I never realised marketing departments employ Twitter wall moderators. It's an important job, too. The Twitter wall moderator ensures that publicly displayed tweets are appropriate. It's like being a censor under an authoritarian regime. Failing your duties as a Twitter wall moderator could lead to nothing less than a public revolt (after which the marketing department has to start educating the public again).

The Twitter wall moderator who censored tweets using the hashtag #spreadthecheer on behalf of Starbucks suffered a temporary malfunction with the content filtering system this weekend. Tweets referring to Starbucks' tax avoidance policies and how the company treats its workforce filtered through and were displayed on a screen at an ice rink outside the Natural History Museum. Worse, Kate Talbot (Geordie in London. Leftie feminist.) witnessed the event and took a picture before the Twitter wall moderator could hit the delete button…

Oops!

The campaign started on 10 December, and at first the Twitter wall moderator did a good job. Only tweets like Holiday shipping with my mom makes me happy #spreadthecheer and 20,263 minutes til Christmas!!! #spreadthecheer were displayed on the wall. It all went wrong this Saturday when this tweet appeared:

• Spend money at independent coffee shops cos they pay their taxes unlike Starbucks! #spreadthecheer

Followed by lots more. Here's a small sample:

• Tip the staff as Starbucks just cut their wages! #spreadthecheer
• Pay your fair share. Not just what you can get away with. #spreadthecheer
• I like my coffee emporiums to pay their tax like I like my coffee emporium employees; paid correctly. #spreadthecheer
• #spreadthecheer all year round by paying your tax - it funds things like healthcare, education and pensions
• Espresso your view. Does Starbucks make a mochary of tax? Other chains Costa the economy a lot less and pay full corp tax. #spreadthecheer.
• If firms like Starbucks paid proper taxes, Museums wouldn't have to prostitute themselves to advertisers #spreadthecheer
• #spreadthecheer support local, independent coffee shops. Not only do they pay their taxes, they offer something more exciting & cheaper.

Inappropriate?

The interesting thing is that Starbucks apparently feels that the tweets weren't appropriate for all audiences and full of profanity. (At least, that's what the Telegraph and Huffington Post claim. It should be noted that Starbucks hasn't made an official statement). This may be true for the few tweets that used adjectives such as fucking and nouns such as MoFo's (note the apostrophe abuse!) but most of the tweets were actually quite family friendly. What Starbucks is really saying is that it considers any tweets that criticise the company to be vulgar and therefore unsuitable for broadcasting. That tells you something about marketing.

I hope you'll support independent coffee shops (those that treat staff as human beings rather than human resources) while they still exist!

The Mail is having a go at junk mail again. This time they've obtained figures that show that local authorities have made £3 million in the past five years by passing on information from the electoral role. Apparently, more than 20 million of us have had our name and address sold.

Some facts

The Representation of the People Regulations forces local authorities to sell a copy of the edited register to any person happy to pay a fee of £21.50 for 1,000 names and addresses (see item 110, Sale of edited register). In other words, if your local council sells your name and address they get £0.0215. And no, that's not deducted from your Council Tax Bill; they're selling your data below cost price, as a subsidy to the junk mail industry and 'people finding services' such as 192.com.

If the Mail's figures are correct we can calculate that in the last five years local councils have sold the personal details of nearly 140 million people: £3,000,000 / (£21.50 / 1,000). Divide that figure by 5 and we have deduced that election administrators are selling nearly 28 million names and address per year. Which is 8 million above the Daily Mail's estimate of 20m.

As per usual, the Mail's figures don't quite add up. If anything, the Mail's numbers defy common sense…

Let's have a second look at the figure of 20m. We know that there are roughly 45 million registered voters and that about 40% of them are opted out of being on the edited register. That means there are some 27 million names and addresses on the edited register. If the Mail's figures are correct the average council sells less than a single copy of the edited register per year! That's certainly false; there are plenty of list brokers that buy a full copy of the edited roll from each and every local authority in the country.

It's a shame the Mail forgot to tell its readers how it arrived at its figures. But of course that's nothing new.

PS - If you want some more useful information about the edited register, including information about how to opt out of being on the roll indefinitely, you should read the Guide to Stamping Out Junk Mail!

Spam from Thomson Local?

This Friday I received the following (anonomous) e-mail from someone who used Junk Buster to cancel the Thomson Local directory:

I registered to stop receiving Thompson Directory - and now I get a weekly spam mail from Thomson, telling me the various online services that I can use as alternatives to the paper directory.

The Thompson spam comes from David Meikle:
david.meikle@thomsonlocal.com

I feel like an idiot for providing an actual email address.

I haven't had any similar complaints. If the spam e-mails are the result of asking Thomson Local not to deliver the directory any more they're in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003. Organisations in the UK can only send you 'marketing e-mails' if you've agreed to receiving them. Clearly, that's not the case here. I'd recommend lodging a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office.

In any case, I'll write to David Meikle next week to see what he's got to say.

New stamper still on its way

Last week I was hoping the new return to sender stamper would by now be in the shop. It will take a couple more days, though I have now received a sample:

Modern times

Two weeks ago I mentioned I had asked juicypeanut to close my Technorati account. I've now sent four e-mails in total, and the account still exists… I'm thinking about making Account Killer Stop Junk Mail's next cause.

Defra keen to keep quiet

On Tuesday I should have received information from Defra about the implementation of the Door-Drop Preference Service. As you may recall, it's the opt-out website that was to be launched by the Direct Marketing Association in April as part of a 'responsibility deal' between Defra and the junk mail industry. The website wasn't launched, and a Freedom of Information request I submitted to Defra in May revealed why; the two parties disagreed about what they had agreed. Since, Defra hasn't said a word about what it's doing to resolve the situation. My latest Freedom of Information request is an attempt to force them to be a bit more open.

Defra did contact me on Tuesday, but only to say that they need twenty more working days to provide me with the information I requested. The official reason is the complexity and volume of the information I've asked for. The real reason is that they don't like it when people take an interest in what they're doing (or not doing) behind closed doors. I'm pretty sure that all I'll get from them early next month is a bunch of copies of e-mails - it's what I got from them in response to my previous Freedom of Information requests. Any donkey can print a couple of e-mails in minutes but Defra needs no less than 40 working days.

New stamper on its way

By this time next week I should have return to sender stampers in stock again. It will be a different stamper; the text on the stamp has changed and the stamper itself will made from 100% recycled plastic.

The text on the old stamper read:

"RETURN TO SENDER"®
Junk mail not wanted at this address.
Please remove this address from your database.

There were a couple of things I didn't like about this text. The quotes around 'Return to sender' are obviously redundant, and the registered trademark sign looks rather pretentious. The rest of the text reveals a lack of understanding about stopping junk mail on the part of the company that produced the stamper. As anyone who has ever sent a data protection notice knows, you can only ask junk mailers to remove your details from a junk mailer's database. Asking them not to send junk mail to anyone at your address is desperately optimistic; I can't see any junk mailer making the effort to check if there might be anyone else living at your address that could be taken off the junk mail list. It's a detail - but detail matters.

This time I designed the stamp myself:

Simple designs are usually the best… As said, the new stampers should be in the shop later this week .

Observer Tree cyber celebration

Until the end of the year Stop Junk Mail is raising money for The ObserverTree (by donating 10% of sales to the cause). I haven't said much about this fantastic campaign on this blog but am pleased I can now give it a mention; The ObserverTree will this week celebrate its one year anniversary.

I'm not sure if 'celebrate' is the right word. Had the campaign achieved its aim an ancient forest in Tasmania would by now be safe from a Malaysian logging company (Ta Ann) and conservationist / campaigner Miranda Gibson would no longer be living in a tree in the heart of the forest. When she climbed up the tree almost a year ago she vowed she wouldn't come down until the forest was protected - it's sad she's still there.

Anyway, to mark the occasion a cyber celebration is planned for Friday 14 December from 7.30am (UK time). I haven't quite figured out myself how to join the party but will certainly try to do so.

I haven't written much blog entries lately. There's no particular reason for that. Sometimes there's just nothing much to report, other times I'm too busy with other things. Anyway, to keep this space interesting I'll try something new… a weekly roundup.

It's probably wise to start with a disclaimer. The idea for a weekly roundup popped up in my head only half an hour ago - and spontaneous ideas tend to disappear off the radar as quickly as they appeared on it. I'm really not too sure I'll be writing something every Sunday.

Dear juicypeanut

On the subject of spontaneous ideas that don't quite work out, just this morning I tried to close a Technorati account I opened a couple of months ago. I joined because I reckoned it could be an alternative for Google Blog Search (breaking ties with Google is an ongoing project) but I was wrong; Technorati seems to be just another Web 2.0 Hot or Not Contest. Anyway, closing my account turned out to be rather difficult - there's no 'Close account' button. After a bit of DuckDuckGoing I came across a website called Account Killer which directed me to the instructions. To close a Technorati account you need to send a 'please close my account' e-mail to someone called 'juicypeanut'. I've accepted it as my punishment for not checking how easy it would be to close an account beforehand.

ICO has done something useful

After all the furore about the (factually incorrect) news that one in two letters delivered by Royal Mail is now junk mail there wasn't any noteworthy junk mail news this week. Luckily, we did have an interesting story about spam; the Information Commissioner's Office has fined two marketeers who "plagued the public with millions of unlawful spam texts over the past three years". It's the first time the ICO has taken action against spammers and it seems they thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The press release is a surprisingly interesting read, and it mentions they're already considering taking action against three other marketeers. There's still hope.

Selling hampers

Equally important is that there's a new item in Stop Junk Mail's sticker shop: a Mini Junk Mail Hamper. The hamper itself is one of my beautiful, hand made, unique, and re-usable junk mail envelopes; and inside the 'hamper' you'll find an anti-junk mail and 'No Cold Callers' sticker of your choice as well as a pad with return to sender labels. All that will cost you just £2 - saving you 75p!

I know, I'm hopeless at selling… Maybe marketing is an art after all. (I'm joking, of course.)

Help!

Since this Saturday Stop Junk Mail is finally an unincorporated association. It de facto had been one for a while but it's now formal. The main reason for the change is that it should make it easier to get more people involved in the campaign. There are plenty of unfinished junk mail related projects sitting on the shelve (that's what happens with spontaneous ideas); I'm hoping that some of these project can be taken up by others. If you're interested in joining the battle against junk mail, there's now also a page with information about getting involved.

Application for something

Finally, this weekend I've been working on an application for… something. I can't yet reveal what it is I've applied for but can tell that it's something I'm more than a little interested in. It's another thing that came up suddenly - but not something that would be shelved or disappear off the radar any time soon.

Who knows more next week!