Chris Peterson

(Apologies for the alliteration. The sad truth is that I once attended a session at the NEYWC run by a senior Sports Illustrated editor. When he reviewed my journalism samples he told me that, whatever other weaknesses my style might have, it was refreshing free of the tropes that had haunted his early writing, mainly alliteration, bad puns, and catchy clauses jammed into sentences where they didn’t belong. He then gave me a sample of that bad writing so as to not emulate it. And I’ve been writing like that ever since).

(Anyway,)

Via James Grimmelmann, the tragic story of yet another individual who found himself tripped up by the confusing design of Google Buzz.

Except, in this case, the individual was Andrew McLaughlin, i.e. the Deputy Head of Internet Policy for the White House and former Head of Global Public Policy for Google itself.

Quote:

Maybe Mr. McLaughlin needs to read Grimmelmann’s Privacy as Product Safety so he can get to regulating his former employer!

edit: immediately after hitting submit I saw this blog post from Google Public Policy about the changes they made to Buzz. Good. But not good enough.