Follow the bouncing distortion:
It starts on CNET, with a story that quotes anonymous “sources” saying Microsoft is “in discussions to buy controversial adware maker Claria.” (The New York Times runs a similar story later the same day, with a few more details, including a quote from its unnamed source saying, “Those in favor of the deal … believe Microsoft could help clean up the adware field,” but that the talks are falling apart.)
Then the story goes to Slashdot, where the reference to “sources” is dropped.
A week later, another Slashdot story begins “A week after word leaked out that Microsoft was negotiating an acquisition deal with Claria…” Leaked out? All of a sudden the anonymous sources are confirmed?
Boing Boing, consistently rated in the Top 10 among sites in Technorati, picks up the ball and spikes it in the end zone in the Ultimate Fantasy Bowl:
MSFT acquires spyware firm, changes antispyware app to ignore its products
Microsoft recently acquired a spyware company called Claria (known for its spyware product, Gator). They have since updated Windows’ antispyware app so that it advises users to ignore Gator spyware.
So the rumor became a confirmed story and now it’s a done deal. Not to mention that the change in the status of Claria’s products happened as much as four months ago. Back in the reality-based community, the whole story’s still just a rumor based on a pair of stories from unnamed sources, but science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, who authored the Boing Boing piece, apparently has a news feed from a parallel universe.
And to compound the error, Prof. Brad DeLong picks it up and calls Microsoft a “company behaving very badly,” because if you read it on the Internets, it must be true.
As the good Professor might say, “Why oh why can’t we have a better blogger corps?”
Update, 7/9: Boing Boing has printed a “correction” that strikes out the words recently acquired and replaces them with is rumored to be acquiring. The headline now reads MSFT acquiring spyware firm. That’s wrong. The CNET and NY Times stories say that Microsoft is “in talks” to acquire Claria and that the deal is far from a sure thing.
Even worse, Boing Boing has left the original story up, uncorrected. See the original here, and the changed version here. If I use a search engine, I have a 50-50 chance of getting the original, bollixed-up version. Sloppy, sloppy.
And the sentence that follows the “corrected” one now makes no sense at all: Boing Boing says “[Microsoft has] since updated Windows’ antispyware app so that it advises users to ignore Gator spyware.” Since when? The implication is that this was a quid pro quo, but the change in detection status for Claria’s applications was made earlier this year (as Donna Buenaventura reported), and it affected other adware companies as well. The New York Times story says the talks between Claria and Microsoft started a few weeks ago. If there’s a quid pro quo, the timeline doesn’t support it.
The real story is that Microsoft has decided that high-profile adware makers who achieve a minimum threshold of disclosure (including Claria and WhenU) will be able to get an “Ignore” rating. Reasonable people can argue that that’s a bad decision, but the Boing Boing story doesn’t do that. It tries to create a story of corruption where none exists.
Update 7/10: The uncorrected Boing Boing story is still there. Meanwhile, if you want to know more about Microsoft’s decision to change the classification of Claria’s adware, see my follow-up: Dear Microsoft: Why should we trust you to detect spyware?
Update 7/12 6:00 a.m.: As of this morning, the original, uncorrected post appears to have been deleted from Boing Boing’s servers. The “corrected” version is still online and still wrong.
Update 7/12, 6:00 p.m. PDT: No deal. Boing Boing still says “MSFT acquiring spyware firm…”
Update 11/13/2006: The original story has never been corrected.
Ed Bott 
Boing Boing annoyed me enough that I unsubscribed. It is turning into a political forum.
This is even more scary that the Microsoft – Claria story itself! BoingBoing seems to be as thrustworthy as an average TukTuk driver in Bangkok. Not good.
Not to distract you from the boing-boing-bashing — fun, isn’t it? — but I should point out that they did in fact print a correction pretty damn quickly.
Conveient to ignore that fact, eh?
See my update, Jacob. The original, uncorrected story is still live at Boing Boing, and the “corrected” version is still wrong.
I too unsubed from Boing Boing a while back. They are the techy version of Current Affair. Which probably explains why they are so popular.
Gator/GAIN/Claria is still a producer
of spyware/adware.
Just yesterday I spent an hour removing
their crap from two clients’ computers.
They can paint themselves with all the
PR that money can buy … but they’re
still purveyers of scum.
— stan
Stan, I haven’t said one word in defense of Claria. Quite the opposite. There’s plenty to criticize using the actual facts instead of fantasy, which is what appears in the Boing Boing story.
I took a class from De Long at Berkeley. He wrote on the chalkboard alot and strangely would lick all the chalk off his fingers and eat the chalk. It was weird. My classmate and I speculated that he was just hungry. Either that or he really loved the taste.
Stan? Come back home. You need your medicine. Please! Mom’s worried.
So why did MS update the Windows’ antispyware app so that it advises users to ignore Gator spyware anyway?
MSAS detects the GAIN adware components and then assigns Ignore as the recommended action. It also detects the attempt to install the software and gives the user the option to block it.
Apparently, sometime early this year, Microsoft changed this classification for several prominent adware makers. Follow the link in my 7/10 update to read why Microsoft says they did this and to get my reaction.
Can’t wait to hear the slashdot commentary when a few irresponsible bloggers get sued up the kazoo.
Hi Ed
You noted:
Umm, yes and no. It’ this phrase that
triggered my post:
I don’t agree. Gator/Claria STILL puts out
scumware. I’m in the trenches every day
removing it. Microsoft deciding, under pressure
from one or more well-funded producers of such
crap, to not recommend it’s removal, is sad/silly/pathetic/choose your own adjective.
Your 7/10 update gets a bit closer to reality.
— stan
Hi Ed
This is the sentence that triggered my post:
I must disagree.
Claria/Gator still produces scumware.
People have to pay me to take it off
their systems. Add/Remove Programs does NOT
do it.
C/G has hired a former FTC
lawyer as their “privacy” front man, used
that connection to somehow get installed on
the Homeland Security advisory team, and
pushed Microsoft into having the MS software
not immediately nuke the GAIN crap. Money may talk,
but it still can’t walk.
Microsoft yielding to their delisting pressure is pathetic. I can’t imagine
a reasonable argument justifying the change.
Look forward to hearing one if you think you’ve
got it.
— stan
Stan, are you deliberately being dense? Reasonable people (like Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing) can argue (that is, create a post making an argument) that that’s a bad decision.
Now read the rest of the paragraph. Boing Boing made a dishonest argument. My point is that if they wanted to argue that Microsoft caving in to adware publishers was a bad decision, that would be a very reasonable argument.
Sheesh.
little churlish to be criticizing Cory so soon after he survived the London bombings (by being in Michigan).
Given that the post in question was time-stamped five or so hours after the bomb attacks, I think I can safely plead not guilty.
Silicon beat first wrote about this story here, citing an anonymous source who contacted them. CNet took the story from there, then the NYTime and the Washington post. Slashdot ran the story and that is where the hysteria started. I posted this entry in trying to quell the crap and work out why they might be considering such a move (I still believe that internally, Microsoft might have been considering it, but not for the reasons everybody else thinks.. no evil motive).
BoingBoing seem to have combined that story, along with an unnoticed weblog post about Microsoft ‘downgrading’ Claria spyware. The author of that post looked at Microsoft anti-spyware after the first stories had broke, so he was obviously looking at it with the intention of finding something, and we all know when you look hard enough for something chances are you will find anything. He then went on to publish what he found as being factual, and his own conclusions were that Claria software not being removed by default by Microsoft was a result of what everybody though to believe was a pending deal between the two. If he had dug deeper, he would have found that Microsoft had downgraded Claria and other such spyware to not be removed by default due to the effects such a move might have on other installed software, such as Clarias smilies software which people actually use. If this was the case then people would be blaming Microsoft for that, a lose-lose situation.
BoingBoing did take this story and put their own spin to it, without looking into it or searching for other views, which can be forgiven in the blogging world but BB is more of an authority on news now and must tread carefully.
The original source of the ‘microsoft downgrade claria’ story was here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,13793423
A forum post that neglected to mention that this update was from May, and involved other software, so it was much earlier than the Microsoft-Claria deal speculation. It was the likes of BB who ignored the dates that things took place and linked the two to form a conspiracy theory.
I will be putting more information up about this and how the story got carried away with all references on my weblog in about half an hour.
Its not fair to single-out BoingBoing alone, a lot of other sites carried the story that Microsoft downgraded the Claria spyware threat in MAS for its own gain. It was a wicked conspiracy theory that was not really true. I wrote about how everybody got a bit carried away in regards to this story on my weblog here.
Nik, the update was actually from March 31, not May. That’s long before any acquisition talks begun, if the NY Times sources are accurate.
Ed Bott – even May is before the first Siliconbeat rumour was published, so either way the MAS update was long before that (I will update the correct date in my post). Claria first approached Microsoft to change the MAS rating its software got back in January..
What I found out about it all only took 2-3 minutes of searching, BB and all the other sites could have done the same thing.
Watch out for that shovel, it will be welded to the front of the webserver. Then the server will use its spyware to control its wheelchair to ram it into its enemies! A truly destructive tactic, one of which we should be wary.
I would like to shovel the obfuscation off the Cubic Truth. Only then will we become aware of Time Cube.