Chamber left looking like a bunch of tweets
Ilove the Hutt Valley, but it can be a strange old place. In the 1950s, a wave of ‘‘moral panic’’ swept the country, all because of a teenage sex scandal in Lower Hutt.
This resulted in the Mazengarb Inquiry into Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents. The official report was sent to every household in the country – and had absolutely no effect on the ‘‘moral’’ behaviour of teenagers.
Late last week, the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce had to launch its own inquiry into Twitter Delinquency in Disgruntled Former Service Providers with a Grudge with a bogus Twitter account scandal that resulted in incorrect allegations that a respectable business lobby group was getting involved in dirty politics.
Such was the level of scandal, the chief executive of the Hutt Valley chamber vowed to make a police complaint.
Let me take you back to Wednesday. Being a sad bastard with nothing better to do, I followed a very official-looking Twitter account for the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce.
Yet, in between notifications of chamber events were some nasty memes about Labour leader Jacinda Ardern and her party’s tax policy. ‘‘I’m 40 years old and I’ve never had a real job in my life,’’ lied the caption.
Ardern is actually 37 and has had numerous jobs. ‘‘I’ve also got no policies,’’ it said. ‘‘Let’s destroy New Zealand’s primary producers.’’
Even worse, if you clicked on the Twitter logo on the chamber’s official website it took you straight to the bogus site. And on the chamber’s official Facebook page, right under the title, was the bogus Twitter address @huttchamber.
Was a business lobby group really tweeting such toxic stuff when it was possible that in a week’s time it might be expecting two local Labour MPs to go into bat for it and possibly be dealing with a Labour government? I did what any responsible columnist would do and retweeted the offending tweets to 3000 people.
Though I found it hard to believe any sensible business group would post such rubbish, I also remembered that the chamber, which receives a $200k a year subsidy from Hutt City Council, complained about councillor Campbell Barry’s comments on the living wage, later deemed by council lawyers to be unwarranted, which cost the council around $13,000 in legal fees.
Hutt South MP Trevor Mallard was outraged by the tweets, as he is a member of the chamber. However, according to Mallard, ‘‘the Hutt Chamber chief executive ... has made it clear this is not a chambercontrolled account’’.
National list MP and Hutt South candidate Chris Bishop was also concerned about the nasty portrayal of Ardern. ‘‘Texted the CEO the image,’’ tweeted Bishop, ‘‘he said he’d remove.’’
Hutt Valley Chamber chief executive Mark Futter explained that the chamber doesn’t use Twitter, just Facebook and LinkedIn. This was fake news.
According to Futter, the account was set up by an employee of a ‘‘former service provider to the chamber that was involved in our web upgrade’’ and who holds a grudge.
Futter only became aware of the ‘‘bogus’’ account from the ‘‘malicious troublemaker’’ on Thursday night and vowed to make a police complaint the next morning. Twitter closed down the bogus account on Friday afternoon.
So it now seems it was all a Twitter storm in a chamber pot. Yet once the scurrilous tweets hit the headlines, why were they all deleted by the ‘‘malicious troublemaker’’ if they wanted to embarrass the chamber? The ‘‘malicious troublemaker’’ really showed them.
Other questions remain. Why did much of the ‘‘bogus’’ account report on normal chamber business? It’s hard to believe a ‘‘bogus’’ account existed for over a year and not one person at the chamber knew about it until the nasty tweets were retweeted by certain sad, middle-aged, technophobic columnists.
Remember, this is the chamber that supports the ‘‘Technology Valley’’ initiative.
This fascinating little fable of online panic has a message for all organisations – be vigilant and take all social media very seriously, especially the week before an election.