Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us | Hacker News Reader

Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us

techcrunch.com

347 pointsvaksel83 comments

Gotta love tech company culture. :)

On an unrelated note, why request a comment from a company at all if you're only going to wait 24 minutes for a response?

Oh its a basic journalistic trick. Each journalist wants to give the impression that they see both sides of each story. But if they have a hot story they really do not want to wait to hear the other side. So they request a comment, wait an unreasonably short time, and then print the story saying "we requested a comment from the other side but they did not provide a comment by the deadline for this story".

It used to be that there was a set deadline to respond because of a broadcast time or a printing run. A responsible journalist would call for a comment and if they weren't available they'd let them know when the story had to be done.

So here we are when the "journalists" are controlling the printing runs and in this case they thought 24 minutes was a fair time for a response. I think this speaks more about the level of journalism practiced at TechCrunch than anything else, and this Facebook prank actually goes a long way to show that.

What kinda baffles me is that all those old deadlines were set by management, the reporters always wanted more time to craft the story and get it right. There were epic battles between reporters and editors over time versus distribution. Now that there's instant publishing the reporters have the same itchy trigger fingers. Just like the before everyone's afraid of being "scooped".

That's a really good point. I'd argue though that web journalists running their own site are also wearing the management hat and are more concerned with the bottom line than the journalist of old who had that bottom line abstracted form them through bureaucracy.

This is just as much a problem with the average consumer's attention span as the content producer's race to print. If this is their policy on stories and yet we still read them and comment on them, well then I guess we value the quick fix even though we complain about it.

Exactly. Whenever you read 'did not return message seeking comment' or 'could not be reached for comment' you really should read 'we try to make it seem like we tried but they didn't care in order to make ourselves more important'.

And it puts the pressure on the parties of who they 'request comment' to replay, knowing that if they don't that that dreaded sentence will be in the article, effectively a small component in the trial by media arena.

There are other examples of such code phrases but this one is particularly annoying.

As though everybody in the world should be at the beck and call of the media, and doing nothing is already a strike against you.

Sure, if a politician stonewalls on a subject call them out for it. But don't use that phrase every second article in order to make it seem that the media are something you ignore at your peril. Plenty of people are loathe to talk to reporters simply out of - justified - fear of being misquoted.

s/replay/reply/ too late to edit. sorry.

Yeah, most recently, I was asked on a sunday night at 7pm pst for a story that went to publication/web posting the following morning. God forbid I should skip email for a night, right?

The press can really suck. There are really good reporters and there are terrible ones. Some will go out of their way to get you to say what they want you to say even if it takes cutting your words completely out of context.

I'm completely out of the spotlight and happy about that, but there was a time when that was not the case. My policy was very simple.

You can print it after I sign off on it otherwise no deal.

Cost me a couple of interviews but on the whole it paid off in that I got some control over the process. Some of these things are misunderstandings, especially when matters are technical, but there are also examples of more deliberate misrepresentations.

Be careful.

The difficulty with that policy is that old-school journalists (the NYT, WP, NPR types) would never agree to that either.

Unless, of course, they did. Were all your dealings with online tech press, or any (ahem) real press?

Dutch newspapers, magazines.

Volkskrant, AD, Quote Magazine and a whole bunch of others.

Quite possible that that would not be a feasible strategy abroad.

True, but it sounds like TC has a pretty tight relationship with FB's PR team. If they got the request in the 24 minutes you can be sure they ignored it, or it would have ruined the whole joke.

I still can't believe the fake feature actually worked. That's a brilliant prank.

I think a lot of the responses to this are really unfair. First, this isn't something that is possibly detrimental to the company (Facebook) so printing it without hearing their "side of the story" is extremely low risk. Second, they're reporting something factual. Ignore the fact that there was a bit of a trick in who saw the feature. There was a button on the site, this wasn't an unconfirmed rumor or anything like that.

TechCrunch asked for more information on the featured, they didn't get it, and they wrote a story based on what they had observed themselves.

The idea that they in some way were being sleazy or should have waited longer to be fair to Facebook is just silly. If this was a material issue that Facebook wanted to comment on, they would have. This happened during normal business hours, not in the middle of the night on a weekend. Facebook PR is a well run machine.

For a bit of context, I run our PR/marketing at Justin.tv and when I get requests like this the first thing I do is call the reporter, usually within a minute. That is my job and the nature of reporting is that timeliness is incredibly valuable. If I ignored that and didn't respond as fast as possible I wouldn't be doing my job.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but waiting 24 minutes is a pretty long time in the blogging world for something like this. Had it been something controversial or potentially damaging I would have waited longer and tried calling more people.

But this was just a basic feature that was apparently live for everyone (at least, everyone in the TC office). I was really only contacting them to see if they had an explanation as to why they'd want to implement this.

If waiting 24 minutes to get basic information for a story is a "pretty long time in the blogging world," then maybe there's something wrong with the blogging world.

Of course there is! Shame on the journalist who gives us what we want! Who's traffic spikes when they practice what we consider sketchy... right before we ourselves go read the article.

Sometimes I even read the terrible article before I complain about it's integrity.

I really wish these guys would show more integrity than me, and simply ignore the fact that I lap up whatever they post.

> right before we ourselves go read the article.

I in fact have not read the article (I refuse to waste my time/give TC a page view) because they represent crap and I want crap to wither and die.

Principals, some people try to live by them.

I think that's great. I sometimes read crap though. I get sucked in by those OMG THE WORLD IS ENDING AND YOU NEED TO READ THIS TO LIVE type headlines... even though I know better I still click on it.

You're a more disciplined man than I, and it's good to know some people are making the effort to keep them honest.

Pissing off a a few people while reaching a lot is a better then reaching few and pissing off none.

You rarely get a downvote as a consumer, just like on HN. Going in to the comments to register your dislike is not the same as a down vote.

It's a lot more efficient for the journalist to maintain integrity in the authoring of information than it is to have every reader scrutinize that information for a lack of it.

Agreed. That does seem more efficient... when can we launch?

I'm sorry, I don't buy that.

If a new facebook feature is reason enough to throw all reason and caution overboard then how can we ever trust anything TechCrunch writes to begin with.

Surely the world does not lose anything critical if you verify if what you see is not an anomaly but an actual released feature ?

No press release ? No statement on a blog somewhere ? No verification from FB ?

Run the presses, we've got a scoop!

It really does sound ridiculous, 24 minutes for 'something like this' makes it sound as though the appearance of a new feature in facebook is of earth shattering importance.

By falling for this prank you may have shot yourselves worse in the foot than you realize.

First you lost a bunch of respect about the Twitter documents, now you prove that you do not care about the accuracy of your stories as long as you get them out first.

TechCrunch depends on readers believing that what TechCrunch writes is true, and verifiably so.

I'll bet you the next feature that facebook launches will be thoroughly researched by you before you hit 'submit'.

Or did you not put some procedures in place after this fairly good example of a social engineering hack ?

Right, because websites regularly roll out fake features that need verification as to whether they actually exist or not? I wasn't contacting them to verify if it was real — clearly they were rolling it out to people (though obviously on a very limited basis). I was contacting them to figure out their logic for implementing such a bizarre feature.

> Right, because websites regularly roll out fake features that need verification as to whether they actually exist or not?

Well, you have one datapoint more now than you did last week ;) Lets hope the counter gets stuck at '1'.

> I wasn't contacting them to verify if it was real — clearly they were rolling it out to people (though obviously on a very limited basis).

Yes, why bother verifying something that even the first couple of posters on your site immediately classified as a hoax ?

5:29 original post

5:37, all of 8 minutes later, Rob Abbott: please tell me this is a joke

5:39: bad april fools joke, Stephen Ausman

5:41: Matt Harwood: I call hoax

So, if you consider it bizarre enough to contact them, your readers point out that it is in all likelihood a hoax you still contradict them.

After all, it so completely makes sense for facebook to implement this, what with the popular demand for this feature and all. After all, every 'expert' in the industry is well aware of the rise of fax usage between the users of social networks.

Elsewhere you say that facebook usually responds very well, and that a response within 10 minutes isn't unusual.

So, in spite of them normally responding amazingly fast you did not have the courtesy to wait for their response ?

Must be hard to let go of a scoop.

I'm really happy that if it would have been damaging that you would have at least waited a little longer and that you would have tried to contact more people. But effectively that says: "If it would have been damaging then we would have run it regardless". Just 20 minutes and a couple of emails later maybe.

Class act.

Wow, that's way harsh. This wasn't a he said / she said piece of gossip. This was a feature that they saw on Facebook.com, that they reported. They are a tech news site and all.

Lighten up.

Then what story is there? If you know what I know, then I have no reason to read what you say.

Yeah, I can understand that. I wasn't trying to challenge your journalist integrity. As you noted, it wasn't a controversial piece. I was simply saying that trying for a comment in such a small time frame by email is pointless since a response in that time is very unlikely. I was thinking either a phone call or publishing right away as alternatives.

Actually Facebook tends to be quite responsive. They have a general press Email address that goes to something like ten PR people, so it isn't unusual to get a response within ten minutes (or at least a note saying that someone is looking into the issue).

Ah, then I understand where you were coming from. Definitely did not know that when I made my original comment. :)

The TC post does hint at a serious motive for the prank though.

...And something else about teaching us to contact them before posting.

I love the fact that the feature (of faxing photos) actually works. Telling sign of true geeks.

Yeah quite cool, hope they'll roll out this feature for all of us!

The Facebook/TechCrunch litmus test of feature design:

- come up with crazy ass feature - implement in the minimal possible way - enable feature for techcrunch network only - see if they write about it - check comments on techcrunch - response bad -> yank feature, nobody the wiser, response positive -> implement feature by pulling an all nighter.

And everybody else.

I figure that pulling a TechCrunch will go down in to history as 'getting an online publication to write something terribly wrong to teach them a lesson about journalism and fact checking'.

Let's see how long it takes before someone else pulls a stunt like this on TC.

Hair trigger journalism.

In fact 24 min is the time they took to write that article. They really didn't wait even a single minute before writing it :-)

Well, I imagine that if you are a tech news site that wants to be known for breaking stories first, you can't wait very long.

In one sense, this is why old print media is far superior to the mainstream online media today. You had to wait at least until the press started rolling the next morning before finalizing anything. A turn around time of days instead of minutes results in higher quality and accuracy in my opinion.

I take it you haven't seen the U.K. tabloid press then?

The existence of bad newspapers to do not make all newspapers bad. When all is said and done I still hold that there is not a blog or web site around that can measure up to the best print media when it comes quality journalism and writing.

To be fair... I'm sure they would have updated the post as soon as an official FB comment came in. That's one thing good about online media, it can get better over time.

From the comments:

Matt Harwood: I call hoax. There is zero way Facebook would even consider this, nor use that god awful over-sized icon.

Jason Kincaid: It’s not a hoax, I’m seeing it when I browse photo albums. Might now be rolled out for everyone yet.

We once pulled a stunt like this on a remote co-worker whose IP we figured out. Eventually we did get to be on speaking terms again ;)

Maybe at TC they'll learn the value of cloaking and a pc that is not on the 'known corporate network' to fact check their scoops ? If not I expect there will be a few more pranks like this.

They must be howling with laughter in the Twitter offices right now, and plotting their own version, the subtle part here is the timing.

The part I love is that they made the feature work and actually faxed the photo over. Lots of effort for a prank. Thats what makes the best pranks stand out :)

That is slightly suspicious. Maybe somebody at facebook actually thought that this was a good idea at some point and had developed it as a feature.

More likely is that the fax was manual after clicking the link did this:

  send_email(to='prankster@facebook.com', subject='FAX Prank', body='Photo ID: %s\nUser ID: %s' % (photo.id, user.id))

But, you know... in PHP, not Python :-)

with efax you can send a fax with an email, so really sending an email to a person and having a fax sent is the same amount of work.

I've heard of companies doing this to their competitors. It's a great trick... Announce new lower prices that only your competitors can see, and then laugh when they send out an email to all their customers informing them of the new pricing structure. Or else announce a stupid new feature, and watch them waste time trying to implement it on their site too.

That's funny. Is there a particular story to share? Do you have a link or source?

Certainly. Microsoft announced that OS/2 was the future and watched as Lotus and Wordperfect spent millions porting their apps to the new oS.

Then they cobbled Windows 3.x together and ported their own apps to that instead of OS/2. (The wikiedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#Breakup makes no mention of the effect of Windows 3.0 on Lotus and Wordperfect.)

This was not actual Microsoft strategy; until the Windows team destroyed OS/2 Microsoft had every intention of making OS/2 the future. Windows was really just a project that refused to be killed until it won.

I can't find the story in his blog archives so I'm going to assume it's not public, but it is a real story.

The funny thing is his competitors got back at him by renting his exact same office after he sold the biz. This way they were getting a good chunk if his mail to use for leads!

Amazing.

This is officially my favorite TechCrunch post.

The best part is that the feature actually worked. If a prank is worth doing... it's worth doing well :)

And Facebook makes $1.50 off TechCrunch. They should do this more often.

Good to know 24 minutes is all you need to verify.

Aren't you supposed to be on a plane?

I'm multi-talented.

If being in two places at once is merely being 'multi-talented' then I think I'm going to have a little lie down now.

If I didn't already want to work at facebook, I would now.

Is it me or does it seem that Facebook is working hard to generate a lot of news/publicity these past few days? What are they looking to accomplish?

Absolutely awesome! Hubris bites back!

Just for a second imagine if this somehow went wrong and this 'feature' was suddenly available to everyone. FB realises the mistake quickly and pulls it, but there is a vocal outcry from all their users who just got into the whole 'Fax your profile pic' meme. Also, TC is first to pick this up in a blog post.

Yeah OK, this is probably highly unlikely, but it would sure have been funny.

Yes, even facebook (along with most of the rest of the tech industry) thinks techcrunch is such a joke that they don't mind pulling pranks on them.

Notice that there are bigger/better tech blogs/publications out there but facebook choose only to prank them - that's how low they think of techcrunch. And they should.

i would think it's exactly the opposite -- being individually signaled out and pranked by facebook is more a sign of TechCrunch's importance...

or a light-hearted way to ask them to stop posting information without first fact-checking.

That's how I read it. With a bit of a bite to it.

If they thought TC was a joke, they'd ignore them, not spend time and effort, planning and executing a prank.

Not unless they think that TC is a bad joke that does harm to FaceBook in some way (by, for example, posting unverified stories about FaceBook before taking the time to fact-check with FB).

Great! Will TechCrunch halt its bid to rename HN "Facebook News" now?

I thought the bid was to rename HN "TechCrunch News". There can't be the most inane article on TC or it gets posted here.

So... you're saying I won't be able to fax from facebook? Crap.

Damn this just made my night. Thank you Facebook.

Man, this is brilliant. A long time coming.

Can somebody explain to me why this article was written/posted/upmodded/commented upon/any of the above?

Serious question.

ED: So...you can't answer the question, but you can click the down arrow? I always find that strange. I'm really puzzled as to why HN is lately polluted by the 3rd-gen friendster copycat facebook, and this latest post just seems to add that many more layers of derivation, all leading to...? I don't know. What's the point?

Serious question, as I said, if that matters.

Elaborate pranks are appealing to hackers.

This site likes humor that is actually funny. This is actually funny. It's also a prank against Techcrunch, which this community loves to hate. Of course the irony is that it is still pageviews to Techcrunch.

Why do we love to hate Techcrunch? I missed the memo, apparently...fill me in.

There are some positive aspects to Techcrunch: they generally do a good job of keeping tabs on a vast field, and Crunchbase is an impressive and useful effort.

But, their particular brand of "pretendo journalism" rubs a lot of people the wrong way when they publish news without doing basic fact checking, and they tend to publish a little too much gossip and rumor.

Take Business Week and mate it with the Enquirer, add some "web-2.0"ness, and you've got TechCrunch. I can't speak for anyone else, but I do not love their Enquirer bits.

You are being downvoted because despite your claim, your question is obviously not serious.

A lot of people seem to miss the point of social news. Hackernews is not a place where "people vote on stories they think that mynameishere will like", it is a place where people vote on stories that they like.

The idea is that it is a group of like-minded people, and most of them probably have similar interests.

If you want a website with moderators, possibly try fark.

See also the Cal Tech vs MIT rivalry. That's very hacker-oriented.

Well, if a company with as much personal information as Facebook is going to pay people to 1) Delve into specific individuals' profiles, 2) Read enough information to make sure it's the right person, and then 3) Mess about with their settings, at least they did it with a sense of humour.

Not so funny sequel - seeing "Zuckerberg told everyone in PR that you were easy" appearing on each of his ex-girlfriends' profile pages.

It sounds like they did it by IP (or 'Facebook Network' membership), not account.

But everyone in the TechCrunch network saw it

I'm not sure if that means TechCrunch's offices' subnet, or the Facebook network. But either way, no big invasion of privacy.

Probably easier just to do it for everyone in the Facebook TechCrunch network, though it's possible that they used IPs.

That's a fair point. I guess my initial reaction was 'this is funny, but does that justify the means?'.

If it's easy enough to do then the means aren't controversial. Punk on!

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