Huawei

Huawei are a company I notice from time to time, perhaps ten times in as many years, for the first time at reference 1.

A company which is presently very much in the news as we in the west remain unsure about whether to take advantage of what might appear to be very good value communications products, from telephones to the serious engineering required to enable telephones to talk to each other and to computers. Can we trust them not to abuse the trust that that involves? Would they be likely, if it came to a choice, to do what the Chinese government might suggest, rather than what we might like, for whatever reason? Do I care if they know everything about my movements in and around Epsom? Or if they borrow my health records for some reason or another?

Against which background, it seems very odd that they should manipulate the not terribly interesting Twitter and Facebook  accounts of some of their middle to top rank executives to suggest that far more people are reading them than is likely to be the case. Manipulating the like counts and stuff like that, if I have got the jargon right.

If they go in for crude attacks of this sort - pointless and ineffective though they might be - whatever else might they get up to?

Do decent, god-fearing Anglophone companies go in for the same sort of thing, while managing not to get caught at it?

PS: I notice mention of potion dispensers from Boots at the bottom of reference 1. Ten years on, I can say that they are an invaluable aid to dispensation. With a dispenser on the mantelpiece, just a couple of feet from where I climb in and out of bed, I very rarely make a mistake. Not quite the thing snapped above, but near enough.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/08/sacks.html.