The internet amplifies reputational risk. My guess is that if HBGary has any future they will at the very minimum have to change their company name. Reading some of the leaked emails provides (at least for me) a shocking insight into the dark side of the internet and how social networks can be abused for sinister purposes. Assuming HBGary isn't the only company involved in these sorts of machinations it raises some really big and serious questions about the future of democracy and the ability of governments to create fake consensus using "persona management software".
The power of publicity (both negative and positive) is now in the hands of everyone not just the hands of powerful institutions such as the traditional press or the government. Wikileaks and anonymous' hijinx are just one example of the brave new world we're entering, it'll be fascinating to see how it will play out.
My hunch is that this very social network and its close cousin reddit are being manipulated by groups following discordian ideologies. In short, it's being manipulated for fun and "profit." ("Profit" in the form of media-manipulation capability.) In other words, it's being manipulated for the LULZ. (By people who don't know how to analyze what they read and argue cogently.)
The flavor of logic and discourse on this site has taken a definite turn for the worse. Nonsensical and somewhat juvenile reactions to my comments occur with frightening regularity.
By "Discordian," I'm thinking you mean the TAZ-theory and other stuff from RAW's other work, not so much the carefree pranksterism of the Principia Discordia, right? Either way, it's a model for which I hold such a low prior probability that it would take a lot of evidence to convince me, but the latter seems to have more internal consistency.
As for your link, people thought you were talking about the overreaching of the Tolkien estate; you were talking about what appeared to be a button taking sides in an imaginary cultural divide. Simple miscommunication.
You did start the comment with "My reaction is: so?", a statement seemingly directed at the actual content of the article, not the (largely irrelevant in the context of the article) content of the button.
People got confused by your somewhat unclear (at least to some people), off-topic comment, and you started ranting about people not using their brains, lacking reading comprehension, being lazy and small-minded.
Wouldn't it suffice to point out that you were commenting on the content of the button, without attacking the people confused by the comment?
People got confused by your somewhat unclear (at least to some people), off-topic comment
What actually happened: People read the first line, jumped to a conclusion, and further reading/brain activity was a fail.
I think it speaks volumes when you have to comment with this level of "tl;dr" mentality in mind. I did not have to do that in days past.
I long for the days when I could simply express thoughts needing 3 or more sentences for complete expression on HN. This used to be the big advantage of commenting in text over speaking. Now, I have to treat the first line of each comment like a headline, because the pool of readers has already jumped to a conclusion.
It's up to the writer to communicate their thoughts clearly. A writer should only blame their audience for not understanding if their statements are obviously unambiguous. However, you were writing on an online forum about a topic that was only tangentially related to the subject, began your post with an inflammatory statement, never clearly stated what you were even talking about, and then blamed the lack of comprehension on the other end. If you're communicating in text to strangers, it's best to err on the side of being overly specific, especially when speaking about a different topic than the one being currently discussed.
Sorry if this comes off as harsh, but people blaming their poor communication on others is a pet peeve of mine.
However, you were writing on an online forum about a topic that was only tangentially related to the subject
The article was about a button, and what Tolkien's estate did about it. I guess you could say "only tangentially."
If you're communicating in text to strangers, it's best to err on the side of being overly specific
More specificity is fine. Specificity is not the issue here. If you knew of the contents of the button, the comment makes sense. If you read the comment, then looked at the link and the article, the comment makes sense. I draw the line at those reading only the 1st sentence and not bothering to make sense of the 2nd and 3rd sentence. How is that any different from a dog parsing an angry utterance from a human containing 'Fido'?
I don't know anything about LULZ, but given the content of the HBGary emails it's entirely possible that "personas" are deployed on this and other noteworthy forums, in accordance with their rent-a-bot business model. However, at least on HN it would be difficult for these to be "botted out", due to the usually higher quality commenting, although voting up "noisy" submissions could degrade the overall quality.
I don't know anything about LULZ, but given the content of the HBGary emails it's entirely possible that "personas" are deployed on this and other noteworthy forums
Such bot sockpuppet swarms had been around for years before HBGary Federal ever tried to sell them to corporations and the government.
on HN it would be difficult for these to be "botted out", due to the usually higher quality commenting
You don't need that much commenting to manipulate HN. Just getting karma up to the point of being able to submit on a number of accounts is enough to enable a lot of manipulation. Being able to recruit 20 or so college aged users for a several days would be enough to get you started. Increasing the speed of submissions past a certain point reduces the influence of the established population and increases the power of voting cabals.
The most disturbing thing about this episode is that DOJ referred BoA to HBGary. It is truly scary when government is in the business of targeting its own individuals. One has to wonder how it is different from Ben Ali or Gaddafi targeting their own people. Sure the scale is different, but the principle is the same.
Actually, DOJ recommended the law firm that ended up talking to HBGary and Palantir and ... whoever the third one was.
Not that it isn't egregious for the DOJ to recommend reputation fixup to Bank of America because BoA is presumably about to get hammered by Wikileaks disclosure.
We need websites that track _individuals_ for their reputation instead of just businesses.
I recently had a moving company move my car across the country. I picked the #1 rated broker in the United States the last 2 years running. They're just the broker, though. They pick an actual trucking company to move your car. I found out that the individuals involved in the company moving my car had opened 3 other companies in the past 4 years and closed them all. I dug more and found that they had absolutely horrible ratings on the biggest rating site for car-hauling companies and also horrible ratings on the BBB site. Luckily, I got my car without incident, but we need a good way to track scum.
If you tried hard and played by the rules in business and didn't do shady things and failed, then I can understand trying again without serious stigma, but if you're forming new companies all the time, you should be informally punished through lots of information/transparency. It's easy to say "don't go with a company that hasn't been around for X years", but that's really unfair to legit startups trying to innovate.
I never made the connection with Ryder trucks, that's an interesting one. It's sort of a reverse Q-tip effect, where instead of your brand being generically associated with your product, it's associated with the worst possible thing it could be used for. Few products have been so spectacularly misused as to warrant such treatment.
Anyway, my personal favorite has always been Philip Morris turning into Altria Group. I can just imagine the meeting where they came up with that one: "you know what, fuck it, let's just make up a nice sounding word."
On the other hand, it is great for companies that are falsely accused, and the false accusation sticks. I've seen people make the most ridiculous false claims on forums, then others find these when Googling and repeat them any time the company gets mentioned. Several years later, someone will mention that company in passing, and then someone pops up saying they plant child porn on your computer or steal your credit card.
It's nice when going into a new line of business to be able to do it under a new name and not have to deal with that crap.
Tallyrand, Napoleon's Foreign Minister, observed that one of the functions of a government is to rename institutions which have, under the old name, become odious.
Or replace the "a" with an "i": Ironn Barr. It will be a unique enough name that anyone's first impression will be "That's a pretty kickass name" as opposed to "You the HBGary guy?".
This is the first positive thing I've read to come out of this fiasco (and I don't say that lightly, as I am particularly sensitive to companies suffering security breaches; but they've handled this about as poor as one could).
Some of the stuff he was doing was pretty clever, and he'll have no shortage of customers if he continues down that path. Taking on Anonymous for advertising purposes however has turned out to be not too bright. His former clients are distancing themselves as fast as possible, but next time they'll just make sure their payments can't be traced to them. "Oh, we didn't know he was doing such things". Bullshit....most companies don't care about ethics, and the US government certainly doesn't at a fundamental level either.
The government and large defence companies certainly do care about ethics. It's just a different 'kind' of ethics than you would normally envision. Its more about your appearance to the general public, and your market than anything else. If the general public perceives your action an unethical, then it is, and it is detrimental to your company.
I've worked for several defence contractors, and each one is crazy about ethical training. Monthly online ethics training courses are mandatory. Any perception of wrongdoing is incredibly harmful when dealing with the federal government. Billion dollar contracts are won and lost based on those perceptions.
But they don't care about ethics for ethical reasons, they care about them for PR reasons...but maybe thats what you said.
My point was, many customers,the government included, would love to have some of this information, and access to social botnets. The background of the seller is irrelevant.
Of course your ethical training at work is top notch. I've done work at similar companies, and I have to pass ethical tests on a regular basis, yet, we have incidents that set records, in a bad way. If you think taking tests at work means your company is taking something seriously, you haven't been working long enough. :)
Without Barr, it's likely that Federal is over (that is assuming that it isn't already over regardless), which is probably not a bad thing for HBGary but will be for anyone who invested in federal.
I think the lesson for everyone here is not to fund a company sharing your brand name without some degree of control over what they're doing and the ability to immediately fire the guy in charge if they endanger the parent.
Who didn't see that coming after the embarrassing fiasco with Anonymous? I've been following this story pretty closely via Salon.com and the excellent series at Ars Technica and it seemed to be only a matter of time for Barr to make an exit.
Indeed. Ars Technica has been covering it in excellent depth. I'm just surprised it didn't happen earlier. From the onset, especially HBGary's reaction, it seemed the only way out was that Barr would be canned or step down.
This is wildly irrelevant, but I have to ask: does anyone else experience profound irritation at the name "HBGary"?
Every time I read the name, my reading flow stops and I stare at the name. HBWhat? Does that stand for something? Are they initials? Who is Gary? Are they from Indiana?
It triggers this bizarre, deep-down irritation like nothing else I've ever seen.
The name comes from the three co-founders. The H is for Hoglund (Greg). The B is for Bracken (Shawn). The Gary is for Jon Gary who left the company shortly after it was founded.
It is also indicative of how uncreative the founders were. To me, I intuit this as clear confirmation that it was a company founded with no strategy other than to suckle from the teat of defense spending.
How much you want to bet that the H. B. and G. of this company had ties/tenure in DoD or other governmental departments and were thus situated to reply to RFPs from their previous colleagues.
In pick up artist lingo, HB stands for "Hot Babe" to keep their names anonymous. So for example you meet a girl with a hotrod you would call her HBHotrod. Had to chuckle when I saw the name HBGary.
I don't have quite the same reaction, but my gut instinct thinks the company name is something my 10 year old son would have come up with. If his name was Gary, anyway.
It's right on par with naming your company "ImSo$#@!Awesome Inc." or something.
Likewise for GoDaddy, hhgregg, and scores of startup names. It's like my brain is looking for a meaningful word and halts briefly when it can't find one. Textual basilisks?
GoDaddy just always makes me think porn before DNS. I can't imagine what thoughts were going through their heads when they thought "GoDaddy. Yeah. That makes me think 'major DNS server'. Lets go with that."
To make matters worse, they've got women wearing shirts that say "GoDaddy" on their front page. Gotta wonder what their target audience is, with that featuring so prominently.
GoDaddy is the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, so their target audience of "everybody with a functioning libido" seems to have worked out well for them. I think it was the Super Bowl ads starting in 2005 that basically got their brand stuck in the head of anybody considering starting a website. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
I've been using GoDaddy for quite some time now. Their user interface is atrocious, and much of their business model seems to be "let's hope they don't notice extra services we conveniently added." I put up with it for years, though, because of low prices.
Lately, though, I'm bothered in a different way. It seems like they want to create an image of celebrating empowered women. Their execution, however, revolves around turning them immediately into sex objects. My conclusion is that Bob Parsons has a fetish about putting women under his control, he made it his corporate image, and it creeps me out.
I reluctantly switched to GoDaddy because none of the TUCOWS-based registrars could handle IPv6 glue records, and I wanted to get my external nameservers running dual-stack. GoDaddy was surprisingly ahead of the curve on IPv6 support.
Their marketing is truly cringe-worthy though. I only keep the registration of that single domain there, and I will probably move it elsewhere when it expires in a couple years.
I had just assumed it was based on names of people associated with its founding, like JDEdwards, JDPower, TD Waterhouse, HP, Lockheed-Martin or even the Debian project. (Do those other arbitrary names trigger a similar irritation?)
With HBGary, though, only the 'H' can be clearly attributed to a founder declared on their 'about' page, Greg Hogland. But they probably had other people in mind for the rest at the founding.
The TD in TD Waterhouse actually stands for Toronto-Dominion. They picked that up after the merger of the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank of Canada waaaaay back then.
I have the same problem with any company that has the word "solutions" in their name.
My problem with it is that by having the term "solutions" in your name, you have a clearly defined problem for which your company is the only answer. Invariably, I find that any company with the word "solutions" in their name cannot succinctly define what it is they do.
They imply they are the solution to something, but I just see it as a company founded by the marketing department.
