Late last night the famous technology blog, TechCrunch, wrote a post apologizing to its users. It wasn’t a direct mistake by TechCrunch, but a writer, someone who I looked up to and admired. This might of ruined the chance for teens to “play” with the adults.
Daniel Brusilovsky, someone who I have written about before, has made a huge mistake. In this post I don’t really want to talk about Daniel directly, but about teens on the internet in general. Do we really have a place here, to say anything we want? Is it meant for us and adults, or just for adults?
Here’s the story, directly stated by TechCrunch’s owner Michael Arrington:
On Monday evening I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.
After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.
The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.
Daniel made a mistake. I hope he realized how big of a mistake it was. He has to realize he was writing for the biggest technology blog out there, and now that whole opportunity is gone. Daniel will move on though.
This whole story is a small part of this post. I wanted to talk about teens on the web. I really do think teens should be on the web. We are the next generation. We all make mistakes online, like Daniel has. But is a teen’s mistake worst then an adults. NO. The comments from TechCrunch were unbelievable. Saying teens have no spot on the web, and they shouldn’t be writing. Which is not true! We all make mistakes, even adults. We teens do have a place on the web, we just need to be responsible.