The chief villain of this process is the social media manager typically who "resides" within the marketing department. Scrubbing most likely is an established corporate communications or public relations policy and it typically follows suit that businesses engaged in such a process are also the toughest to e-mail, call or receive a response to from a traditional complaint letter. Scrubbing is not a habit of any one industry in particular nor is it illegal to do so. You will not read about the "procedure" advocated in an annual report or see it on a company website. Many are well aware of it being done, but there is little that you can do to stop it.
I hear what some of you are saying. Some customer comments are untrue, downright nasty, use language that is highly inappropriate, vulgar and might be personally threatening. You don't want to leave that on your site for public viewing anymore than links to newspaper articles claiming the CEO is a thief. That's a given. Removing that is common sense public relations, not scrubbing. However, scrubbing is clearly corporate censorship. It both suppresses inconvenient or objectionable customer communication just the way a dictatorship supervises and bullies its press.
Here are real world examples of scrubbing. A cruise line developed a new customer rewards program and attempted to market it through its Facebook page, website and blog. The response was highly negative and customers expressed their "distress" with it though their comments and posts. 99% of them were scrubbed within a few minutes of them being published. A restaurant chain scrubs any and all reviews that are not glowing with admiration for their service and food. A major vehicle manufacturer scrubbed its entire blog because drivers made comments not about the company, but about industry practices they deemed unfair.
The most recent evidence of scrubbing was a passionate female consumer who objected to companies advertising and supporting a highly controversial terrestrial radio program. An effective harassment program of Tweets were hitting the offending companies hard. Just as fake plastic ducks disappear after being hit by a toy gun at a State fair the comments were scrubbed within seconds after being posted. It takes a strong corporate communications backbone to let these communications stand and address them in a professional customer oriented responsible way. That sadly is not the case with businesses that engage in scrubbing.
I do not recommend doing business with any company that scrubs on any level of communications, customer service, or public relations. One has to conclude that if they don't want to be honest with customers the same relationship must exist with their employees, vendors, subsidiaries and the communities where they are located. It is said that social media has led to a new transparent relationship between business and the public. That sure sounds good, but the revolution that is social media has not made irresponsible businesses better, in fact it has represented no change whatsoever.
