Forbes Goes After Bloggers

walterbyrd writes "In a recent article, Forbes bashes bloggers big time (forbesdontbug/forbesdontbug)." From the article: "Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns. It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat. " BoingBoing has a long post about the article.

Blog Bashin' Fools

[ackthpt]

Microsoft: So many rants to choose, so little time.

CBS, CNN and ABC News: Big media are lap dogs to the powers that be. To afraid to really speak out for fear of harming revenue, stock value, etc.

IBM's Notes software: If you make software, someone, somewhere will complain.

Kryptonite bike locks: The best bike lock in the world, picked in seconds with a BIC pen.

The most effective defense against being slagged in blogs is to take the charm offensive. Be open and honest. If you've done wrong apologies and move on. Strip their legs out from under them. A harsh retort is more likely to get them a larger audience.

"Ackthpt is t3h rat basturd!1"

Yes, I'm afraid I am. Sorry, I'll try to do better next time. If I had $5, I would most certainly mail it to Happy Guy, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield, USA

I wonder if anyone's started a blog critising AMD for eating Intel's lunch. [eetimes.com]

Bashing? Subjective at best

[bconway]

No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News, two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks

The uproar and exposition of the Kryptonite bike locks was covered extensively on Slashdot. This _security_ product had severe design flaws that exposed the owners of their device to significant risk, and the company buried it, hoping no one would notice.

I'm sure Alexander Hamilton said the same

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Of Ben Franklin's newspaper. This sort of thing has been going on since the begining of the country- that's what freedom of the press is all about.

Having said that, my new signature line is key to defeating the danger of the blogosphere. For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. This goes for business ethics just as much as it goes for momentum.

The more alternatives the merrier -

[Japong]

Amazing - Forbes, which caters to the very rich, is shocked and appalled that suddenly people who aren't rich are getting heard. And these giant, billion dollar companies just can't seem to figure out who to crush, or how to lock them out of the media. Hopefully once the internet becomes even better equipped for creating many-to-many streams of information (blogs are taking on newspapers, podcasts are taking on radio... soon it might even be... television?), we'll at least get to a point where the select few have aclimatized to the fact that there oligopolies are gone.

democracy of sorts

[TheAdventurer]

god, don't you hate it when the lowly plebs have a forum in which to have their voice heard? I just feel so much sympathy for giant corporations with access to the biggest media outlets in the world. It's just awful that they are being picked on by individuals who more often than not live paycheck to paycheck and have to face the practical consequences of the decisions these companies make in private board rooms.

Also, boycott Nestle.

Hmmm...

[evil agent]

Perhaps I should start a blog about how I hate blogs...

Who's the pot and who's the kettle?

[mcc]

This might have meant something coming from some other source, but Forbes is hardly the height of objective and level-headed reporting itself.

I mean, if nothing else, look at this article. This article is essentially made up entirely of brand-bashing, personal attacks, and smear campaign, and then it goes on to complain about "brand-bashing, personal attacks, and smear campaigns". Hmm.

people should express themselves

[circletimessquare]

that's always good, and healthy for a democracy

what the forbes article suggests is that we should all suppress our desires to express ourselves

i mean the article is 100% right: blogs are a wasteland of mental detritus

however, i'll take that wasteland of mental detritus over some sort of expectation or belief that the content of all of our minds should be placid and the same, without any sense of dissent

blogs are nothing but windows on people minds, and anyone who is surprised that most of what is in our minds is absolute crap doesn't really know the human species very well

blgos are an avenue for venting, for blowing off steam, and it's a healthy, acceptable way to do so

to suppress that doesn't destroy asocial impulses, it merely means pressure builds and asocial thoughts and desires get expressed in far less acceptable ways, often in real life

far better the web serve as our mental trashground than real life, don't you agree?

so the author of this piece may or may not be happier in an authoritarian state, but they certainly are guilty of taking blogs WAY too seriously in the least, and at the worst, they have antidemocratic instincts and impulses

and if so, then please, by all means, dear forbes article author: enjoy your emigration to north korea, the utopia of sameness and consensus you seek

Unfortunately

[mcc]

For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. This goes for business ethics just as much as it goes for momentum.

Unfortunately companies don't seem to be learning the right lesson about what that opposite reaction is. I assume, right, that with your sig you're trying to point out that if companies don't like people complaining about their actions on the internet, then the correct response would be to stop taking actions worthy of complaining about? No, according to Forbes, the correct response is:

BASH BACK. If you get attacked, dig up dirt on your assailant and feed it to sympathetic bloggers. Discredit him.

Uhm.

Article might not be all wrong

[AaronStJ]

I've only skimmed the article, but has it occured to you guys that it might not be all wrong. We're quick to rush in and defend blogs - they're a great way for the underdogs to expose actual wrongdoing and injustices - but maybe not all bloggers deserve our support.

The truth is, Forbes is right, blogs allow yahoos with an axe to grind and phony information to gain publicity adn credibility - after all, they're the underdog, standing against the faceless corporation. In a day where pretty much all of us are very skeptical of anything published in the mainstream maybe far too many of us are willing to take anything read in a blog as the gospel truth (I read it on the Internet, so it has to be true).

FUD flows in both directions, and businesses should be at least aware of the blogosphere, and that bloggers may be spreading misinformation, and how to counter it with the truth. Businesses, of course, also need to know that the blogosphere is watching their every move - and they need to be more careful now than ever that they always act ethically - something thye should be doing anyway.

Reading the Frobes article deeper, it's pretty hard to defend. The article itself is full of misinformation and despicable ideas (in their sidebars, they side with SCO, malign Pamela Jones, and suggest using the DMCA to take down blogs). Nevertheless, the general idea of my post still remains - maybe we're a bit too trusting of blogs, and it doesn't hurt to look at the other's guys point of view. Bloggers are just as capable of spreading FUD as a corporation - even more capable because wheras a corporation has very very little accountability, an anonymous blogger has even less.

Who is PJ? A better journalist than you...

[nweaver]

True, Pamela Jones is a bit secretive, and a bit more of a free-software zealot than is really a good idea (I'm more of a BSD-liscence kinda guy.), but as a journalist, she is a hell of a lot better than Maureen O'Gara.

Having actually READ Groklaw on a regular basis, as well as O'Gara's tripe, its clear that PJ is the journalist while O'Gara is the shill.

It is unfortunate some of the zealots who DOS'ed Sys-con, but as an allegedly journalistic site, they showed a distinct lack of editorial intelligence in having O'Gara write for them. Sys-con probably would have been better served by the journalistic skills of Jason Blair.

Re:blogosphere CAN be healthy, too

[rvandam]

The problem with the kinds of blogs that are being criticised here is that they amount to nothing more nor less than the pointless, trivial griping that usually goes on in bars or on front porches because Person A got pissed off about what Company X did. Then, since you always want to side with your friend and not Company X, everyone in the bar or on the porch or at the bus stop says, "Yeah, you know what happened to my cousin/brother/nephew/uncle/3rd great grandma/neighbor/etc, ...". Everyone basically understands that its just mob bashing and doesn't actually have anything against X. A week later they're sitting with friends from work at lunch and someone starts talking about how great Company X is and they chime in. It's pointless, meaningless, and normally never affects anyone. Now all of the sudden someone puts the same silly bashing up on a new, kewl and trendy kind of website called a "blog" and everyone suddenly pays attention to it. It's as intelligent as using /. comments to gauge public perception of Microsoft. At some point, we all learn to ignore people who spend all their time complaining. Hopefully, the same will happen in the world of blogs. And quickly.

Re:Subjective? No, defensive.

[antiMStroll]

There's no doubt an element of that but I'm sure it reaches deeper. There's a certain special offense when powerless proles are capable of raising problems for the monolothic, faceless multinationals which are Forbes' client base. There's more than a hint of anti-republic monied elitism in it, a sentiment almost as old as civilization

Re:Blog Bashin' Fools

[el americano]

They're giving the blogs too much credit. Take this line, for example:

"Circle Group stock fell below a dollar in a year of combat with Miles and the anonymous bashers on Yahoo (and after Nestlé dropped Z-Trim)."

Oh by the way, Nestle pulled out and the stock tanked. Sounds like the year long battle should go in the parenthesis instead. This piece has the objectiveness and balance of... a blog!

Yeah right.

[Coleco]

"Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns."

Kinda like they're doing with blogs. It's called free speech.

Fucking idiots.

Re:I'm sure Alexander Hamilton said the same

[Have Blue]

The same was true of print before the slander and libel laws

And yet, now we have libel and slander laws, and print is much improved because of them.

Well, nice to see such objective journalism

[rfc1394]

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

With an opening such as this we can surely expect objective, factual reporting in a neutral and fair manner. Yeah, right.

Face it, if people can get good information directly from various websites, what do we need so-called professional journalists for? This is a threat to magazines like Forbes and the author of this reference article. And my guess is they realize this implicitly, and they don't have a solution other than the same solution Microsoft has tried to use against open source: fear, uncertainty and doubt. Or smear campaigns, which are essentially the same thing.

Certainly the potential for abuse is possible in what people say. But that is the price we pay for free speech and free press. The only other alternative is government regulation such as licensing of journalists which, of course, publications like Forbes could handle while private parties could not.

The presumption of this article is that people's weblogs cannot ever have anything of value. Also, like many others he chooses to pick on Groklaw and it's so-called pro-IBM and anti-SCO bias without regard to whether the comments on Groklaw are reasonable, accurate or true. The vitriolic tone of what the author wrote seems to indicate he has not read the material there, just taken the opinions of what people who don't like what is posted.

This seems to be the whole point of his article, his opinion is that people being able to directly expose their opinions to others without the filtering of some media organization is automatically bad. Which it is.

For the media organizations.

It's freedom of Speech.

[Jafar00]

It's Freedom of Speech. Get over it.
Years ago people would get up on a soap box and just talk to whoever would listen and engage in debates. You can do a similar thing in London even today at Hyde Park corner.
People will express their opinions on Blogs and that is just a fact of life. If they want to bash Micro$oft, they are as free to do so on a blog as they would be on the street corner.