Amway and Scientology Trade Tactics

At first glance, it would not appear that Amway and the Church of Scientology have much in common. Recently, though, their tactics in dealing with criticism on the internet have become very similar. Have they been sharing strategies?

About two years ago, in a complete change of face, Amway began allowing -- in fact, encouraging -- distributors to put "Personal Home Pages" on the Internet. These home pages were very restrictive as to content. The distributors could have a picture of themselves, and could tell about their wonderful Amway business. No e-mail links of any kind, no addresses or other contact information, were allowed. The only permitted link was a link to Amway's public web site. While a distributor could mount a personal home page on any server, Amway recommended two services for these personal web pages. Then, of course, the distributors registered their page with search engines.

According to an article on FACTNet,

"Scientology has launched a new censorship attack on the Internet, one designed to clog search mechanisms. By spamming Internet search mechanisms, Scientology will render them slower and much less useful, all in an effort to censor Internet free speech. Scientology hopes flooding search mechanisms with over 100,000 newly created Scientology-based sites, Netizens will be unable to find the two or three hundred sites critical of Scientology. Join the outcry against this action."

The article continues:

"If Scientology is allowed to continue its censorship war on the Internet, other totalitarian corporate, government, or cult groups will follow. Any issue people care dearly about can be drowned out by one side or the other using this techno-censorship technique. Continued efforts such as this latest ploy will jam search mechanisms, make searches fruitless, and slow down the Internet. It is extremely important that the Internet send Scientology a clear, strong message to stop this Internet abuse."

Last December, Ken MacDonald, an Amway Vice President, sent an Amvox message down through the North American organizations telling them of Amway's plans to move the anti-Amway sites down in the search engines.

The purpose of both these exercises? To "bury" critical sites under all these cookie-cutter "personal home pages" so that people seeking honest information would have a harder time finding it.

Judging by the hits I get on this site, Amway's tactics are not very successful. I would hope that Scientology's aren't either. But if you are as disturbed as I am by these attempts to stifle free speech on the Internet, send an e-mail to amway.com and info@scientology.net and let them know their tactics are unacceptable to you.