Bad Programming

Jonathan Bernstein crisis communications, crisis management, Crisis Prevention, crisis public relations, Crisis Response, media training

HP computers are racist?  Who knew?  In a humorous video that went viral on YouTube over the weekend, two sales associates point out a flaw in HP’s facial recognition software, which apparently fails to recognize black people.

While the video’s creators, Wanda Zamen and Desi Cryer, say they originally made the video with the intention of being funny, it’s accumulated over 750,000 views on YouTube — probably not the best-case scenario for the folks over at HP.

This quote from a post on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog demonstrates the power that a video which goes viral, even one from a non-malicious poster, can carry. The two minute YouTube spot, created mostly for their own amusement by two Texas sales clerks, demonstrates a bug in the Hewlett-Packard webcam software which causes it to have trouble tracking anyone with dark skin.

HP’s crisis management got off to a slow start, with the first response coming almost a full week after the video’s popularity skyrocketed, but other than that has been solid, with well-thought responses on all major social media networks as well as in the traditional media.

The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/