Facebook hired PR agency to plant bad stories about Google
I’ve mentioned before that Jennifer Egan’s vision of the not-too-distant future in A Visit From the Goon Squad is disturbingly realistic — and very cynical. Nearly everyone’s influence can be bought. Friends are “friends.” Well, the future is now.
“For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.
The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.””
(via soupsoup)
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The Great American Cooking Project
Notes from others: