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Comment by chaosmachine | Hacker News Reader

Did not mean to upvote this. I don't think Microsoft has anything to apologize for here (raising money and awareness via retweets?), so a non-apology seems entirely appropriate. How many people complaining about this have donated even $1?

I'll take all the karma burning you can dish out, I've got lots to spare, but calling them "Douchebags" for donating 100k is over the top.

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Raising awareness of an event of this magnitude? Really? Does anyone honestly think this is what Microsoft was doing?

I don't know if it's more ridiculous to think that anyone who uses Twitter or Bing need to be made aware of the destruction in Japan, or that someone honestly believes Microsoft thinks there are such people.

> Does anyone honestly think this is what Microsoft was doing?

Microsoft executives. They can honestly believe (to the extent of sustaining that under oath) whatever they want.

calling them "Douchebags" for donating 100k

Disingenuous. I was clearly referring to the non-apology. And for that you get a nozzle.

So you are implying that one has to donate a thousand bucks to be allowed to complain about a company turning a tragedy into a marketing stunt?

/e: the parent poster edited his post. In the original version of his post, he asked whether anyone who criticizes bing has donated 1% of $100k.

I find your implication that this was a marketing stunt much more insensitive than the original controversial tweet. First off, this is a tweet, so presumably only people who follow Bing would originally see it, and it would be up to them to retweet it.

Is any public corporate humanitarian donation a marketing stunt by your definition? Should corporations keep these things secret? That seems like nonsense to me.

No, because they ask people to retweet it. Hence, they (probably?) want to achieve that people that do not follow @bing will see it in their timeline.

Not every public corporate humanitarian donation is a marketing stunt. I guess it would have been perceived very different, had they just announced that they donated a $100k instead of making the amount that they are going to donate a function of retweets. Just imagine them tweeting "Bing just donated $100k to help the people in Japan. Join us at http://blabla to find out what else we can do."?

Do you really think the people offended by this tweet would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made? I doubt it, especially considering that their follow-up tweet which did just that has only further offended those who have chosen to be offended.

I think the idea was for the $1 donation to be an incentive for people to retweet, which would spread the link to the Microsoft Disaster Response page.

> would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made?

I would find it more acceptable, yes. Not asking people to retweet in order for them to donate UP TO $100K would be more honorable.

There are noble ways to get 100K retweets. This is not one of them.

All I know is that I felt conflicted when I saw the tweet. "Do I retweet? It's for a good cause. But, I don't want to support Bing."

I didn't retweet and felt a bit guilty. I didn't want to be used either.

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