Comment by jmillikin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmillikin | Hacker News Reader

Here's a fun game: if you start at the beginning of this blog's archive[1] and browse forward, you can spot the exact moment when Google's support for net neutrality landed it on the blogger's enemies list. At first, the anti-Google posts are entirely about net neutrality[2], but in 2007 they start to shift towards more general complaints. Interestingly, the blog started mixing in pro-Microsoft posts at the same time (previously, it was pro-Verizon). By 2010 the blogger had started writing most of his posts about Google, and was now being funded directly by Microsoft[3].

2011 and 2012 saw the addition of pro-AT&T and anti-Netflix posts, with a sudden surge of pro-SOPA posts starting in late 2011. After SOPA failed, the posts changed again to become almost exclusively anti-Google or pro-Verizon (with the occasional anti-Netflix thrown in). The pro-AT&T posts seem to have tapered off.

[1] http://precursorblog.com/archive/200605

[2] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Scott-Cleland-Google-Usin...

[3] http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2009/06/google-crit...

This sort of ad-hominem attack doesn't really have a place on Hacker News. It's no secret that Scott Cleland is an anti-Google shill, available for hire by fortune 500 companies to write books and testify in front of Congress, but the correct response to his arguments is to point out the gaps in his reasoning and prove him wrong.

Instead, this is an appeal to groupthink to disregard the fair (and not-so-fair) questions raised in the blog post, instead of responding critically to them.

While I love the pointing out of logical fallacies, this is not necessarily an ad-hominem attack on the argument. I think this post provides important context for the reading of the article. Since I did not know of the blogger's background, this comment allowed me to put it into context.

Last time I checked, it was even disclosed at the end of each article.

Update: not this one, unfortunately.

I have no problem with this sort of ad-hominem attack. Knowing this about Scott Cleland lets me know that it's not worth my time to respond critically to his posts.

That does not make any sense. Yes, arguments should matter by their own merit, but why would we bother with a list of arguments curated by somebody that is inherently a fraud?

With the same logic you can spent a full life carefully dismissing idiotic arguments on Youtube.

Who has time for that? So his comment is very relevant. The submission itself is tainted, and goes on the "maybe ill look at that, if i live forever" pile, together with racial arguments, conspiracy theories and the political spin city puke.

I don't like these sort of hand wavy "I'm just saying..." implied conspiracy theories.

What specifically are you suggesting?

Here's an excerpt from a recent Wired article at http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/it/magazine/17-02/ff_kill...

"Over the past couple of months, several AT&T allies have spoken out against what they describe as Google's disdain for privacy. Scott Cleland, who serves as CEO of a telecom-funded consultancy, has turned his widely read blog into a Google attack machine, with posts titled "Why Google Is the Biggest Threat to Americans' Privacy" and "Google Protecting Its Privacy to Invade Your Privacy." "

That whole article is pretty interesting. It also mentions how Microsoft-hired lobbyists succeeded in getting the American Corn Growers Association and the Dominican American Business Network (!) to weigh in against Google. Here's another article about that: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9965555-38.html

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