. I felt that individual's articles were more revenge based than anything to expose ethics on astroturfing. Kevin is an excellent individual and his work on Linux Today is second to non. I hope everyone takes a deep breath and just think before posting anymore slashdot induced flames on Mr. Kevin Reichard

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....

Slashdot editors do a good deal of moderation

[Trepidity]

That's not entirely the case. See my explanation in another thread [slashdot.org] in this story.

Liars and trust

[mystery_bowler]

Call me a cynic, but I find it hard to believe a liar when they apologize.

It's a shame that people give any credit at all to people who are caught in a lie. After all, the apology isn't for the lie. The apology is for getting caught. If the apology was for the lie, it would have been issued long before it was common knowledge that a falsehood existed.

Feh...

/. does this too

[gamorck]

Hmmm... you still post here though right? /. does the same thing. Do you know how they censor posts that are contrary to their beliefs? Thats right - its called the moderation system.

Just check out the comments on the stories that were posted relating to the OSDN router outage - you'll see what I mean.

Gam
"Flame at Will"

Not sure what the big deal is

[wrinkledshirt]

Okay, Linux Today is primarily a press-release site, right? It doesn't exactly claim to be a real news site, does it? As such, the expectations of partiality and journalistic integrity that you'd normally want of an editor don't really apply here, do they?

Maybe it sounds like I'm oversimplifying a bit, I don't know. But I've never really gone to Linux Today hoping to find straight news, and it seemed like the editor was less an editor than a page maintainer. I guess what I'm saying is, in theory, I don't think there's anything wrong with the guy faking an alias and posting stuff to get a reaction. It's not like I give a damn who any of the other aliases are because they're all unverifiable anyway (or, I guess, considering this case, mostly unverifiable ;) -- if they post something debate-worthy, I'll fight it or support it on merit.

Re:/. does this too

[Trepidity]

Now, if you're implying that Taco and company downgrade themselves messages that criticizes them, that's another thing entirely.

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.