Re: MS Stealth PR

[Mitch Stone <mstone@vc.net>]

In reply to Brett Glass's message sent 4/10/98 11:15 AM:

>New medium, old tactics.
>
>Microsoft has, for years, "planted" people in online discussions
>to advocate Microsoft's positions. One of the first and most
>artless attempts to do this was the famous "Barkto" incident
>on CompuServe; however, Microsoft has continued to do it on
>other online forums.
>
>It's no surprise that they are expanding these efforts to
>the print media.

Maybe so, but the "planting" efforts were difficult to prove, and 
impossible to trace back to any source policy within the company -- and 
arguably benign in character. But THIS time is different. This is the 
smoking gun for a disinformation campaign with a scope and 
comprehensiveness far in excess of anything previously known. And they 
put it in writing. Held national meetings.

Microsoft hired PR firms to get them -out- of this sort of morass, but 
instead sucked them in even more deeply. What genius is going to extract 
them from the tar pits now? Additional PR would only appear to be even 
more disingenuous. If there is any justice in the world, this deserves to 
be one, prolonged, horrific public relations donnybrook for Microsoft.

I hammered out an editorial on this, for the interested:

http://www.vcnet.com/bms/keynote

   Mitch Stone
   Editor, Boycott Microsoft
   http://www.vcnet.com/bms 
 +---
   The idea that people know what they want is wrong. 
   --- Laura Jennings, Vice President, Microsoft Network