Mike,

I’m appalled that this actually makes a headline here at TechCrunch. Not only did you decide that it was OK to send an off-topic “story” (and I use the term loosely), but you also decided to further propagate both a racial and sexual orientation slur to your ~200K users. That makes you even more of a prick than the guy who actually posted the original garbage. Perhaps you think it’s ok to use some other person’s ignorance as a license to mention those abrasive words in a public forum — maybe you’re just as politically incorrect as the other idiot but saw this as an opportunity to hide under the fact that you’re just repeating someone else. Well it doesn’t make the phrases less dick-headed just because they didn’t originate from your mouth first. You didn’t point out the insensitivity of someone else, instead you’ve shown us your own.

Well, I hope you feel proud of yourself. You didn’t think about how readers of this filth might feel every time they encounter those words. One might expect that crap from a political campaign, where mus-slinging abounds — but from a tech blog?!

Obama gives nice speeches and that’s about it. Mostly style with little substance which is not what we need in a President after the Idiot-in-Chief

the bottom line out of all this hoopla is for techcrunch to not write about political bs - and stick to purely tech companies, Period.

ughhhhh…hello, TechCrunch; this is not PoliticalCrunch

mike is just purposely throwing fuel on the fire by tossing in who he’d vote for in the democratic party, Word

HEY TECHCRUNCH,

Can you remove this story from your bin? The problem has been resolved and the site does not need this negative publicity to continue. Not many people saw the attack but reports like yours keep it alive.

GET RID OF THIS STORY INSTEAD OF USING IT TO PROMOTE YOUR OWN SITE. THERE ARE BIGGER FISH TO FRY.

Wish the see the 1st black president

OK guys, you’re all being a bit too serious. It’s Mike’s site and he can post whatever he wants, about whatever he wants whether it has anything to do with Web 2.0 or not, tech or not … news or not.

Yepper, so I think that about sums it up.

agree with web2point0critic. at least update your negative words toward it.

Hey Mike,
Seems like you’re getting a lot of crap from people about the article. I just wanted to say keep up the good work. The point of this blog is to talk about the use of new technological advancements and how they affect our lives (or if they will). You gave a good third party review of something and are getting bashed by people who are probably all Obama supporters. That is just bad taste by others. No one is blaming Obama for the foul up. It happens and you’ve helped them fix a bug.

Joe Rospars,
Political interests have no place at Techcrunch. While occasionally they seep their way in please don’t add to that effort. Your comment was really unneccessary. We’re tech junkies that are more interested in applications of technology then anything else. Next time some one points out a flaw, a simple “thanks, we’ll fix it” is all that is needed. Many of us here have built and killed user generated tech platforms so don’t quote us on the drawbacks, we know them already.

P.S. We need a spell checker on comments.

web2point0critic- wants to bury the story since it involves his candidate. What a joke!

He will not be the Dem candidate. Looks at the polls…. LOL…

Sojo,

Too true. And if he wants to make it personal rather than professional his readers may vote not to read.

They lost my vote well before this ever happened… In fact, I probably won’t vote; neither of the major parties are offering anything I want.

I’m not anonymous, BTW… I can be reached at rdewey@otiosoft.com

Hmm… I wonder how many “I’m removing you from my RSS aggregator” notes we’ll see

Mike,

You should check out the site building tool on the McCain site. It goes to the opposite extreme and pretty much approves every piece of content that goes up. I did a post about it on our blog.

http://www.bivingsreport.com/2.....mpaigning/

Todd

Mike I disagree that he would lose your vote just for the Director of New Media doing his job.
You are doing yours and here we go creating a big political debate on techcrunch.
Close discussions on this post, that would help.
Obama still got my Vote.

Mike,

I’m with you - forget Obama now! Let’s go with Hillary - oh wait…she doesn’t have a tag cloud.

Sojo: Actually you are pretty wrong.

For Mike, the site is only as good as it’s readers. If Mike took that egotistical stance, he wouldn’t have got where he has got to now. And he wouldn’t be earning hundreds of thousands on advertising if he had no readership.

To everyone else: I don’t think this needed to be posted BUT I also think people are taking it over board a little bit. It was tech related and it was a follow up to a recent story.

Although I had to laugh at Mike’s immature response

Palak,

For whatever reason Mike chose to sensationalize this in his choice of post title and message. He wasn’t simply reporting a problem. And he is the one that brought politics into this, Joe’s comment actually relates to one of the intents of this blog: Discussion of Web 2.0 applications and the problems we all face in dealing with their openness.

“You are a fucking loser fag”

And you judge others based on what they write? How are you any better?

Great response Robert Dewey.

Honestly, I think that “New Media Director” shouldn’t have made that long post. I, for one, when seeing this post, I only looked from it at a humor point of view. There was nothing political or anything.

Just chill and relax, doesn’t it make you laugh when you see that picture? Who cares which site the bug was from.

By the way, if you continue this path of not admitting your mistakes, you are doomed for failure. Your designer left you for this very same reason, and soon your users will too.

.
.

“You just lost a user because of that”
.
.

@Joe:

Mike didn’t write a “gotcha” post — he simply pointed out a flaw in the design of your “open” software that led to an unfortunate listing of a fake e-hate group. Mike’s post was preceded by a glowing review of the MyObama social networking site — a flawless design which generated many comments about the behind-the-scenes framework. The net result of both posts are very positive — a larger interest in the tech infrastructure behind Obama’s campaign site and concern over the apparent political trolling allowed to appear as a “legitimate group” in a search box, even temporarily.

I believe what Mike is suggesting is that the Obama campaign lost his vote if there is a lack of respect for the messenger, especially if the message was out of concern for the Obama campaign site’s ability to manage malicious posts.

Although TechCrunch remains a politically neutral site, the line between technology and politics is becoming ever-thin as we move into an era of technology-fueled accountability through direct engagement with voters.

For this reason alone, the Obama campaign should be appreciative of Mike’s attentiveness and willingness to call attention to a serious design flaw, which is now resolved.

Onward…

Since this will be the most digitally political election yet and Obama just launched a site that’s trying to leverage some of the more 2.0 community ideas the fact that there was a major screw up with the site day 1 is news that’s likely interesting to most of TC’s readers… same as if this was a screw up day 1 of the Gap’s new site to sell shoes.

Whether Mike’s assesment was right or wrong the fact remains that not thinking this feature flaw would be manipulated was a strategic error. In politics (and the blogosphere) these kind of errors get magnified pretty quickly. What ends up defining the errors is usually how you deal with the fallout.

You Americans need to calm down. Wow.. two parties to choose from… It`s not like you can flip a coin or anything.

This “racial slur” is so stupid it becomes comedy. It´s similar to the (making shit up) Terrorist Communist Nazis who implant brain control devices in random rednecks in South Dakota in an effort to brainwash Americans into using the metric system.

Anyway.. I think Michael and Joe just pulled a “Boston”.

I read TC all the time, for almost a year now I would guess, and this is the first comment I will have made, and I’m sure I will take shit for it unfortunately — but jeez, cut Mike some slack here. You can say this isn’t news all you want, but this is news — an amateur mistake on a what-should-be professional site is news to the tech world, like it or not. Sure, it didn’t happen on Google’s homepage (which I’m sure none of you would have had a problem with from a posting relevancy perspective) but nonetheless, I was interested to hear about it from a tech and non-tech perspective. With that in mind, the Obama people should be thanking Mike for the heads up, tucking their tails between their legs in shame, and cordially asking for an update; Joe Rospars shouldn’t be commenting on the post coming off as a of condescending douchebag, even though he most likely is. Is he not a politician, after all? Mike, good post.

GNAA is an online meme. There used to be a wiki entry but that disappeared. I think this is funny more so than offensive.

I though the “New Media Director’s” response was interesting insight into cutting edge spin. How political campaigns will take advantage of the new tools and communities – what they’ll learn from Howard Dean’s campaign last time around – will be interesting to watch.

Is it a bug or is it a feature?

Honestly though, I would expect the text in that message box to be hard coded according to standard coding practices.

I don’t see any sensationalization of this at all. I agree with Mike that a simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.

How can anyone claim that this isn’t worth TechChrunch reporting? MyBarackObama was the biggest Web 2.0 launch of the week, and there was a big exploit for it discovered. It’s absolutely blog-worthy. It isn’t a huge deal by any means, but it’s absolutely worth the write-up/summary that Mike gave.

I’m very sure if this bug appeared on some other Web 2.0 site like digg, Mike would report it as well. This bug just happened to be on the Barack Obama’s Web 2.0 campaign site.

Al Gore invented the Internets … I think he’s behind all of this.

I’m simply curious why everyone thinks blogs should be totally neutral. They’d be quite boring (ie reading the snooze news from the AP) if they were always completely neutral and fair. It’s news as presented with a bias, of the person who’s writing it. Seems pretty simple to me. They can express their opinions all they want and I can choose whether to read them.

in conclusion: to drop this subject already - TC needs to post a new lead tech article to put this clown of an article behind us

any substance is getting diluted by all the petty rants and raves

If you don’t like Michael’s articles, then don’t read them. I happened to find this article very interesting and it’s unfortunate they allowed for a thing like that to happen. If you’re going to show the last group that joined, perhaps they should have said this up front and it would be a non-issue.

I still don’t see why it should have anything to do with why or why not you should vote for Obama. I don’t feel that Joe was that harsh.

Mike, go grab a beer bro, this is just crazy. I cannot believe such a smug comment was left from someone at Obama’s campaign. This is the typical stupid ass “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” defense. A “thank you” and a request for interview as a followup post would have been the right way to go, not jumping on you. Oy.

He he, too hilarious! This is the most fun I’ve had reading blog comments, in… well, I think ever! The smugness of the so many of the posts reminds me of Paul Graham’s recent quote:

“I think there’s a general principle at work here: the less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate. More often than not the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse.”

and also this one by Tara Ploughman:

“The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.”

Isn’t that sooo true!

Great post Mike - great entertainment

so GNAA is backing obama?

First time commenting.

Interesting post. Thanks for showing us the glitch.

Just accept it that some of the most intelligent people are stubborn and refuse to admit when they are wrong about an action or comment. It is just a negative quality that often comes along with brilliance.

Oh wow. I was blown away by Michael’s response. It didn’t seem like the New Media Director was attacking this site at all, he is just concerned with getting bad press on the release of their campaign social network. The way Tech Crunch reported on the issue was very sleazy. Of course Mike didn’t point out the blatant vandalism, he only questioned the developers and then continued by calling them stupid… Wow.

Read/Write is now my new Tech News source. Forget all this childish behavior.

‘I have had my hand slapped by a representative of the Obama campaign’

A legitimate story to report. Michael could have emailed the person concerned and tipped them off about the error, but he’s not a political campaigner, he’s a journalist.

Barack Obama is the Tiger Woods of Presidential Politics and the pundits and talking heads are just starting to figure him out…His campaign is gearing up and it’s true they could have had a better “new media” experience on the announcement day when the new website went live…I’m not holding that against Obama though…I had no trouble and only a few friends noticed things…The situation was fixed quickly….The Obama campaign is a work in progress and the traffic out on their website is amazing right now…Obama appeals to young folks in such a powerful way…This campaign will come down to character, charisma, courage, convictions, and vision…Obama has what it takes to go all the way and become a unifying but transformational leader…Do your homework on him…read his new book and keep an open mind. I predict that the Obama campaign will leverage the Internet and Social Networking in some totally new ways. They won’t be perfect but they probably will be on the cutting edge for “the political world”.

Mike, if you’re not going to remove the screenshot with the offensive language then you should at least black it out (eg ‘N****’). Any redeeming qualities this post had in relation to web 2.0 was certainly overshadowed by the seemingly indifferent and almost casual disregard for the racist comments shown.

I think you and the media director for Obama’s campaign could have handled things better, but hey, we’re all human and that’s life..c’est la vie…

imo, Obama is truly oneof the most promising candidates out there, but when people with your exposure dismiss him so casually because of misjudgement by one of his campaign staff, it speaks volumes about even the most liberal minded.

I do hope Obama is a strong contender but after watching a movie like Borat, i am less than optimistic that the millions who voted for Bush, are the least likely to tolerate a black president.

Off-topic, but someone named “Ashutosh” posted a slew of insults. Ashutosh is truly my name, and the author of post number #68 is not me. I’m sure Mike can verify that based on my IP’s. Howerver, post #19 and #40 are infact me.

I really wish the comments were integrated into the forum software, allowing people to use the same username/password for both comments and forum posts.

I am puzzled by Michael Arrington’s belligerent reaction to what seemed a fairly restrained , if perhaps ill-advised, comment from Joe Rospars. It is not like Mr. Rospars accused him of being racist or in the pay of Obama’s opponents. I also find Michael Arrington’s assertion of simply ‘pointing out an error’ more than a little disingenuous. ‘Pointing out an error’ is done by an email; posting it on a blog with the readership of a news organization is taking a stance. It is like pointing out that somebody’s fly is open by whispering it to their ear versus telling everybody in the room.

Ultimately, I believe this is a clash of experiences, very much along the lines that interethnic experiences frequently come into conflict. Rospars is on the receiving end of all sorts of unpleasant accusation so this article must read to him as hostile (and to be fair, there were a number of ways to phrase the same facts that would have made it seem as a generic warning to campaigns) and an example of sensationalist journalism (which it isn’t too far from in phrases like “not a good start for the Barack Obama social network” - it could have just as easily said ‘minor bug in an otherwise strong start’, which it was until Michael Arrington posted in on the blog). Michael Arrington, on the other hand is used to being attacked for partiality and Joe Rospars comments read to him as an ungracious attack (and in fairness, had he started and ended by saying thank you, he would have probably gotten a better reception).

This isn’t a debate about the substance of racism. However, if a rather polite comment is all it takes for Michael Arrington not to vote for Obama, he should perhaps spend a bit more time thinking about what it takes for Obama’s campaign (and most importantly for people of any minority aspiring to public office) to deal with torrents of mindless hostility. Sure it is an inconvenience to have to watch one’s words around these issues. But taken against the pressures of people on the receiving end of open or veiled racial and ethnic antagonism, it pales into insignificance. Anyone complaining about this as a chore should not do so lightly and automatically.

I am no longer reading TechCrunch. Not because I think you are racist, or because I think you are stupid for no voting for someone because of their website team (which I do), but because you are posting far too much bollocks.

Thanks for the good times. However long ago they were.

I think either Mr. Arrington got up on the wrong side of the bed or I’ve been giving him way too much credit before today. In any event this blog is off my must read list. Michael, are you trolling your own blog posts banking on an ensuing link-storm?

Heh, well, I sure did miss the shit storm.

Joe’s comment was maybe a bit over defensive, but Mike, your reaction was very juvenile. And then you decide that the reason people questioned it was due to partisanship…

If you’d distilled your reaction comment to: “Attacking the people who point out a problem on your website is a stupid idea.” I bet 100% of the comments would be agreeing with you. But instead you escalated the situation and invoked partisan politics (all the while whining that this isn’t a political blog). It made you sound really silly. Not to mention that you apparently base your political decisions on the words of low-level campaign officials… which is, uh, to put it bluntly, stupid.

Just my two cents. I’m not about to say I won’t read your blog anymore (that’s equally idiotic). I really enjoy TechCrunch.

Also, I think the GNAA thing is just an example of really poor-taste satire.

Reporting on bugs does seem a little out of place for techcrunch’s focus… I thought this was about startups and venture capital and funding rounds blah blah…?

raising a security scare without trying to get more information first is irresponsible. period.

This is ridiculous, will you remove those offensive words!

Michael,

I think the power you feel you wield in the web 2.0 startup review space is going to your head.

Joe and the Obama campaign seem to have behaved perfectly well in response to the issue you and Fred Destin raised, yet you responded in a heavy handed, arrogant way.

Just as in the case of Techcrunch UK, which you shut down for allegedly doing something you then went on to replicate at DEMO, it seems you are prone to knee-jerk extreme reactions, which is hardly the best approach for a reviewer of new tools. Sometimes more thought and more empathy are a good thing.

The real issue here is the potential that Obama brings to an otherwise dysfunctional US political process, not the fact that you will not vote for him. Hopefully the history books will be lauding Obama for his positive impact on the world long after Techcrunch has been forgotten.