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(a.k.a. “You are what Google says you are”)
A powerful lesson this week courtesy of Dan York, my friend and co-correspondent at FIR.
His employer, Voxeo, has recently been the target of some pretty outrageous digital lies, including the company being controlled by the Israeli Defence Force and being somehow sneakily and underhandedly involved in Iowa political wranglings.
WTF?!
As Dan says on one of the Voxeo blogs:
After we first saw these articles - and stopped laughing, we admittedly thought the assertions were so far out there that they wouldn’t be taken seriously. However, we have had a handful of email inquiries and have seen the text continue to be cross-posted to other blogs, so let’s just set the record straight for anyone searching on the topic…
First, Voxeo is a privately held, employee-owned company, and is not affiliated with, owned or controlled by any outside companies or interests. No Israeli defense firms, Russian mafia, aliens from Area 51 or anyone else like that.
What is even more worrying is that Dan’s post attracts some pretty ‘interesting’ responses from some of the lunatic fringe which North America seems to have in abundance.
Crazy, isn’t it — one of the world’s richest countries, a superpower, a country that spends billions of dollars a year on technology, but a country that is also home to some of the weirdest conspiracy theories and barking-mad adherents to them for whom no amount of logic, truth or reason will satisfy… I remember the high school joke about aliens: if they were so smart how come they only ever show themselves to some of the most unbelievable people?
It’s cost Dan a considerable amount of time to uncover all of the places where the lies about his employer exist, and to then challenge them.
Even on the Voxeo blog, where the rabid conspiracy theorists voice their views, Dan is nothing if not polite and friendly. I’m not sure I’d show the same courtesy.
Your digital reputation is out there… what are you actively doing to manage it?
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Currently listening to: Supertramp - Crime of the Century - Asylum
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Dan York 01.09.08 at 6:35 am
Lee,
Thanks for your kind words. My aim all along has been to be civil and point out the facts. At some point I’ll put some more information up on my http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/ blog about some of the lessons I’ve learned over the past week. It certainly has been a week I won’t forget for a while…
Dan