Lessons Learn: When good people do nothing evil is propagated unchallenged

When David Crownborn and Esther Crownborn were subjected to a tagmobbing and tabbonmbing attack by a few disgruntled former employees in Ireland, their friends were shocked at the level of the barrages of abuse and hate campaign published about them on the internet.

Based on professional advise, David Crownborn and Esther Crownborn were told to just ignore the bloggers which they did for over a year. But the reality was due to the negative publicity many lives and businesses were affected, business partners and associates were traumatised, and David Crownborn and Esther Crownborn themselves suffered both financial loss and losses in many other areas.

A year after the event, David Crownborn and Esther Crownborn began to question the accuracy of advise received to just ignore the negative bloggers. A year later they realised it may have been a serious mistake to just keep quiet and allow their enemies to rant and rave and spread lies about them. Although based on the advise received legal action was taken against the main perpetrators of the abuse which resulted in high court injunction and removal of some of the ennous remarks, but the damage was done already.

Hence the question is “is it wise to allow your attackers to damage your name, business and reputation while you do nothing apart from take legal action?”

David and Esther Crownborn answer to this question a year on is : “with hindsight it was probably not the best advise to do nothing. They also now realise that some of the advise received was based on information from professional who were unfamiliar with the bloggosphere and the potential of negative comments on the blog to cause serious damage to business reputation and destroy brands.”

Many multi million dollar corporation in the US and abroad have all at one time or another in the recent past been a victim of negative blogging, however proactive steps are taken by these corporation to counteract any negative publicity.

There are now organizations set up mainly to scan the internet and the bloggosphere for any negative comments about their client.

Forbes Magazine recently published an article titled “attack of the blogs” by Daniel Lyons November 14, 2005 in which she reported that “Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective” ...they destroy brands and image”. This would be an interesting article for anyone seeking to know the potential damaging effect of negative blogging.

Blogging in itself is a great means of communication, but the potential for abuse by negative campaigners can be very damaging.

By: David Crownborn and Esther Crownborn