Jumping into the fray

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

Just because I think his stance is completely inconsistent and someone should take him to task over it.

Robert Scoble, Feb 28, 2005 talking about Autolink:

“I believe that anything that changes the linking behavior of the Web is evil. Anything that changes my content is evil. Particularly anything that messes with the integrity of the link system. And I do see this as a slippery slope. Today users have to jump through hoops to use this feature. What about tomorrow? Oh, and Google says they won’t be evil, but what about their competitors who haven’t taken such an anti-evil stance? (Hint: Microsoft isn’t the only Google competitor).”

Today, talking about GreaseMonkey:

“Some people are wondering if I find this evil, even though it does almost the same thing that Smarttags and Autolink do.

I don’t. Here’s why: this is all about individual users. There’s no default behavior loaded. Users need to go around and add in scripts individually. And, I can make my own Greasemonkey scripts.”

Just so I have this straight. Autolink, which does not alter the appearance of any page, does not over write links on your page, and must be invoked on every individual page by the individual user is EVIL, but GreaseMonkey, which anyone can script to do anything with links on a page and can then distribute to anyone, is not, just because the individual has the choice to make their own scripts as opposed to having one built for them by a company?

Remember: “Anything that changes my content is evil.”, Robert? You said that, there are no “unless it’s built by an individual” qualifiers. So which is it? Are Autolink AND Greasemonkey evil because they change your content, or is only Autolink evil because it’s not built by one of your buddies?

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