Obama administration no longer publicly seeking citizen informants; their plan tracked my satire

Back on August 4, the White House blog briefly acted like a toned-down earthtones Stasi and said (whitehouse.gov/blog/facts-are-stubborn-things):

If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Now, per this, emails sent to that address bounce back with a message suggesting that the sender visits whitehouse.gov/realitycheck instead.

In thinking back, I think the Obama administration got this idea from me. In October of last year, I posted the following satirical proposal to a fake blog I created housed at my.barackobama.com:

What the Obama campaign should do is set up a "Neighbor2Neighbor" program. When someone in your community starts spreading lies, you can go to the Obama website and fill out an "incident" form, typing in the person's name, their contact information, and a description of the lies and smears they're peddling. A "campaign counselor" can then contact them by phone to discuss with them all the ways they're wrong. In extreme cases, counselors can even go out to the person's home and try to talk some sense into them. Obama himself said we need to get into peoples' faces and convince them to vote for him, and this program will help us do just that. Of course, the campaign shouldn't reveal the name of the tipster, but after the (former!) "smear spreader" sees the light they'll be grateful to whoever filed the tip.

I guess I forgot the satire tag and they took it seriously.

Mon, 08/17/2009 - 14:49 · · Importance: 4