Twitter, auxiliary cop
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “This is a true story,” blogs Koen Delvaux.
“About a month ago I had a negative experience as a customer of a retail outlet,” he says, going on, “As I do with many things that draw my attention, I shared my feelings of this experience on Twitter.”
But then —-
—- “I got a phone call from a police officer, telling me that a complaint will be filed against me if I didn’t remove the Tweet.”
But, but, Twitter is vehicle for 21st digital century communications, not a police tool, surely?
Meanwhile, “I can understand the aggravation of the shopkeeper,” says Kurt adding »»»
If you typed in the name of his shop in Google, my Tweet (unfavorable for his shop) appeared 3rd in the search results. What I don’t understand is why he would want to take the matter to the police. If he would have sent me a friendly email with an apology for what happened and how my tweet is damaging his business, I would probably have deleted the tweet and maybe even given his business some positive exposure.
But that didn’t happen. Apparently, the shopkeeper does not understand a fundamental change that the internet is causing:
Social networks empower us all to share our opinions. This is no longer the privilege of manufacturers or advertisers who can control the media. Blogs and social networks are now a more powerful influencer than the newspapers. Your customer will talk about you online.
To offer the shopkeeper a chance to tell his side of the story, I did send him a mail to ask for his reaction. However, he choose not to communicate with me. If he would start legal proceedings against me he has little ground. I did not insult a person, but described an experience in a shop (where multiple people are working). I did not accuse the shop of a felony, but merely stated that I was misled by the shop attendant. And yes, although my Tweet was accurate, the 140 characters limit of a tweet did not help in making my point without being direct.
Therefore, I deleted my tweet and include the content of my email to the shopkeeper in this post. My e-mail more accurately describes what happened and what I concluded out of those facts.
“Although my conclusions might be wrong, I am still waiting for the shopkeeper to respond,” Kurt adds.
They just dont get it.
But they will.
(Cheers, Cliff)
October, 2009
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October 15th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
“As I do with many things that draw my attention, I shared my feelings of this experience on Twitter.”
what a loser. twitter is for losers. who cares?
October 15th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Personally I would have left the tweet as long as it didn’t contain any threats or of the like. It sounds like the shopkeeper is just completly ignorant. If your tweet is coming up in third, then he obviously doesn’t have a good Internet presence and should execute a plan to be more “known” on the Internets. If the police are going to decide to control your free speech (I guess depending on what country you are in), then I’d battle it.
Him going to the police is probably the absolute worse thing he could have done… Well maybe 2nd worse thing he could have done.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
I would have left it up. The shopkeeper is completely out of line. Instead of trying to provide for a customer, he threatened to call the police. He deserves all the bad press he gets.
I don’t use twitter….. but it is popular enough to have its own anti-twitter troll on this site. Maybe I’ll check it out.
October 17th, 2009 at 2:03 am
Did anyone visit his blog to see the email he sent? All his wife wanted was a new battery for his watch…the store told him the watch was broken so he could buy a new one. When she brought his old watch home, he put another battery in and it worked fine. All he stated on his Twitter was that the store is try to rip you off. Hell Twitter or not….this shop owner feels like he can stop the guy from even telling his friends that they were trying to rip him off.
I don’t use Twitter, or even like it, but for this situation, I would love to use something like that, especially against a chain type store…. we spend enough money as consumers, it is about time that we finally have a global “Word of Mouth” against this type of business practice. I will gladly pay top dollar for quality service, but if you are just going to try and make a larger sale by telling me a lie, I will spread the word right away. It used to be, satisfied customers will tell 2 people, but unsatisfied customers will tell 20. Now, it can be satisfied customers will tell 2 to 20, but unsatisfied will tell the world.