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Motrin Ad Pulled Due to Online Protests



Antagonist online response to a recent Motrin advertisement has led Johnson & Johnson to pull the offending ad and offer a public apology, reports All Things Digital.

The ad in question, which features a narrator complaining of the body pains experienced by mothers who carry their babies in modern-day papooses, riled up lots of folks, creating a furor in the blogosphere and Twitterdom. In fact, in the time it took to enter "Motrin" into the search field and wait for the page to load, the search page at Twitter yielded eight new results. It yielded 41 new results in the time it took us to write this sentence.

Due to this online outpouring of frustration, Johnson and Johnson temporarily took down Motrin's Web site to purge the video from the site, and to offer the following statement (after the break):

Twitter User Deported for Online Olympic Protest


The Chinese government has booted NYC resident Noel Hidalgo from the country after he took part in a protest of China's occupation of Tibet in Tiananmen Square. While Hidalgo is far from being the only person to be deported in response to protests during the Olympics, he is the only person who has covered his arrest and deportation live on Twitter and via the video streaming service Qik (the service lets you stream video from your phone to the Internet).

The cell phone video documenting the protest and arrest has become something of an Internet phenomenon, and it has received over 50,000 views so far. Of course, China probably shot itself in the foot here. Hidalgo, known as 'noneck' on Twitter and Qik, wouldn't have drawn nearly as much attention if the story hadn't ended in deportation. [Source: ValleyWag]

Flickr Buys Donuts for 20,000 Anti-Protesters

Flickr Anti-Protesters Demand Donuts, Get Sweet Victory

Last week uber-photo-site Flickr launched a new service enabling subscribers to post videos to the site. Users can now list their moving pictures in galleries right next to their still ones. Most Flickr members accepted this new feature with open arms, but some Luddites organized a protest to have the video feature removed. The fear was that the addition would result in an influx of jokers who would degrade the overall community.

It seems there were already plenty of jokers on the site, however, who organized themselves into an anti-protest group. That members of that group didn't want the removal of the video feature, they just wanted pastries.

The group called itself We Demand Donuts and demanded just that, stating that it wanted Flickr to buy all of its protesters pastries if it reached 20,000 members. The group hit that number, and Flickr held up its end of the bargain at San Francisco's Bob's Donut and Pastry Shop, where it bought one delicious-looking confectionery treat for every member of the group who showed up.

Based on the photos from that event (and the other meet-ups that this triggered worldwide), it looks like it was quite a success. [Source: Flickr, via geeksugar]

China Blocks YouTube Access Over Tibet Protest Videos

The flag of the People's Republic of China

The free flow of information is one of the basic rights those in open societies claim as an advantage over those who live in closed societies, and one right many Web surfers may take for granted. Case in point: if you lived in China right now, you'd find your access to YouTube denied as that country attempts to block its sizable population from viewing videos of recent demonstrations in Tibet's capital city of Lhasa.

China blocked access to the popular video site over the weekend as video images captured on cell phone cameras were posted of people protesting the Chinese government's control over the smaller Asian country.

While people around the world have been following the news of the Tibetan protests, Internet users in China, who number more than 210 million, have found only a blank page when they try to call up YouTube on their browsers. While China does encourage its people to use the internet for education and information exchange, there is also a fair amount of censorship in place. At its most basic level, pornography is blocked but also images and information that runs counter to government policy can also find itself beyond the reach of most Chinese citizens.

China has been trying to balance control with the recognized need for growth of the online industry. The country briefly sought to limit online video sharing to only state-owned companies but concern over stifling a valuable and growing industry moved the government to let private companies continue their operations – with strict guidelines, however, over content.

From AOL Money.


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Boycotting Sellers Dent eBay's Business

Boycotting Sellers Dent eBay's Business
Auction site eBay has been suffering at the hands of an online protest over a change in how it charges sellers for listing and selling goods. The change has resulted in a substantial increase in costs for sellers.

The changes lowered the initial fees for sellers to list items on eBay, but increased the commission charged on completed sales. Additionally, the feedback system was altered to eliminate the negative feedback on buyers option, making it tougher to weed out sneaky or dishonest buyers.

eBay has faced boycotts before, but none approaching the scale of the current one. Thanks to protest related activities on sites such as MySpace and Facebook, eBay sellers have been able to better organize and encourage each other to stick with the boycott.

Since the boycott started on February 18,, listings on eBay have dropped 13 percent to about 13 million items. Nancy Baughman, an eBay retailer taking part in the strike, says if she and the other activists can get the number of listings down to 12 million, then they will have made a very significant dent in the online auction house's business.



From USA Today

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Student's Snow-Day Question Causes Internet Brouhaha

Dean Tistadt, Chief Operating Officer for the Fairfax County, Virginia school system, and his wife, Candy, learned a tough lesson in the power of the Internet after an angry voicemail left on a student's cell phone became an Internet phenomenon.

The ordeal started when Devraj "Dave" S. Kori, a senior at Lake Braddock Secondary School, called Dean at his listed home phone number to find out why he had not closed the schools after three inches of snow fell in the area. Kori left his name and number on the Tistadts' answering machine. Later that day, Candy returned the call and left a furious minute-long tirade on the boy's cell phone.

"How dare you call us at home! If you have a problem with going to school, you do not call somebody's house and complain about it," she yelled. At some point, Candy refers to students in general as "snotty-nosed little brats," and towards the end of her outburst shouts, "Get over it, kid, and go to school!"

Kori was taken aback by the anger and combative tone taken by Mrs. Tisradt and decided to share it with the Internet public by posting the audio of the message -- along with Dean Tistadt's home and work numbers -- on Facebook and YouTube.

The posting has touched off all sorts of debates over whether Kori's actions constituted harassment, if Candy Tistadt overstepped her bounds, and what is considered a polite and reasonable request for information. Within a day, the clip had received hundreds of hits online. It then made its way onto the local nightly news, and, as of today, had gotten over 20,000 listeners on YouTube.

Kori, a member of his school's debate team, said he was not intending to harass. He says that he had attempted to reach Dean Tistadt at his work number and thought he had a basic right to petition a public official for more information about an issue that affected him and his fellow students. He says the disagreement probably stems from a generation gap "People in my generation view privacy differently. We are the cell phone generation. We are used to being reached at all times," said Kori. Paul Regnier, Fairfax County Schools' spokesman, retorted that the conflict was more likely the result of a "civility gap."

Needless to say, the incident has resulted in countless prank phone calls to the Tistadts and much embarrassment for Candy.

Our take -- Kori probably shouldn't have called the Tistadts' home line, but Candy's minute -long rant was certainly unwarranted. Perhaps next time she'll think twice before leaving a hostile message and try to explain to the student that calling Dean Tistadt at home is unacceptable in a calm, level-headed manner.

From Washington Post

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