HP Deletes Negative Corporate Blogger Comments 270
Thomas Hawk writes "HP has recently been making the rounds promoting their new company blogging efforts. Nora Denzel, HP's senior vice president and general manager of HP's Adaptive Enterprise and Software Global Business Unit has started a podcast and a number of new bloggers including David Gee, the head of worldwide marketing for HP's management software business, have also started company blogs. So imagine my surprise when I tried to legitimately leave a comment critical of HP at David Gee's HP blog and had my comment quickly erased and my HP passport (required to leave comments) revoked. Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?" Update: 05/07 04:24 GMT by Z : Indeed, "Update: It would appear that David Gee has changed his mind and has
reinstated my comment along with a comment from him saying he would pass
the feedback along. A good first step. I've asked for an explanation as
to why it was removed and hopefully will hear back soon."
change of heart? (Score:5, Informative)
"Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it."
Re:change of heart? (Score:3, Insightful)
They've pulled comments once and could easily continue to do so - I doubt most people would care enough to make a stink about it.
Re:change of heart? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is that corporate blogs can be (and will increasingly be) used as marketing tools and should be treated with the same skepticism that you'd treat an advertisement or PR release.
Re:change of heart? (Score:3, Insightful)
A week or two ago
In the same article there was speculation that one reason blogs are so popular is t
Re:change of heart? (Score:2)
He's not even subtle: http://imdb.com/user/ur1132073/comments [imdb.com].
due diligence 101 (Score:2)
Say I'm an employee of Corporation X. My job, first and foremost, is to do everything I can to make buttloads of money for X's shareholders, be that in increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or inflating the stock price.
Conversely, if I do something in your spare time, say, while blogging, which injures your company, my ass is on the grill. Hell, they could even roast me for due diligence if I fail to do something, say, remove somebody's negative comment on a highly public blog under my immediate control.
Re:change of heart? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:change of heart? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every consumer knows not everything will be perfect every time. We expect it and while we accept that it happens, sometimes it is at the wrong time or is too expensive a mistake. A company can take such an opportunity to really shine their brightest by acting in the consumer's interests. Nothing could say more about how a company conducts business than how it handles the unfortunate situations that will occur no matter how hard they try to avoid it.
Re:change of heart? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:change of heart? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:change of heart? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, in reality they aren't, but in reality it doesn't really matter. They were either allowed to do it (standing policy) or broke policy while doing it. But if someone does something in the name of their employer (a corp) it tends to become "corporate policy" regardless of the actual policy unless it is quickly and unequivocally dealt with.
This would probably fall under their external PR
Not all customers. (Score:2, Redundant)
Firstly let me say that I agree with all you've said, except the following. Note that I'm not endorsing what HP initially did, although I am endorsing their actions in putting the comment back.
Every consumer knows not everything will be perfect every time.
Unfortunately, there are consumers / customers that expect perfection every time, which I think is unrealistic, and commonly they're also the most vocal. Futher more, they're sometimes also the most stingy - they have "champagne tastes" on a "beer b
Loss of credibility (Score:5, Insightful)
They need to provide something to gain peoples trust back, which will either be very creative or take a immense amount of time. This move alone is just PR, and probably doesn't indicate anything. Even if it does, HP will still have to work for years to gain peoples trust.
Re:Loss of credibility (Score:2)
Re:Loss of credibility (Score:3, Insightful)
We cannot nor we must not ever trust a corporation for any matter large or small. Certainly some corporations naturally carry more credibility than others, based off their current and past set of actions, but trust, no we must never trust them. For a corporation is nothing but a physical and legally instantiated embodiment of greed. As with all greed, it is all-powerful and all-corrupting and they will all eventually sour. Instea
How the situation went down (Score:5, Informative)
<May 5, 2005 2:26:43 PM PDT> thomashawk complained [hp.com] about the media center pc support
(Tom's post disappears, Tom writes a
<May 6, 2005 4:14:43 PM PDT> D Gee responded [hp.com] and apologized for tom's bad experience
<May 6, 2005 4:41:33 PM PDT> thomashawk replied [hp.com], saying: "Thanks for responding David. Can you explain why my initial comment was deleted and then reinstated? Thanks, Tom"
<May 6, 2005 6:23:53 PM PDT> D Gee informed [hp.com] him: "Tom - you can see my response in my entry "Taking it on the chin""
(Friday May 06, @07:24PM PDT, Slashdot post hits frontpage about HP censorship)
We had no effect on this. They changed their mind BEFORE they got publically shamed for it. Not that I'm agreeing with them removing the comment in the firstplace, but it's interesting.
Re:How the situation went down (Score:3, Informative)
Thursday evening, May 5th at 9:41 pm. I sent the following message to David Gee at HP "Nice. At least I took a screen shot."
On Friday morning at 7:15 a.m. I still had not heard back from Gee or had the post reinstated so I blogged about my experience.
At 9:07 a.m. on Friday morning I submitted the
This is hardly new.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I wrote to the CEO, whoever that was before Carly, and pointed out the situation and mentioned that I run a discussion forum site of my own that gets around 75,000 visits a month and that my next step was to post a serious discussion about the modem and how I was treated on the HP forum. I mailed from Illinois on a Thursday. On Tuesday I got a call from a staffer at the CEOs office telling me that if I'd go buy whatever kind of modem I wanted and fax them the receipt, they cut a check for that amount and mail it the same day. I went and bought a US Robotics USB modem, the latest greatest, for some $239.00. I faxed the receipt, didn't even open the plastic wrap on the modem and returned it. By this time I'd already bought a Zoom external for $99 anyway. I got the check in 3 days and have lived happily ever after.
Re:This is hardly new.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've heard more than once people on
Of couse,
This reminds me that I *personally* don't compliment/publicise retailers enough when they provide good service...
Re:This is hardly new.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is hardly new.. (Score:2)
Awwww that's so cuuute! - that's not what the parent comment said about the grandparent! The parent noted that grandparent should not take a grand stand where he is nothing but a thief, and it has nothing to do with who he was stealing from. If you make comments on someone's ethics but you do something just as unethical, should your comments be taken seriously or discarded as hypocritical?
Discarded, obviously. But you wouldn't understand that.
Why do I read ACs' posts?! (Score:2)
*Wonder if he's an athiest?
With the sibling's quibbling about spelling aside, there is no correlation between being atheist and ethically challenged. A statement like that is just as bigoted and egregious as "Ethically challenged? *Wonder if he's a Jew [...African
For the retards: Atheists have Ethics, Too.
Re:change of heart? (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what. No one likes being criticized.
It's their web server (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's their web server (Score:3, Interesting)
HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:5, Interesting)
Either have a blog, or don't. That's their right, as it is their servers. But if you ask for feedback from the community, and you give the appearance of being impartial - deal with the consquences.
jh
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
a blog, a term that means one thing - a site for public news and discourse
When it comes right down to it, a blog is just a set of web pages that are updated frequently in a diary-like fashion. Why should they treat them any differently than other pages on their web site?
Eric
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:2)
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:2)
Oh my god, what a compelling argument! QUICK +5 INFORMATIVE! wHAT'S an appropriate reply? You aren't the boss of me! This is a free coutnry!
Caps lock and spelling errors are both the result of alcohol and intentional.
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:2)
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, is that the definition. Interesting. And here I was thinking "Blog" was merely a stupid abbreviation of "Web log". It would therefore mean that it is some kind of a web-journal where regular entries are made.
And personally, on my weblog, I'm not going to have any inhibitions about deleting whatever comments I want, for whatever reason I want. It's not a "site for public news and discourse". It's a site where I spew lies, write boring shit, display my incompetence for all to see, and occasionally put something interesting up (Much like Slashdot!) I think HP ought to have the same privilege on their own site.
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:2)
HP, like any other big company, put too much $$$$ into these engineering projects. They can't afford to have it not be profitable.
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:3, Insightful)
1) In your libertarian view of the marketplace (and the view of a few others before you) you forget the incredible delta$ to acquire a new customer compared to the delta$ to hold on to a old customer. Saying that they have the "right" to damn well do whatever they want is like saying, "I'm the CEO, and if I say burn the factory to the ground, then burn it to the ground". Your board of directors will have your butt.
2) It isn't *really
Re:HP is trying to have it both ways. (Score:2)
1) If you got fired from your job and sent out some resumes, would you allow your previous boss to add comments about your horrible work ethic? Would you feel like a hypocrite for putting other references, but leaving him out? Of course, not. Burning the factory to the ground is a horrible analogy. It's like saying that leaving the contact info for your boss is equivalent to kicking your new employer in the nuts.
2) If you took a v
Re:It's their web server (Score:4, Insightful)
They have no obligation to host data on their servers that doesn't benefit them. If you have something negative to say about HP you have every right to publicize your message. HP doesn't have to pay for it, though.
True. However, if the goal is to have an open discourse towards the improvement of their products, this type of behaviour is, umm, not so good.
Then again, this could always be a post-Carly spin pseudo event designed to draw attention.
Yes, I have an original HP-11C and you can pry it from my cold, dead hand.
Re:It's their web server (Score:2)
Such places rarely get educated traffic, or even much of the traffic of their clients, as people who really want to evaluate the product or fix their installations will be Googling for "Product X problems" which will never hit thier site.
Re:It's their web server (Score:2)
There is a surprising number of fanatics, err, people that love that generation of HP calculators. It's sort of a geek thing - if you see an RPN HP, there's the clue that you're dealing with someone technical. Naturally, there are always posers who bought the latest, greatest versions to impress.
Most are engineers, although HP did have a "financial" version (all buyers of that one are now mesmerized by spreadsheets and Powerpoint).
Of course, most love the stack and the RPN, but the overall "feel" of thes
Re:It's their web server (Score:2)
With that, it should be mandatory their content is labeled an advertisement like magazine articles that try and play like an article.
Re:It's their web server (Score:2, Insightful)
From Hawks Blog (Score:4, Informative)
Why YRO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why YRO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, maybe you're OK with that if you are one of these "I have a fiduciary duty to steal" type of people.
Re:Why YRO? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why YRO? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, I don't like their deletion policy, but their honesty about HAVING one means I still trust the corporate entity and continue to buy from them. I mostly ignore the comments, because I know they're biased. I'd PREFER for the comments to be mostly unedited. They would be more useful to me that way. But when they tell me right up front they're not, I have no problem with it.
So it CAN be done that way, and it's still ethical. Without that kind of disclaimer, however, a public comments section carries an implication that the public can freely comment. I don't expect fully uncensored comments, since they ARE a corporate entity and can't exactly be publishing every trollish, obscene, or off-topic thing that anyone wants to say, but it should be edited as lightly as possible.
Deleting negative comments because they are critical is highly unethical unless you are most clear, in big bold print, that you are doing so.
Re:Why YRO? (Score:2)
Re:Why YRO? (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example, this comment would be deleted:
Did any of you see the game yesterday? I can't believe the Vikings won.
This comment would be acceptable:
Yesterday I watched the Vikings game on this TV tuner card. The software was easy to install and the package got here fast.
This comment would also be a
Re:Why YRO? (Score:4, Funny)
The foresight of the Founding Fathers to add that to the Bill of Rights was truly astounding.
Re:Why YRO? (Score:2)
It's HP's site. They get to do whatever they want with it.
Re:Why YRO? (Score:2)
While HP can certainly do what they want with their server, the whole "customer service" aspect of the site goes down the tubes as soon as they start censoring legitimate claims. Why is it whenever someone or some company has a legal right to something, people start acting like the right to do something also means they haven't done anything wrong? The law an
i'm not surprised (Score:2, Informative)
Really, find a way to blog anonymously and rip your company to shreds. Fucked Company [fuckedcompany.com] or whatever is probably a good way to go about it.
Re:i'm not surprised (Score:2)
Even if negative stuff was allowed, I'm not sure why anybody would trust a corporate blog as the ONLY source of information. I'm not thinking about the common sense factor of it here, but rather the different ways people express themselves. For example: I create 3D artwork. That means I have specific uses for 3D cards. If I have an issue with my card, I'm FAR more likely to ask the q
Jackass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Jackass (Score:2)
Re:Jackass (Score:2)
If HP doesn't want people to say negative things about the company, don't let anyone post any comments at all. It's as simple as that.
Re:Jackass (Score:4, Insightful)
Try to imagine a world where even though something is legal, it's not ethical. If I were married I'd be completely within my rights to have sex with another unmarried woman (Adultery is only illegal for women in Minnesota). That doesn't make it right, however. Try to expand your definitions of right and wrong beyond a legal/illegal one.
Re:Jackass (Score:2, Interesting)
What was that proverb? (Score:5, Funny)
I like screwing with people. I like managing a webserver. I'd give someone free hosting for their blog and change all kinds of stuff on them, bofh style.
Who cares, really? What if I wanted to say wh ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT nd that was on here for example, you don't think they'd edit it, do you?
This sort of blogging is about publicity (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot $$$ (Score:4, Funny)
Slashdot is wonderful! OSTG is great! No I'm not being paid to say such things
Re:Slashdot $$$ (Score:2, Insightful)
Freedom of the Press is for those who own one (Score:2)
You have the right to speak, but no one is required to listen.
You have no right to use anyone else's press, be it my web page, HP's blog, or Fox News. Freedom of the Press doesn't override
Who freaking cares? (Score:2)
I fully support HP's right to delete any comment from HP-hosted blogs at will, and I further support everyone's right not to waste precious minutes of their one and only precious and oh-so-finite lifetime reading such drivel. Why do you car
That's freedom of speech man (Score:2)
I mean when you get down to it, all blogs exist for pushing the point of view of the owner. Even if you allow comments, they certianly dont' have the same prominence as your own posts and many blogs don't have them at all.
It's about intellectual honesty (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically HP was intellectually dishonest about the intention of the blog, and if you read the rest of the comments you see they are almost all a bunch of ring-kissing cheerleader posts. The fact that they re-posted the comment is not impressive at all, it just means they aren't completely incompetent at damage control.
Personally I have nothing for or against HP, but this blog doesn't really seem worth the time or effort to look at, and the people involved with it have lost my trust.
No surprise (Score:2)
I'm so tired of overly affluent, unethical people who claim to be where they are because of honest efforts. Sure.
What planet are you from, dude? (Score:2)
You must be smoking crack if you even thought your negative comment would go unchecked on a large corporation's website.
Now, it would be nice to live in a Utopian world where people are treated fairly, corporations aren't greedy, and their products don't have
Serving only what you want... and Routing? (Score:2, Funny)
There have been a number of comments here saying that you are not obligated to host what you don't want to. Makes some sense. But...
Are you obligated to route stuff you don't want to? If I'm Quest or Verizon or somebody, and my router sees a packet coming in that contains the plaintext "Verizon sucks," am I obligated to route that?
What if I have routers and I'm the Chinese government?
Re:Serving only what you want... and Routing? (Score:2)
Aren't those companies "common carriers"? Wouldn't that be equivalent to the phone company bleeping your calls every time you said "boy I sure hate my phone service!" into your telephone during a conversation? I'm pretty sure THAT'S illegal (I hope).
This is not the first time, HP (Score:2)
In particular (since that site can not take much trafic)
---- citing relevant parts of the thread on tabletpcbuzz:
Hmm. My efforts turned out to be futile, since HP removed all my complaints about the loud fan from the support forums. Maybe I was a bit intrusive after few days, when both technical support couldn't help, and my complaints r
This happens all the time on political blogs (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, check out the screenshot of the comment (Score:4, Insightful)
If I were HP, would delete it simply for incoherence.
See http://thomashawk.com/hello/305309/1024/HP%20Comm
Taking it on the chin? (Score:2)
Uhmm, I thought that that phrase was a reference to oral sex... but that really doesn't sound like something that that would make it into HP's blog.
What does the phrase taking it on the chin mean?
Re:Taking it on the chin? (Score:3, Informative)
Not anymore! (Score:2)
[nelson]Ha hah![/nelson]
This would make more sense (Score:2)
Re:This would make more sense (Score:2)
Most importantly, there were public online diaries long time before the invention of the buzzword "blog". It's not particularly cool to have an online diary, but it's way cool to have a blog, even if they are the same thing. It's like iPod versus any other portable mp3 player.
Not surprising (Score:2)
A customer makes a bonafied and honest comment regarding his experience with one of their products and what do they do? Delete and then ignore it.
His complaint wasn't even highly critical. Regardless of the retraction which only seems to have occured because of bad PR it has really solidified by view of HP overtime. The old HP is truly dead and dead.
I'm sorry but this is enough for me to make sure that I stay away from HP stu
Re:Not surprising (Score:2)
1. HP has fallen due to their poor customer service and neglect of using useful technology and engineering capabilities over time. They've pretty much gutted their engineering and software talent pool. Thrown out technology which could be useful for them and generally treated their own customers and employees with some sort of weird disdain. This comment issue in and of itself is what I believe to be an attitude ingrained at HP. It reaffirms that HP rea
This is typical of blogs (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard The Free Republic does that to people who hold different views too, but I am not on there to confirm it.
Same thing with Kuro5hin, I had a different point of view than some editors there held, and I was "anonymized". Lots of users got "Anonymized" as I recall. Many signed back on with new accounts, protesting their rights being taken away.
Apparently the freedom of speech does not apply to blogs. None of them, apparently, support the freedom of speech to one who posts a negative comment or a different point of view.
On other forums, like IWETHEY, you will get flamed for having a different opinion than the groupmind.
Apparently this is abuse from those who hold a majority point of view, editor, or administration access of a blog or forum. Fascism, Communism, it don't matter, because your right to post your opinion is taken away without even a warning or reason why it was taken away. If not, you are personally attacked until you are forced to leave.
Re:This is typical of blogs (Score:3, Interesting)
Now IF they had been clearly up front about things, this wouldn't be the perception or the reality. As it is... well, you make your choice, I'll make mine.
Actually, this isn't quite fair, as my choice was made by the last call that I made for
Re: (Score:2)
It's behind a diode. (Score:2)
A very sophisticated diode, that is.
It's their right (Score:3, Interesting)
They now have a PR fire to put out. They can get the lawyers if they want... but they will need years to put this one out.
They are now known for silencing anyone who disagrees with them among the tech community.
Personally I don't censor anything on my blog unless it's: illegal, obscene (and I'm rather liberal about this one), racist, etc. I don't really care about critical comments. I just don't want people to read and be offended by what they read in my visitors comments.
HP's going to need a lot of PR to undo the damage this slashdot story will do to it.
Sorry HP, you blew it. Go ahead, for now on, your blog community is useless as a PR tool because nobody trusts it. Even Business Week realized how important blogs are to business. And you managed to ruin your blog presence. Bravo.
If I were a VP at HP, I would seriously consider terminating who ever made that policy decision. That easily costs millions in PR (the fact that it ruined the "blogs as PR" strategy). You can make a mistake at work, but one one that ruins a marketing strategy of such large size.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is HP is not just going to read this slashdot article and ignore it. Heads may turn, they may lash out at bloggers who comment on it, and try to scare them... but they will respond.
Lets just hope they learn something, and other companies get the idea: silence customers, and they ruin your business.
Before Screenshot? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before Screenshot? (Score:2)
So much interest.... good and bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So much interest.... good and bad (Score:2)
He starts off by needlessly telling us he's working on a Friday night, as if this is some indicator that he's taking the issue seriously...
Maybe he's just trying to make the point that he's just some guy, like you or me, who reads Slashdot. It's called making a human connection.
to be honest, when
The Cluetrain Manifesto (Score:2)
This reeks of HP (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand (Score:2)
Slashdot editors, can you at least *try* to keep the section on topic please?
Blogs have credibility as long as they're honest (Score:2, Informative)
Seems a bit of a mountain from a molehill to me (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree with the guy who said you can't treat a company as a single entity. This was plainly an error of judgement by one guy who decided to pull a comment he didn't like on his blog. The error was compounded because he didn't consider at the time that it could end up somewhere l
Who owns the server? (Score:2)
If its not HP, then bring it up to the owners.
Gonzo Marketing (Score:2)
People are interested in REAL conversations, not the contrived sort of marketdroid speech that makes people want to gag. People are also very good about recognizing BS when it occurs, and the internet is an effective way to provide negative feedback. (How long will it be before the HP blog comes down?)
Thomas Hawk is a rude, arrogant prick (Score:3, Insightful)
1) If you read his blog about it, he insults ALL IT professionals and tech support people in particular.
2) His post on HP's site was not well written.
3) He then expects slashdot to rally behind him.
Sure, Slashdot didn't post it before it was changed back, however he sought this avenue before that point.
Re:Is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yer free to speak, and the truth shall make yee fret.
Re:Is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, that is one answer. Another is to use a site like
B.
Re:LOL (Score:2)
Assuming you spend 2 hours a day, for 4 years, before you toss it for a 21", this works out to what, ten cents an hour? Aren't your eyes worth 10 cents?
1280 x 1024 x 19" is the norm nowadays. In a couple of years it will be 1600 x 1200 x 24", again for the low, low price of $150.00
Re:LOL (Score:2)
Re:Pot meet Kettle. (Score:2)