Apple has moved to suppress dissent over the iPhone 4 by deleting at least 6 critical forum threads.
According to Gizmodo, customers on Apple’s support boards were discussing an unflattering Consumer Reports study which had positively identified a critical antennae design flaw.
“The threads were cached by Bing before getting deleted by Apple. It is not the first time that Apple censor[ed] support threads — or applications and editorial content,” wrote Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz.
“Ironically, Consumer Reports’s scorecard shows that the iPhone 4 has the best score of all cellphones, two points ahead of the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Evo 4G.”
Meanwhiel, TJ Luoma of Tuaw noted that Apple’s practice of removing negative forum posts had become SOP – standard operating procedure for the Cupertino-based company.
“That’s not to say that there are no negative threads on the discussion boards, but the ones that are there are the ones that Apple’s moderators have decided to leave active.
“It’s hard to imagine what Apple hopes to gain by doing this. Instead of having one negative news story, now we have two: not only did Consumer Reports come out and say they don’t recommend the iPhone 4, but now Apple seems to be trying to prevent people from talking about it on their support board.”
