Atlas - www.atlaswearables.com

I’ve crowdfunded several projects along the year, none of which has respected its deadline. The reason is simple: companies are afraid that providing more realistic timelines will scare away customers. I usually take it in stride. Last December, though, Atlas Wearables displayed several ads on their Facebook wall, boasting a sale for the third batch of their product, which prodded me to post the following comment:

‘More ads for a product that is already six months late? Shouldn’t you wait to have solved all the problems and shipped the first batch before raising funds for a third?’

Their answer? They deleted my comment and barred me from posting again.

I mentioned the fact on the project’s Indiegogo page, and of course Atlas Wearables deleted my post. But since I didn’t break any Indiegogo rule (my comment was neither irrelevant nor otherwise inappropriate), they couldn’t bar me from posting again, which I did. They deleted one of my comments twice [edit: three times, since I started writing this review!], and I’ve just posted it a third [edit: fourth] time.

They emailed me to try to make me stop. I argued that censorship wasn’t the right way to deal with criticism. They answered, in essence, that they were very much against censorship, but that they thought themselves justified in deleting any post that could hurt their business — which means any criticism and, when their product finally comes out, any negative review (though, for the sake of credibility and deniability, companies that prune their body of reviews do spare a minority of ‘bad’ ones). They pointed out that Facebook gave them the right to delete comments and prevent people from posting again, for any reason. For them, this right is enough of a moral justification. Censorship, according to them, is something that dictatorships do, not small companies like Atlas Wearables.

Censorship, however, comes in three basic flavours:

1) Protecting the common man. The movie industry’s Production Code and the Comics Code Authority belong to this category. Basically, what is censored is what is considered as hurting sensibilities or having a corrupting influence (sėx, swear words, violence, drug use … depending on the censoring institution).

2) Protecting the State. If a newspaper discovers a state secret (let’s say, the emplacement of a secret base), it can be censored from disclosing the information.

3) Protecting the censor. This one is self-serving, and covers dictatorships like North Korea as well as small companies deleting bad reviews of their products. The difference is one of means and scale — the deed and its motive stay the same.

In contrast, I posted a much harsher comment on Moov’s Facebook wall, since they’re many months late in delivering their promised Android apps, without which I can’t use their product. While I can safely assume that they didn’t enjoy my comment, still they answered it, and while I’m still not happy with how late their Android apps are, at the end of the day I do feel more respect for Moov, for its willingness to tackle criticism rather than just sweeping it under the rug, than I feel for Atlas Wearables and their censorship model of dealing with criticism from customers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to add that I discovered when checking facts for this review that the Atlas Wristband was late but not six months late when I posted on Atlas Wearables’s Facebook wall. It’s more than six months late now, though.