Kid Mercury's Blog - View Single Post - Calling Jason Calacanis Out (As Requested) And the Online Editorial Process

kidmercury · 07-08-2007, 08:34 AM

Jason Calacanis is a successful Internet entrepreneur who is currently the CEO of Mahalo, a human-powered search engine. Jason is known for ruffling the feathers of the search marketing community, and has recently called Seth Godin out on not addressing the Squidoo spam problem.

This quote summarizes Jason's rationale:

For the record, everyone knows I attacking [sic] anything that has to do with deceiving users or the pollution of the "infovironment."

Jason also states:

Please, if I ever pollute the web call me out on it.

Well, Jason, since you asked for it.....

Here's the Mahalo page on 9/11. Please note:

1. On the right side of the page you'll see a section called "Fast Facts." In this section one of the "facts" is that 19 hijackers died. Wrong. Some of the hijackers are still alive.

2. The second "fact" in that section is that the attack was organized by Osama Bin Laden. There is no evidence to support this; the FBI admits there is no hard evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11.

3. Third, you'll notice that the first link under the deceptively named conspiracy theories section is a link to Popular Mechanics "rebuttal" of 9/11 truth. Their rebuttal is a joke. I highly recommend the book Debunking 9/11 Debunking, by Dr. David Ray Griffin, which DESTROYS all such nonsense (seriously, DRG drops truth bombs like you wouldn't believe). Remember the Popular Mechanics article was written by the cousin of Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff.

4. Lastly, AND MOST DISTURBINGLY, you'll notice that the Popular Mechanics disinformation article has two images to the right of it on the Mahalo 911 page. These images are icons used to signify articles that are endorsed by Mahalo editors.

Please do not dispute what I am saying about about 9/11 with more disinformation. After all, I'm not really the one who's saying it -- I'm just the messenger, here to show you that the testimony of 9/11 survivors, architects and engineers, pilots, veterans, physicists, college professors, top ranking government officials from around the world, a peer-reviewed scientific process, and psychologists and psychiatrists clearly prove that 9/11 was not pulled off by a guy in a cave but rather by a criminal element within the United States government working with criminal elements within certain intelligence agencies around the world (namely MI6, ISI, and Mossad). Remember the NORAD war games, remember building 7, remember the signs of foreknowledge, remember CIA insider trading, remember Dr. Steven Jones' scientific studies, remember Larry Silverstein's admissions (and his collections). Remember historical precedents like Operation Northwoods, and subsequent events like the 7/7 London bombings. In sum, do your homework before dismissing this as just some nonsense.

So Jason, here I am, calling you out on it (since you asked to be called out in such scenarios). You may also want to check out your other pages related to US history, it contains much of the standard disinfo.

So ball's in your court -- you can either improve those pages and be the information warrior you were born to be or you can ignore this post and continue hypocritically talking trash on Seth Godin and search marketers. Choice is yours.

To be fair, I doubt Jason crafted this page -- he may not even know it was crafted. But it does introduce what I feel is one of the most important issues is in online publishing: what is the editorial process like? Digg and Wikipedia will say it is community-reviewed. Google will say it is based on user behavioral data. Mahalo will say it is manual and largely internalized within the firm. Which model is best -- or perhaps more appropriately, which model is best in which condition? I think there is still a good bit of room for innovation in the editorial process, and I think the best is still yet to come.

07-08-2007, 08:34 AM	#1
kidmercury Administrator Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 3,987 MercBucks: 965,024 Awards Showcase Total Awards: 4	Calling Jason Calacanis Out (As Requested) And the Online Editorial Process Jason Calacanis is a successful Internet entrepreneur who is currently the CEO of Mahalo, a human-powered search engine. Jason is known for ruffling the feathers of the search marketing community, and has recently called Seth Godin out on not addressing the Squidoo spam problem. This quote summarizes Jason's rationale: For the record, everyone knows I attacking [sic] anything that has to do with deceiving users or the pollution of the "infovironment." Jason also states: Please, if I ever pollute the web call me out on it. Well, Jason, since you asked for it..... Here's the Mahalo page on 9/11. Please note: 1. On the right side of the page you'll see a section called "Fast Facts." In this section one of the "facts" is that 19 hijackers died. Wrong. Some of the hijackers are still alive. 2. The second "fact" in that section is that the attack was organized by Osama Bin Laden. There is no evidence to support this; the FBI admits there is no hard evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11. 3. Third, you'll notice that the first link under the deceptively named conspiracy theories section is a link to Popular Mechanics "rebuttal" of 9/11 truth. Their rebuttal is a joke. I highly recommend the book Debunking 9/11 Debunking, by Dr. David Ray Griffin, which DESTROYS all such nonsense (seriously, DRG drops truth bombs like you wouldn't believe). Remember the Popular Mechanics article was written by the cousin of Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff. 4. Lastly, AND MOST DISTURBINGLY, you'll notice that the Popular Mechanics disinformation article has two images to the right of it on the Mahalo 911 page. These images are icons used to signify articles that are endorsed by Mahalo editors. Please do not dispute what I am saying about about 9/11 with more disinformation. After all, I'm not really the one who's saying it -- I'm just the messenger, here to show you that the testimony of 9/11 survivors, architects and engineers, pilots, veterans, physicists, college professors, top ranking government officials from around the world, a peer-reviewed scientific process, and psychologists and psychiatrists clearly prove that 9/11 was not pulled off by a guy in a cave but rather by a criminal element within the United States government working with criminal elements within certain intelligence agencies around the world (namely MI6, ISI, and Mossad). Remember the NORAD war games, remember building 7, remember the signs of foreknowledge, remember CIA insider trading, remember Dr. Steven Jones' scientific studies, remember Larry Silverstein's admissions (and his collections). Remember historical precedents like Operation Northwoods, and subsequent events like the 7/7 London bombings. In sum, do your homework before dismissing this as just some nonsense. So Jason, here I am, calling you out on it (since you asked to be called out in such scenarios). You may also want to check out your other pages related to US history, it contains much of the standard disinfo. So ball's in your court -- you can either improve those pages and be the information warrior you were born to be or you can ignore this post and continue hypocritically talking trash on Seth Godin and search marketers. Choice is yours. To be fair, I doubt Jason crafted this page -- he may not even know it was crafted. But it does introduce what I feel is one of the most important issues is in online publishing: what is the editorial process like? Digg and Wikipedia will say it is community-reviewed. Google will say it is based on user behavioral data. Mahalo will say it is manual and largely internalized within the firm. Which model is best -- or perhaps more appropriately, which model is best in which condition? I think there is still a good bit of room for innovation in the editorial process, and I think the best is still yet to come.