Comments here are unmoderated and are operated on a use-until-abused basis. I will adopt a moderation policy if I feel that my visitors abuse this privilege.
I will delete any comment that is lewd, crude, lascivious, racist, sexist, libelous, off-topic, or injurious to the privacy of a non-public individual. Such users will be forever banned from commenting on this site.
From time to time, certain comments will be investigated if they appear to be marketing spam. The offending company gets one free pass before public censure.
In short, treat me as your host and I will treat you as my guest.
My colleague Zeenat Subedar from Edelman's Silicon Valley office e-interviewed me about a wide range of topics, including the Social Media "Belt System" that our tiny team has built at Edelman.
I get a lot of questions about the Belt System, so this serves as a pretty good FAQ.
For a Slate article subtitled "The Facebook Posts Palin Doesn't Want You To See", perhaps I was expecting too much.
Generally speaking, Slate appears to try to make an issue of what, by and large, appears to be a sound and reasonable Facebook moderation policy employed by Sarah Palin's online team.
From the piece:
The deletions amount to a real-time look at how much effort and care Palin puts into protecting her public image. It's not just the number of posts that are screened out that gives some indication of how seriously Palin's team is monitoring things. The superfine mesh through which posts are sifted also gives an indication of the work involved. You don't get erased just for using vulgarity or pushing spam (which Facebook might remove anyway if flagged).
Replace the word "Palin" with "any reasonably funded public figure or candidate" and you start to wonder what exactly the fuss is all about.
As to Slate's methodology for analyzing the Palin team's Facebook moderation policies (emphasis mine):
How much work does it take to keep everything so sanitized? To help me find out, my colleague Jeremy Singer-Vine wrote a program to capture comments to Palin's page before the clean-up crew could arrive. (Here's an explanation of how Jeremy's program works.) All these posts were initially public, if only for a few minutes. We looked at the comments to 10 Palin posts over 12 days, capturing the deletions in the 24 hours after the posts were live. In that period, a rough average of 10 percent of total posts were deleted.
Ten percent? Why those newspeak-uttering, censorship-happy bastards! Seriously? I probably delete more than that in a given week on my Cachaçagora blog.
Anyway, let's address Slate's classification of deleted Facebook comments one-by-one:
Mean comments about Sarah Palin. "Please go away from my wall. I do not like you or agree with any dumb thing you say or do."
I would have deleted this simply because the poster appears to be a deranged lunatic who believes that Mrs. Palin's Facebook content is getting shoved down his throat. This person probably clicked "Like" one day on a lark and couldn't find the "Unlike" link, typically buried in the left-hand margin. I'd remove this comment, but might try to send the commenter a complimentary tinfoil hat. Verdict: Delete.
Mean things about the people who say mean things about Sarah Palin. "if you dont like her posts LEAVE THE GROUP DUMBASS!!!!"
The moderator of a Facebook page (or any community) owes it to the audience to police decorum. Big deal. Verdict: Delete.
Racial or ethnic slurs. "America's greatest threat is Marxism and International Jewry/Zionism! We will never regain our Liberty and Freedom until we expel every Jew from America!"
Again, the problem with deleting this? Are they somehow surprised that a Republican wouldn't allow such postings? I sense a double-standard from Slate here: Basically that a Democrat's Facebook team would delete this out of the need to maintain civility but, in the hands of a Republican, such a deletion must mean that they're trying to hide what they're really like! A-ha! Caught them!
Uh-huh... Right. Sure. Verdict: Delete.
Polite disagreement. "Sarah, perception is everything! I learned that in the military. All you have to do is disassociate yourself from those Tea Partiers that are indeed racist and the NAACP gones [sic] away," wrote one in response to Palin's post on the NAACP's charge that the Tea Party tolerated racism. "Even they [the NAACP] admit the Tea Party is not a racist organization. Mrs. Palin, I believe you to be an honorable Woman. You believe in your cause. Sometimes for the good of the cause one has to make a stand even to those that support the cause. Remember John Mccain, circa 2008 in which a woman stood up and called Candidate Obama a Muslim. The Honorable John Mccain rebuked her. This could be your moment."
I'm actually kind of borderline with this one. I don't expect mellifluous prose from every netizen, of course, but the comment shared here is very poorly written and can easily be misunderstood. I first read "those Tea Partiers that are indeed racist" as meaning a blanket statement applied to the entire group. It's clearer to me now that the commenter wants Palin to denounce any racists within the Tea Party.
Honestly, I think that racism as an element of even a significant minority within the Tea Party's membership is grossly overblown. As a result, it looks like Team Palin was a bit hypersensitive with this one. Verdict: Keep.
Too much agreement. "Do us a favor Sarah, trap a few Wolves and ship em to D.C., they do eat Rats don't they? Have a great trip Sarah, God Bless."
You could flip a coin with this one but, given today's environment, this post does imply that someone believes Sarah Palin should seek to do harm to elected officials. Verdict: Delete.
Criticism of her children. "please dont let your daughter do a reality show :( but i love your family and you ..hope thats just a rumor from the liberals."
When Bill Clinton took office, he had one big rule with the press: Hands off Chelsea. The standard then became that the children of a candidate or office-holder were generally off-limits to the press, even when the children were brought on the campaign trail. So, would one expect less from Palin, especially in an environment she can at least somewhat control? Verdict: Delete.
Anything about Obama's birth certificate or conspiracies related thereto, even in muted form. "Just so we're clear, Conspiracy theories about Obama's refusal to release his college records—lunacy. Conspiracy theories about Trig Palin—journalism."
Allowing anything fringe on a site in this scenario invites great risk. But Slate's example here--however "muted"--is more about criticism of the media than it is about supporting the so-called "Birther" movement. Verdict: Keep, though items that perhaps more specifically promote conspiracy theories would be deleted.
In the end, Slate's analysis of Team Palin's Facebook policies is much like the Palin phenomenon itself: You'll be kind of left wondering what the point of it all was by the time you reach the end.
Credit: Steve Mason
In "Slashdot Struggles to Remain Relevant in the Social Web", ReadWriteWeb asks "Why is Slashdot almost irrelevant to the social media community?"
I ask:
Among the fallacies in the post:
They're comparing apples and snow-tires. Seriously... What exactly does Slashdot have in common with the likes of, say, Digg? On Slashdot, people submit stories that admins select for publication. With Digg, Delicious and so on, the process is a bit more democratic, operating more like a common service first and a news-source second. Slashdot never aimed to be a service, as such.
This miscategorization allows RWW to make the statement that "Slashdot is no longer the powerhouse that it once was." This may be true, but the argument that RWW is framing looks like it was built for no other reason than to needle an iconic Web destination.
Further, Slashdot has a topic focus and a specific, narrower audience. On the other hand, the focus of the news-memeing sites is pretty much whatever the online zeitgeist wants it to be and, therefore, has a broader appeal.
To wit: When I noticed this RWW post, one of the day's most popular items on Slashdot had the headline "Dell and HP to Sell Oracle Operating Systems." By contrast, the most-Digged item in the past 24 hours was a parody of the PETA ad featuring Sheryln Chopra in her lingerie.
Okay... I'm talking to the guys here... Given the choice, which of the two would you recommend to your friends? Is this a reflection on Slashdot? Hardly. It's more a reflection of how the Web in general, and social tools specifically, have been democratized and, therefore, are made to reflect a broader range of interest.
Then there's "death by Excel." I guess I'm supposed to gasp at oh-how-the-mighty-have-fallen when RWW shows me a sloping-down-and-to-the-right graph detailing Slashdot's traffic since March 2007. Context is everything, though. A decade or so ago, Slashdot used to be one of the few places to go for community-based tech news. People who were perhaps more casually interested in tech slogged through stories about Linux kernel upgrades and MySQL patches to get to tidbits about CES or iPods. Today, of course, there's plenty more choice. Sure, Slashdot's traffic has suffered but I argue that it probably has a much more qualified audience.
Was Slashdot slower to introduce Facebook and Twitter integration? Perhaps. Has it "historically favored stories submitted from traditional media, over 'new media'" with the perceived result of making the site "seem behind the times and a bit too closed minded?" Newsflash: The "traditional media" observably still drives a gigantic chunk of the conversation from pretty much all of the Social Web.
Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I actually do read Slashdot, though more out of a personal interest (I'm an open-source software enthusiast) than a professional one. Occasionally, though, the site provides me with information that serves the intersection between the two.
Once again, the social media digerati are so focused on leaderboards and horseraces that it forgets the real value that social media brings—the ability to serve niche and broad audiences economically. From my perspective, Slashdot does the former admirably well and in ways that RWW's analysis certainly gives lip service to, yet ultimately does not reflect.
Photo by Laughing Squid
Not too often but, every once in a while, a company will send a cease-and-desist letter to a netizen it finds, well, pesky. These are typically attempts at control and intimidation in an environment where the most one can reasonably strive for is to influence an outcome. These letters quickly get posted, passed around, and become targets of richly deserved ridicule.
Nevertheless, there are instances where taking such action is justified. OnTechnologyLaw gives a five-point test to at least help ridicule-proof a C&D. Philosophically, their approach is very sound:
A kinder, gentler approach is almost always better – not least because the cease-and-desist letter might someday be read by a judge, by jurors, and/or by journalists and bloggers.
The Technology & Marketing blog wisely points out:
Increasingly, lawsuits play out in the public arena, so it's also worth looping in the PR/messaging folks at the early stages (i.e., before you send the letter). If the recipient posts your letter and mockery ensues, you probably skipped one of the steps outlined in the post, but in any event, it would be helpful to have something articulating your rationale and position already out there or ready to go.
I was once the recipient of the threat of a cease-and-desist letter. I didn't really see the humor at the time, but I now kind of liken it to when I was in First Grade and just threatening to give someone the finger (GASP!) was enough to earn you detention. Nowadays, that 2005 incident continues to be a private joke between me and a longtime correspondent of mine. (It was my online answer to his question that sparked the almost-C&D from the interested party.)
A U.S. general and a political journalist have had their less-than-flattering comments become the talk of the interwebs.
The former is, I could argue, someone who should uniquely understand the value of information control. The latter is in a profession that often relies on failures in information control in order to demonstrate its value.
While holding two different perspectives on this concept, in both cases, the general's and the journalist's media behavior cost them their jobs, one by way of a public dismissal (of the most public variety) and the other through a speedy resignation.
And, in both cases, the most naïve and hackneyed of all possible excuses was deployed.
Yup... General Stanley McChrystal's handlers and WaPo's David Weigel said they were "off-the-record" when their comments came back to bite them via Rolling Stone (McChrystal) and during participation in a since-scuttled listerv for journalists (Weigel).
"Off-the-record."
People actually still believe in this concept?
When a journalist is on assignment, as the Rolling Stone reporter most certainly was, there is no such thing as "off-the-record." Ever. That journalist is there to observe, contextualize, and present what occurred.
As to Weigel, what did he think would happen when he distributed his severely worded opinions about his beat and people he covered on a listserv of 400 journalists? To quote Sam Whitmore, "At it's most granular level, journalism is not a team sport." Whether Ezra Klein's "JournoList" was intended for centerish-to-left-wing reporters or otherwise, it was a bad move.
(Furthermore, what's with Weigel's pre-WaPo fascination with rodent copulation metaphors and did he think that a handful of people, even in DC, would catch the All the President's Men reference?)
When I was much closer to media relations, especially when I was professionally judged almost exclusively by my success in that activity, I came to tell clients that nothing was ever off-the-record and to think otherwise was dangerous. Years later, the soundness of this approach was confirmed when I attended a journalism conference recently and one very senior reporter was demonstrating to everyone how a handheld audio recorder could easily be disguised as a mobile phone.
As newsrooms get thinner, the competition more fierce, and citizen-journalists more eager, the concept of going off-the-record while on assignment (and even off assignment) will seem a quaint anachronism.
I've lately been interested in how some of the names-you-know in social media have blown up their digital presences in order to refocus, retrench, or reinvent their online identities.
Some examples:
Me? I just kind of got sick of dragging around my technology choices of 2001. In any event, I was already running two blogs on TypePad. Mostly, though, the old blog represented a "me" from a long time ago and starting Where the Fishermen Ain't was a good way to make a clean break.
All of this is so much more than the nauseating "[x] is dead and [y] killed it" eyeroll-generating crud that many in the social media sphere use as onanistic linkbait. Look forward to more people blowing up their online pasts, for whatever reason, to participate anew.
Flickr User: Firexbrat
Over at the old blog, I wrote that the news media, despite its problems with its business model, should not seek help from the government. To do so would be to bring American media to the level of countries we rightly criticize.
I continue to follow this topic with interest, noting during breaks in the Memorial Day celebrations that Mark Tapscott and Jeff Jarvis have published their similar positions, warning of the dangers of FTC involvement in journalism.
Tapscott outlines the issue succintly:
I'd love to be able to say that there's nothing to worry about, since heavy government involvement in the news media wouldn't survive a Constitutional test. Unfortunately, all branches of government—and, more damnably, the citizens they supposedly serve—appear to care little about the powerful restraints on government power this founding document describes.
They say that citizens in a democracy get the government they deserve. As to the journalism we deserve? There's one word for a government-controlled media: propaganda.
Update 2010-06-09: Tapscott delivers a whithering update.
Flickr User: colin_n
Frankly, I wouldn't trust the average politician with my garage-door opener, to say nothing of a device that 1) involves computing technology, and 2) dispenses money on-demand.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has long pushed an amendment to limit those pesky and expensive transaction fees at automated teller machines, but his fellow senators didn't go along with the idea this week.
One possible explanation: Quite a few of Harkin's aging colleagues appear to have little or no contact with the decades-old technology of cash machines.
As you might guess from an earlier post, I'm thrilled that Silicon Valley companies are taking a stand against regulators and blogging about their interactions with FTC investigators.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Many of those who have spoken with FTC investigators say they appear to be building a case that Google's purchase of AdMob would harm mobile-applications developers. Under that theory, the companies that create programs that appear on the iPhone and other handheld devices would have fewer mobile ad networks to choose from when trying to make their work pay.
If that is the FTC's case, then the fact that so many developers are publicly opposing a challenge to the deal could pose a problem for the agency. What's more, many of the bloggers have been unflattering about the FTC investigators with whom they have spoken, something Google could use in its defense.
Could all of these disclosures been responsible, in part, for the FTC's eventual closing of its investigation on the day this article came out? (And six months after the investigation started?)
Calling upon government to enforce light-touch, fair-play rules of the game is important, even necessary. However, regulators, in particular, simply do not understand Silicon Valley, technology, and the concept of value creation.
What I'm convinced regulators do understand is the PR value of big, meaty, publicity-significant targets that allow it to tell other companies "We're watching." In many ways, even after closing the investigation, the FTC probably accomplished all that it originally set out to do.
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