Oops: Facebook caught planting anti-Google stories to press

Unless they got caught, of course.

The point is, Facebook should complain about privacy in PR, because it implies that they care about it (whether or not they actually do care). Anyway, I think your points are pretty solid otherwise.

1. "Attacking the overlord" - People bash Google all day, every day; for privacy reasons and what have you. Seeing as Facebook is Google's biggest competitor and vice-versa, attacking Google doesn't seem to be a mistake. 2. "Bringing attention to Circles" - It's the "but THEY're doing it too!"-method fb is using when it comes to privacy and Google, plus, "we care about privacy". However, you forgot the main point: Nobody was supposed to know Facebook was the one behind the reports.

While it's behind the scenes it's hard to say how much it happens, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, the PR firm were trying to spoon feed a writer with information he could use to write a story, if he decides that information is worth writing, and readers decide it's worth reading, then fair enough.

But it's an important story because Facebook have failed to keep secret the fact that they are trying to attack Google, and that will have implications on politics between those two companies. Even if Google already knew that Facebook were doing this kind of stuff (more than likely), Facebook being outed changes how Google can act towards them with a different public reaction.

BM offered a mea culpa today that notes as much:

Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client.

The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media. Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources.

Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle.

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/b-m-says-facebook-assign...

2. How is a smear campaign "business as usual"? Just because Zuckerberg has low ethical standards doesn't mean that you or I have to. As strange as it may seem, it's quite possible to run a successful business without psyops and Zero-sum mentality.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2539824

In my reply I explained why he was wrong about that submission. And now, coincidentally, this is the first time I've seen an ingur link on HN. If only he hadn't deleted his comments, I'd know who he was and go apologise to him for downplaying his prediction.