BT: The censoring starts

November 20th, 2008 § 0 comments

ISP Review:

BT has removed a significant number of major Phorm (BT WebWise) related topics from its customer focused beta discussion forum (bt beta forum), including some from as far back as February this year and one that was nearly 200 pages long.

The reason for removing the posts?

Our broadband support forums are designed to be a place where customers can discuss technical support issues and offer solutions. To ensure that the forums remain constructive we’re tightening up our moderation policies and will be deleting threads that don’t provide constructive support. For example, we have removed a number of forum discussions about BT Webwise.

If you do want to find out more about BT Webwise, we provide lots of information and the facility to contact us at www.bt.com/webwise.

So, the forum is only for technical support then. If you want information about Webwise, BT will happily provide all the propaganda information you could ever need.

The Reg:

A first thread on WebWise extended to almost 200 pages, before being closed in late September when BT’s third trial of the system began. It was still available to read however and a new thread was started by BT Beta moderators, which continued until yesterday. All record of either has now been removed.

Adam Liversage, BT’s chief press officer, told The Register: “The reason why we’ve done this is that the point of the forums is technical support and the WebWise threads weren’t appropriate.”

He said the fact that BT had chosen not only to close the threads but delete them entirely was insignificant. “It doesn’t matter either way because the people who are following this will have the threads backed up in multiple copies,” he said.

Not appropriate because people were say bad stuff and the poor little company was feeling a bit picked on, was it?
Can I have a show of hands of people that regularly keep multiple copies of forum threads. Ordinary people that is, not tech ninjas, because it’s ordinary people that would find this information most helpful.
And if keeping to technical support of BT product and services was so important then why do other areas extend beyond that criteria?

Forum: Online Security.
For help with BT’s online security products and everything else related to online security.”

Transparency? Reassuring? Open? Bollox is it. No wonder so many people are worried about it.

Update:
The title of the post is rubbish. It isn’t that the censoring starts. It has probably just got less subtle.
One of the distinguishing features of this blog is my inability to come up with appropriate or imaginative titles for the posts’, dontchyaknow.

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