Bonum Certa Men Certa

Are Microsoft Employees (Technical Evangelists) Using Spammers in Twitter?

Summary: Microsoft "technical evangelist" (euphemism for AstroTurfer on the company's payroll) appears to be operating some kind of bot programme that smears Boycott Novell

A CERTAIN pattern has gone on for far too long to be ignored. The target is Boycott Novell, so it ought to be finally brought up.



For those who require some background, we wrote about the subject several months ago when it had heated up greatly. We wrote about this in:



To tell the story very briefly, a Microsoft "technical evangelist" (TE) [1, 2, 3, 4] called Jonathan Wong came to this site with some "perception management" [1, 2], never revealing that he was a Microsoft employee until after he had been exposed. Then he wrote a post against us, quoting known anti-GNU/Linux people as a source of supposedly disgruntled people who have a problem with Boycott Novell. That was months ago. Since then, about a hundred times or more and almost at regular intervals, some Twitter accounts have been boosting his post. Here is an example just from the past few days:

Twitter results



See the similarity of the twits and the weird account names. In one case, two different accounts have the exact same avatar. This stream of twits has been going on like this for months. Those twits always come from accounts without a description and not a single person is following anyone else, which makes the characteristic of some kind of bot accounts. Jonathan Wong describes himself as "… a social media aficionado who loves to use social media tools to procrastinate optimize his own personal information stream." Maybe this is why Microsoft hired him.

More on Microsoft in Twitter
  1. More Microsoft AstroTurfing (aka 'Technical Evangelism') in Twitter
  2. User “Microsoft Incentives” Wants to be Your Friend, Too
  3. Microsoft's Twitter AstroTurf Continues
  4. Who is Pumping MSFT and Pimping Microsoft in Twitter?
  5. Microsoft Hires Federated Media for Twitter AstroTurfing
  6. Does Microsoft Still Create Twitter Accounts for Guerilla Marketing?
  7. Microsoft's AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
  8. Microsoft Twitter Bots, FTC Blowback, and Paid-for Vista 7 Glorification
  9. Microsoft Feeds Hundreds of Korean Bloggers to Promote Vista 7

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

You Need Not Be a Big Company to Defeat Microsoft If You Can Successfully Challenge Its Core "Ideas"
Maybe that's just a sign that the ideas of RMS have become too effective and thus "dangerous"
Links 10/05/2025: Germany Considers Smartphone Ban in Schools, Right to Repair Bills
Links for the day
 
Links 11/05/2025: China's Fentanylware (TikTok) Tells Kids to Vandalise Schools' Chromebooks and Increased Censorship in India
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/05/2025: Yeeting Oligarch Tech, Offline Browsing
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 10, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, May 10, 2025
One is Simply Doomed to Fail When Working for Violent Men From Microsoft and Attacking Women as Well as People Who Merely Expose Crimes or Report Real Crimes
Imagine saying to people that you "practice law" or "exercise law"
The Tariffs Are Accelerating Microsoft's Decline in China
Judging by the way things are going, there will be considerable adoption of GNU/Linux in years to come, China being one major contributing factor.
Control Your Systems, Control All Your Data
what does it take for us to control our own systems and data?
Misplacing Blame for Security Problems, Sometimes With LLM Slop That Blames "Linux" for Microsoft's Failures
Broken telephones and stochastic parrots beget plenty of Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
Links 10/05/2025: WW2 Revisionism, Further Tit-for-tat in India-Pakistan Conflict
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/05/2025: Git Server and Great LLM DDoS of 2025
Links for the day
Blizzard/Microsoft Unions Grow Ahead of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft, Apparently Starting Next Week (as Many as 30,000 Workers Laid Off by Year's End)
Microsoft already fired about 5,000-6,000 workers this year by our estimates; that's not counting resignations compelled through pressure (i.e. pushed, did not jump) and contractors
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, May 09, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, May 09, 2025
"Victory Day" - Part II: Abject Defeat to Hypocrites and Objectionable People Who Strangle Women Whilst on Microsoft's Payroll
Someone is going to have to pay for this; it won't be us
Rust Propaganda Now Amplified by Slopfarms Powered by Microsoft LLMs, Encouraging the Outsourcing of GNU/Linux Distros to Microsoft/GitHub/NSA (and a Shift Away From GPL/Copyleft)
Moving to Microsoft GitHub and adopting unfinished, untested code for highly critical bits
Links 09/05/2025: Inflation Rising and Rights to Protest Curtailed Some More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/05/2025: Good and Evil, LLMs Made the Web Worse Yet Again
Links for the day
IBM is Rotting With "Zero Internal Jobs" and Many PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans) on the Way, Typically a Fast Track Towards Layoffs Without Severance
At risk of giving air(time) to tribal sentiments, the internal joke at IBM is that to IBM "AI" stands for "All Indian"
European Patent Office (EPO) Faked "Revenue Expansion" by Granting Loads of Invalid, Illegal Patents; Staff Still Wants to Know Where That Money Went
Only about 30% of the EPO's patents are for EU entities/people
The Gerstnerisation of Microsoft: Seventh Wave of Microsoft Layoffs (Over 20,000 to be Cut) Allegedly Going to Start Shortly, Probably Start of Next Week, Microsoft Spreads Chaff and Noise Before the Big Axes Fall
we might be looking at about 50,000 people that Microsoft gets rid of this year
Links 09/05/2025: TeleMessage Blunder, More Distractions From Impending Mass Layoffs at Microsoft
Links for the day
GNU (and the FSF) Still Changing the World
Today, in 2025, GNU powers almost everything
Military-Grade Anti-Linux Microsoft Propaganda Using Microsoft LLMs in Fake 'News' Sites (Slopfarms)
This is part of a pattern
Links 09/05/2025: Analog Computer and First time at FOSDEM
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, May 08, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, May 08, 2025