Right up front, let me note that A) cybersquatting is illegal and B) TikTok is probably some kind of evil surveillance tool for the Chinese.
That said, this is kind of special.
As of today, a TikTokker is in her eighth day of holding the username @pearsoneducation hostage.
It is safe to say that this user has not been using TikTok for philosophical or deeply artistic pursuits. Here are some of the posts from this siege, mostly posted over serious party activities.
Day 1 of holding Pearson's username hostage. Willing to return for cash. Negotiable. Honestly a kind gesture of me after all the money I spent on all the terible textbooks.
Day 3 of holding this username hostage from a trash textbook company that left a bunch of 18-22 year olds unable to afford to eat.
Day 5 of holding this username hostage and I'm still not convinced that Pearson MyLab wasn't invented in h3ll by demons and fueled by the tears of sleep deprived children.
Day 7 of holding this account hostage. Pearson is still trash. I challenge McGraw-Hill to a beer pong tournament. Get @ me bro.
The account has 9647 follower and some of her hostage posts have hundreds of thousands of likes. If she's doing this for attention, she's getting a bunch. No indication that Pearson has paid the slightest attention to her. They do pride themselves on their ability to swim in the digital ocean, but I don't know if that includes TikTok. The comments on her posts indicate a huge amount of deep-seated anger about Pearson book prices, and a pretty huge number of people angry about jumping through costly certification hoops for the company.
The account holder has done this before, previously trolling the Oaks Christian School, which now appears to have its account back.
Hard to imagine how this might play out. It seems like small potatoes, but then, this is the company that tracked down high school students to threaten them for breaking test security, so who knows. In the meantime, if you want to work off some Pearson anger vicariously, you can (for now) check out the account here.
Have you ever written a post or two or ten explaining who Pearson really is and how they took over the entire textbook industry? Does it bother anyone that these are Google and Twitter executives....?
ReplyDeleteIt would be helpful for the general public to learn why these people have a monopoly. Is anyone fighting it?
Does it matter? Should parents care? Should parents take action? Should anyone take action?
Who? How? When? If not, why not?
I look forward to the email from the district testing office advising teachers that the testing scripts have been amended that no one is allowed to comment on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter ... and TikTok. (Please read with the sarcastic tone in which I write.)
ReplyDeleteBut more seriously, as a teacher who has spent years plugging the holes in Pearson textbooks, finding materials for the gaps, and rewriting entire mathematics chapters for which the word incoherent is an understatement, I understand the anger about the textbooks.