Joel Johnson of Boing Boing Gadgets caused a bit of a stir yesterday, appearing on an AT&T Tech Channel online show and changing the subject to discuss AT&T’s plans to filter the Internet.
As Joel says:
As you can see from the video, the crew ended up scrubbing the interview about half-way through. Figuring that might happen, I asked my steely-nerved friend Richard Blakeley to tape the first take. I wanted to make sure that we had a record of the event, primarily to ensure that AT&T would have no reason to try to bury the interview entirely—the same reason I am running this clip now, while discussion about what to do with my segment in post-production is surely underway.
After the crew got their wits about them—they were not very happy with me, understandably—we went on to shoot a second take, which to Hugh’s credit also included not only talk of gadgets, but of network neutrality and AT&T’s collusion with the NSA. I look forward to seeing that segment air on the The Hugh Thompson Show.
It’s yet another lesson for all you Join The Conversation/Two-Way Dialogue/New Transparency/Consumer Engagement gurus: Companies want to control the conversation as much as possible. And it could get very, very ugly.
Thanks to The Consumerist for pointing to this.
