Bribery
Speaking of “free tea”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2007/01/02/tea/, this new practice of giving things away to bloggers is bothering some. Joel in particular is afraid our credibility is at stake:
bq. I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and the only conclusion I can come to is that this is ethically indistinguishable from bribery…These gifts reduce the public trust in blogs…this is the most frustrating thing about the practice of giving bloggers free stuff: it pisses in the well, reducing the credibility of all blogs. [ "Bribing Bloggers":http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html ]
You can’t hear me but I’m giggling.
Of course, Joel is speaking in the context of Microsoft giving away free laptops for reviews of Vista, which is pretty much beyond the pale. It’s hard to see how a several-thousand-dollar gift for a review is anything but an attempt at bribery. But screener tickets, a free book with the promise of a review, free tea in exchange for a link — these are small beans. And I think most reasonable people understand the mechanics.
Credibility doesn’t come with asceticism, and some people are inclined to see sell-outs where there are none anyway. Joel even admits this:
bq. Recently I wrote a nice article, for example, about Sonos. I bought the system with my own money, liked it, thought it had some great UI that programmers should pay attention to. Most people understood the article to be what it was: a positive review about a good product, influenced only by the fact that the product was good. But some people thought it was just a paid advertisement.
And Gord was told his credibility suffered “because he said Kwanzaa”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2007/01/04/damn-you-for-being-politically-correct/.
Just selling advertising space on their blogs is enough to convince people you’re on the take. Or saying you’re a Democrat. Or having a broken image. And yet there are people who will willingly order from “Zombie Spammers”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2004/01/02/maybe-they-actually-do-talk-that-way/ or give their checking account numbers to Nigerians who ask nicely. People have strange ideas.
Honesty, transparency, and fair-minded commentary are more reliable ways to earn and keep your credibility.
Anyway. “Reducing the credibility of all blogs?” That’s a laff. Has he surfed blogs recently?
