[LINK] Isn't one S.Conroy enough?

[Jan Whitaker]

Telstra man behind Fake Stephen Conroy


http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/fake-stephen-conroy-outed/2009/03/17/1237054799469.html
Asher Moses
March 17, 2009 - 2:33PM

A web prankster impersonating Communications Minister Stephen Conroy 
on Twitter has been outed as a Telstra staff member.

The staffer has now been silenced by the telecommunications giant, 
perhaps out of fear that the revelations will further increase 
tensions between Telstra and the Government, which has excluded 
Telstra from the bidding process to build a $10 billion-plus national 
broadband network.

The satirical "Fake Stephen Conroy" 
<http://twitter.com/stephenconroy>profile, which has now been wiped, 
sparked almost as much discussion online as Senator Conroy himself. 
It primarily lampoons the Government's proposed mandatory internet 
filtering scheme.

Following an online manhunt that 
<http://amnesiablog.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/who-is-fake-stephen-conroy-full-list-of-suspects/>turned 
up a long list of suspects, Fake Stephen Conroy decided to turn 
himself in before he could be outed.

"OK, so here it is; Fake Stephen Conroy = Leslie Nassar," he wrote yesterday.

Nassar's LinkedIn profile says he is a "Senior Emerging Technology 
Specialist (Mobile)" at Telstra and has previously worked for the 
ABC, spearheading its podcasting efforts.

Nassar confirmed this but refused to provide any further comments.

"I've been instructed not to talk to the press, so you'll need to 
talk to Telstra PR," he said.

Telstra has not responded to calls requesting comment. A spokesman 
for Senator Conroy would not comment on the fact that Fake Stephen 
Conroy was a Telstra staff member but said Senator Conroy was aware 
of the fake profile.

"Satire is an important part of any healthy democracy," he said.

Since the profile was created in October last year, Fake Stephen 
Conroy has published 708 tweets and attracted 1531 followers. He has 
been called on to write satirical guest articles for Crikey and ZDNet.com.au.

The trend towards fake online profiles was sparked by US journalist 
Daniel Lyons, who famously created the Fake Steve Jobs blog in 2006.

Lyons was outed by The New York Times in August 2007 but not before 
amassing a cult following online and garnering a mention from Apple 
founder Steve Jobs himself.

Fake Steve Jobs was ranked 37th on Business 2.0's "50 Who Matter Now" 
feature and Lyons went on in 2007 to release a book titled Options: 
The Secret Life Of Steve Jobs, A Parody.

Nassar followed a similar style with Fake Stephen Conroy. Some 
examples of his 140-character-or-less tweets are:

"Apparently LOL means 'Laugh Out Loud' and not 'Lots Of Love'. Now 
I'm going to have to re-read all those internet comments about me."

"about to board my flight to Melbourne .. nabbed seat 1B! a person in 
a wheelchair was going to get it .. lucky IM CONROY! Trump card played!"

"When I Googled for information on how to circumvent surrogacy laws 
in Victoria, I bookmarked the results so we could ban the sites later."

"The filter is a community service; it's not just about removing 
content, we can also repair content. We can make it truthier."

"I don't think it's unreasonable to compare the National Filter 
Network to a cure for Super-AIDS; both of them protect children."

"Dear journalists; please do not continue to report on my enormous 
penis and ability to please the ladies. My personal life is off-limits."

"Today I received an I-Phone. The IT people tell me that it is 
biometrically activated, but no matter how much I lick it, it won't turn on."



Fake Stephen Conroy lashes out at Telstra

http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technology/fake-stephen-conroy-lashes-out-at-telstra/2009/03/18/1237054872141.html
Asher Moses
March 18, 2009 - 11:53AM

Telstra's attempts to cover up the fact that it tried to silence Fake 
Stephen Conroy have backfired spectacularly.

The Telstra employee who created the satirical Twitter profile has 
told his bosses not to "throw me under the f---ing bus just to make 
Telstra look social-media savvy".

After it was revealed that the popular Twitter profile impersonating 
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was 
<http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/fake-stephen-conroy-outed/2009/03/17/1237054799469.html>written 
by senior Telstra employee Leslie Nassar, the postings stopped. 
Nassar refused to speak to media, saying he was told to direct all 
comment requests to Telstra's public relations unit.

The Fake Stephen Conroy <http://twitter.com/stephenconroy>profile was 
also disabled for a period before reopening late yesterday.

Telstra's social media adviser Mike Hickinbotham came out to declare 
that Telstra did not try to shut Nassar up nor tell him to cease 
making the Fake Stephen Conroy posts.

This directly contradicted earlier comments by Nassar, who said he 
was told by Telstra to stop.

Even though Nassar wrote the Twitter posts as a completely separate 
endeavour to his work at Telstra, the issue is sensitive for the 
telco because it may increase tensions between Telstra and the 
Government, which has excluded Telstra from the bidding process to 
build a $10 billion-plus national broadband network.

Hickinbotham made his comments on Telstra's Now We Are Talking (NWAT) 
<http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/blogs/the-scrum/the-real-facts-about-telstra-and-the-fake-stephen-conroy>propaganda 
website and <http://twitter.com/M_Hickinbotham>on Twitter, saying 
that Telstra did not tell Nassar to stop the Twitter postings and 
that "we simply ask him to use good judgement".

The comments infuriated Nassar, who has been praised for lampooning 
Conroy and the Government's plan to censor the internet.

"I was fine with your NWAT double-speak, but f--- you if you think 
I'm standing for that," Nassar wrote to Hickinbotham on Twitter.

"I was fine with being told to drop FSC [Fake Stephen Conroy], but 
don't throw me under the f---ing bus just to make Telstra look 
social-media savvy."

Nassar has not made any new Twitter postings since then and Telstra 
has so far refused to comment on the matter.

People responding to Hickinbotham's Now We Are Talking posting have 
criticised Telstra for trying to censor the personal political 
commentary of an employee.

Iain McDonald, founder of digital marketing agency Amnesia, said in a 
phone interview that Telstra should use Fake Stephen Conroy as a 
social media opportunity instead of trying to silence Nassar and 
apparently lying about it afterwards.

"I don't particularly agree with the way Telstra handled it," he said.

"Fake Stephen Conroy kept his profile completely separate to work ... 
it was one guy who seemed to be expressing a political view so again 
i'm not really sure what the whole thing has to do with Telstra."



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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