All politicians and their campaign staffs practice message control. That is, they craft a message, often spending money testing the message with focus groups composed of various demographic segments, and then struggle to keep the entire campaign “on message.”  While I can support their desire to control a site embedded with the candidate’s name, “http://www.myspace.com/barackobama,”  the method of simply grabbing the site was inappropriate.

According to published reports, the site’s creator/owner, Joe Anthony, labored for approximately two-plus years, at his own expense, to create this informational/tribute site. Attracting over 160,000 friends linked to the page as a consequence of his good work.

Even though MySpace, the wildly popular social networking site, is owned by NewsCorp — yes, the “fair and balanced, O’Reilly, Hannity” Fox, management wasted no time in turning over the site to Obama’s people.

What makes this situation especially egregious is that the Obama campaign team had been providing Joe Anthony with content and was provided with password access to allow the campaign staff to make site changes.

Like all political machines, the campaign at least tried to compensate Anthony for his efforts. Anthony threw out a number which he apparently felt fairly compensated him for his efforts — the campaign rejected the number — and the takeover ensued.

Considering the amount of money spent on a single media buy, the money that was mentioned did not seem excessive or out-of-line. Especially since Anthony’s 160,000 friends was said to be more than four times greater than other candidates.

MySpace, perhaps fearing a major backlash like that which happened recently to the news site Digg, allowed Anthony to take his contacts and use them to tell everybody what had happened. 

You may be wondering why we are even mentioning this? First, it is indicative of the effort expended by a political campaign to control a portion of the Internet. And more importantly, it says something about the candidate and his people. Lacking the ability to amicably settle this matter and keep what, for all intents and purposes, is a devoted fan, makes one wonder if the candidate or his people could actually negotiate with world leaders in this increasingly dangerous world.   

What can YOU do?

Watch all candidates closely for the skills needed to successfully lead the United States out of these turbulent times. Remember what you see … and VOTE accordingly.

But, let Joe Anthony tell you how sad he feels in his own words…

“5.01.01 What happened to the Obama profile?
Current mood: disappointed

Friends,

Many of you are probably wondering what happened to the Obama profile. The campaign, with the help of Myspace, have seized control of the profile without my consent, and are using it to refer traffic to a new profile they created. I have been blocked from having access to the profile. The campaign will probably have a different perspective on the events leading up to this, but until my personal profile is deleted, I'm going to take a stand on this. I believe what they did is just wrong, and someone should say something.

Here is an email I sent to Micah at techpresident.com. Any questions, let me know:



Thanks Micah,

I want to be careful about this, but also I think it's unfair that they deleted this community when they could have left it up as an unofficial fan site as it has been for the last two and a half years. The campaign may say that this was my decision, and this is not true.

I did want to be paid, if we were to continue working together . This was not an attempt to use this profile for commercial purposes. This was an attempt to keep working my ass off on this profile, for Barack Obama, and for the enormous community of supporters on Myspace.

Since January, as you may know, and as many in the Myspace community know, I've been working on the page around the clock. I started this profile in November of 2004 and it grew steadily since then. In January and February the media started to notice, and I began to work even harder because I reallized what an impact the Myspace could really have.

People were actually registering to vote, making contributions, asking questions, putting banners on their pages, etc. I know this because I constantly received emails about this, and I replied to every single one to thank them or point them in the right direction if they needed more information.

The campaign got involved in February and although at first it was very exciting, it quickly became clear that they just had no interest in me or my involvement. They only wanted to take control of the profile and get on with it. I bit the bullet for a while and kept working for the good of the campaign, but they quickly went from passive aggressive, to aggressive, and then eventually just rotten and dishonest.

For the past few weeks, the campaign decided it would be better if they just took control of the profile and we decided to try to come to some agreement. By this time, I didn't have quite as much respect for the campaign guys, and frankly felt like I was just being used. They knew about this profile the entire time, and really just waited until it got enough media coverage and friends request so they could step in and bully me out of it.

The last few weeks were just insane. They kept scheduling phone conferences with me, I would wake up early that day after barely sleeping the night before, I'd take time off work, etc. and each after another would be postponed at the last minute. This went on for weeks.

It got to the point where I didn't feel comfortable turning the profile over to the campaign unless they paid for it. This was largely symbolic. The same campaign that inspired me to work so hard to build this community, the same campaign whose underlying message stresses "the power of the individual to have an impact on politics", was constantly downplaying my role in this, bullying me, and a couple of other things that were just rotten and dishonest (specifically in connection with Myspace, and the campaign quashing a recent NPR interview about the profile).

In a conversation with Chris from the campaign last week or the week before, Chris suggested a one-time fee to transfer over the profile to them and that they discussed this with Myspace and they were agreeable with any arrangement we could work out. He did not suggest how much, or what sort of a fee. He did say that he needed it by the next morning so we scheduled another meeting and I stayed up all night working on a proposal that I thought would be fair to everyone. This was a positive conversation and he seemed sincere enough.

That meeting finally happened yesterday. It was clear at that time that there was no "one-time fee". I felt like it was a bit of a setup so that they could have a reason to take the profile without my consent.

I was accused of using this profile for commercial purposes. I was threatened that I would be responsible if the profile was deleted (they even followed up via email to be sure I knew it was my fault!) The conversation really was about them taking control of the profile. There was no counter offer, or anything to suggest that they had any intention of paying me anything at all.

At this point there was no way I would turn this community over to them and would rather keep it as an unofficial site and keep doing what I've been doing. I expressed this, and they said that if I did not turn the profile over to them immediately, they would delete it and all of my hard work would go to waste. They reiterated this several times, and repeated "You are the one making the decision to kill this profile". In fact, I responded each time, that I have no plans to delete this profile, and that decision would be between them and Myspace. (I even added that he sounded like Bush telling congress/senate it was their decision not to fund the troops. How hypocritical is this!)

Finally, Chris from the campaign emailed me, indicating that Myspace needed my consent to give them access to the profile. I replied that Mypace did not have my consent to grant access to the profile to anyone.

An hour or so later, I was blocked from the profile and the content was altered to redirect traffic to the new, "Official" profile. Myspace has in fact granted access to the profile without my permission.

This was not about money and I don't believe that one person who has interacted with me via the Obama profile over the past couple of years would be able to say that my efforts were anything but sincere. This was about holding a campaign to their message, about acknowledging my work, and taking this community seriously.

I think I did the right thing. I wanted a fair outcome for everyone, but unfortunately that's not what happened. In fact, I think this was enormously offensive to both me and the Myspace community. I could understand Myspace/Newscorp doing this, but didn't think Obama's campaign could have the audacity to do such a thing.

Apparently the message here is, as an individual, if you have too big of an impact, you're just a liability.

This is how Obama lost my vote, and one of his strongest supporters.

Sincerely,

-Joe Anthony

p.s. Like I said, I'm passionate about this right now. All this work, all this progress is down the drain, and I'm absolutely heart-broken.”

A reminder from OneCitizenSpeaking.com: a large improvement can result from a small change…

— steve

Research:  See http://techpresident.com/node/301 for another view of this story