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Comment by brown9-2 | Hacker News Reader

This headline seems incredibly overblown and designed to get more attention than it really deserves.

One email from "a Moviefone/AOL Television representative" asking you to tone it down is not the same as "AOL" asking you to tone it down.

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I completely agree with this. I don't understand how an email from a Moviefone employee (just trying to do his/her job the way it works in their industry) asking for help from a sister site gets blown into AOL censoring TC.

It seems like a more appropriate response would have been to email the Moviefone person back with a, "sorry, that's not how we do things here."

Under the new AOL Way, linkbaiting seems to be a good thing. :)

No. This is exactly how TC has always worked. They are a nothing more than linkbaiting, content firm dressed as a legitimate news outlet.

Yeah everyone wins, the guy at AOL can be like the the movie company, well I tried but I have no control there, and any attention to the link bait article helps the AOL bottom line.

I agree, especially when the request to tone it done is followed by "I know of course that TechCrunch has its own voice and editorial standards, so if you have good reasons not to change anything that’s fine..."

The reasoning does seem a bit odd though: Good reasons should be provided to change something, it's not as if the normal is to change material just because a related entity requested it.

Even if it was AOL asking for them to tone it down, what's the problem? A rep asks nicely if the language used is appropriate and if perhaps some better wording could be used instead?

To pan a person or company over a request like that seems ridiculous.

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