Giving the False Impression That the R blogosphere is Microsoft's Microcosm
"Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"
-Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
"R Bloggers was started by Tal Galili," this page says. "R-Bloggers.com is a blog aggregator of content contributed by bloggers who write about R (in English). The site helps R bloggers and users to connect and follow the “R blogosphere” (you can view a 7 minute talk, from useR2011, for more information about the R-blogosphere)."
Over the past year or so we've noticed that R-Bloggers.com was getting polluted with Microsoft boosters however. Here's one recent example. Just about every Microsoft product gets promoted there, which is unfortunate. We've quietly witnessed this for about a year already (didn't say anything) and someone else noticed and the same, asking us, "how can this tsunami of Microsoft spam be countered in the R community? Similar attacks are going on in the corresponding Perl and Python communities."
I said that "this is an EDITORIAL issue" and therefore "one option is to contact the editor."
The faster approach is to drop the site entirely, but that would just ignore the problem, not tackle it. It's possible starve it (others would do better in its place), rendering it invisible in one's own personal case, but others would still see it and get exposed to the Microsoft spam.
"A one-site boycott is insufficient," an associate said, "IMHO."
"Many are unlikely unaware of the nature, scope, and source of the problems. The astroturfing is intended to look grassroots."
I am therefore contacting the person who runs the site, at the very least to make him aware of the issue and what people make of it. Curation that culls "astroturfing" isn't censorship but quality control for relevance. █
