[liberationtech] Avaaz, is this for real?

[Dave Karpf]

Agreed that that's what makes it importantly different. This wasn't the Comm department responding to reporters, it was an active fundraising ask.

I'm withholding judgment for the moment, but sincerely hope the Avaaz folks will be more open with the tech experts on this list. At the moment, this looks a LOT like a crass fundraising ploy. If so, I personally would lose a lot of respect for the org.

DK

Sent from my iPad

On May 4, 2012, at 6:36 PM, Okhin <okhin at okhin.fr> wrote:

> On Fri, 4 May 2012 15:48:35 -0400
> Sahar Massachi <Sahar at brandeis.edu> wrote:
> 
>> I'm a bit concerned about all the muttering about Avaaz's sensationalism.
>> 
>> Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding something, but the following
>> scenario seems pretty plausible to me:
>> 
>> The Avaaz site comes under some sort of attack. The tech team at Avaaz
>> gives a quick "idiots guide" to what's going on to their communications
>> team, and then goes back to trying to deal with the problem. The
>> communications team has a partially confused understanding of exactly
>> what's going on, but tries to deal with the situation as best they can.
>> When technically minded journalists want to talk to Avaaz, the
>> communications staff doesn't want to bother their still-hard-at-work tech
>> team, so they give unsatisfying, vague, and unhelpful replies to these
>> journalists".
>> 
>> Am I missing something?
>> 
> 
> Yeah, they started a funding campaign to fight the attack and, while
> the attack has stopped (according to their claim), it's still open and
> their goal is 35k$ (and they're at 33k$)for what?
> https://secure.avaaz.org/en/massive_attack_on_avaaz_a/?fp
> 
> Next time I've got a spam bot raiding my corporate network, I'll ask this amount of money to my boss. Just to see he's face.
> 
> Okhin
> 
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