Comments on: BUSTED: bing defender is Microsoft employee – and have they deleted my post on bing’s usability from bing?

By: nomalab

nomalab — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:04:14 +0000

"According to intertwitter, @bing and I share just 16 followers. It could be that, of those 16, 3 were online at 11pm-ish when I sent the direct tweet to @bing and clicked the link."

... or could it be that someone (anyone!) saw it in twitter.com/public_timeline and clicked on it to see who this raving maniac is?

By: Malcolm Coles

Malcolm Coles — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:25:21 +0000

I'm sure they didn't - although it has been 9 days now and it's still not indexed.

By: GaGaTak

GaGaTak — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:38:20 +0000

I still can't believe that they will purposefully delete that... Did they?

By: Malcolm Coles

Malcolm Coles — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:20:38 +0000

Thanks for the comments both - I've removed the mentions of hypothetical illegality and added an explanation at the top of why.

By: Ian Betteridge

Ian Betteridge — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:56:19 +0000

I'm afraid you're wrong: It's not illegal for him not to reveal he's a Microsoft employee. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (which is the law you're referring to) outlaws "misleading commercial practices". These are defined thus: "A commercial practice is a misleading action… if it causes or is likely to cause the typical consumer to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise, taking account of its factual context and of all its features and circumstances." So I'm afraid you're wrong on two counts. First, there's no evidence that he's acting on behalf of his employer, which he would have to be in order for it to be illegal (he's neither "acting for purposes related to his business" or "acting in the name of or on behalf of" his business, to use the terms from the The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which is the UK law which enshrines the EU directive.) Second, his comment contains nothing which would constitute a "misleading" statement (by the definition in the Regulations) in what he's said. He simply doesn't agree with you about how usable Bing is (or isn't). There's nothing which could (again, the words of the Regulations) "appreciably... impair the average consumer’s ability to make an informed decision". The intention of the Regulations is to prevent companies from organising campaigns which intend to mislead consumers. It's not designed to force everyone to disclose every potential conflict of interest in every commment, or to stifle the free speech of employees. Seriously, Malcolm: it's one thing to point out that he's a Microsoft employee - and he *should* have mentioned it, for form's sake. But it's entirely different to then claim his comment is "illegal". To do so errs dangerously close to claiming Microsoft *itself* is organising an astroturfing campaign, which I'm sure you wouldn't want to say.

By: Andy L

Andy L — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:16:07 +0000

"I suppose he's in the USA and Microsoft there is a different legal entity to Microsoft in the UK, so he probably isn't covered. But if Yohan had done it as a UK employee, he'd be acting illegally." No he wouldn't. Sorry, law isn't that simple. And you've Tweeted that he has broken the law despite having no evidence of where he is, which is probably libellous... I would strongly advise some redrafting on this one.