Note: Earlier this evening, the guys over at MacHeist admitted that Malcor was their doing. This article was written before MacHeist made their admission. While there was some speculation that MacHeist was behind it, I didn’t feel like dragging them into it when I wrote this piece since there was no confirmation that they were indeed behind Malcor at that time. As such, this article assumes that the malcor “hacks” were a PR stunt carried out without MacHeist’s involvement. My opinion has changed since then, but I’m not writing any more about this mess until I’m ready to do so. Please keep this in mind as you read this article. --Ed.

It’s hard to run a tech news site or blog. It’s hard to keep writers motivated, and it’s hard maintaining and growing a readership base. For this reason, I can understand why some Mac sites participated in the Malcor hoax, which Hadley Stern of Apple Matters admitted was a bad PR stunt. I can understand why these sites would take part in an out-of-the-box way to gain publicity. No publicity is bad publicity, as the old saying goes.

That doesn’t mean it’s right, though.

Readers expect those who operate sites—especially ones like Apple Matters—to hold some standard of ethics. When the site operators don’t, well, readers are disappointed and may stop reading the site. So in that case, when you get caught, there is such thing as bad publicity.

Me? I love a good prank as much as anyone, and there’s a time and a place for jokes and pranks. We call in April Fools Day! I don’t know about you, but Malcor would have made an awesome April Fools prank. If Deep Thought were asked to take part in an April Fools prank like that, I think we would be all for it. If we were asked in late November to take part, though, our response would have been something along the lines of, “Are you f@#$ing nuts? No!” Our server was hacked for real in June 2005. Real hacks aren’t fun. Fake hacks aren’t either.

So what’s worse, a real lunatic hacking any Mac site he has a problem with or Mac sites pretending they have been hacked by such a lunatic?

Let me first take the perspective of someone who runs a site. Here at Deep Thought, we talk about the Mac a lot, but we also discuss other tech topics as well. When sites started going down, I didn’t think DT would ever be a target because we don’t post pretty pictures of Mac setups, we discuss other topics, and we’re a fairly small site. Also, the first two sites taken down ran on WordPress, while DT is based on ExpressionEngine. When Apple Matters went down, I was a little concerned. After all, Apple Matters isn’t exactly known as being a fanboy site. In fact, they sometimes take a negative stance, such as in Five Reasons Why There Will Be No Macs in 2010 (Pilky countered with Five Reasons Why There WILL Be Macs in 2010). Worse still, Apple Matters is based on Expression Engine. I still didn’t anticipate Deep Thought to be targeted, but I watched things a bit more closely.

When I found out that it was just a hoax, I was relieved on one hand, but annoyed on the other. I was relieved that there really wasn’t some sick moron out there with nothing better to do with their life than knocking out Mac sites. I was annoyed because these “hacks” a) did nothing in my opinion to help the sites who took part, and b) unnecessarily set off a false alarm for site operators who were worried that they would also be a target.

Now, from the perspective of a reader, I kept tabs on Malcor’s blog, reporting it to Blogger, and checking back to see which site would be next. I got annoyed over the fact that there is someone who would actually waste their time with such a silly crusade. Now that Hadley Stern came clean, I’m still annoyed, but this time because I feel like a fool for believing it, and I think these sites didn’t stick to the level of ethics I would expect from them.

So what’s worse? Pretending you were hacked for personal gain. Being hacked isn’t any fun, but so long as you do what you can to secure your site, it isn’t your fault. If you fake the hack and get caught, though, that’s it, you’re credibility takes a big blow.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

That said, I have to thank Hadley Stern for being up-front and having the guts to come clean about the whole thing. That doesn’t make it right, but at least he realized that it was wrong.

There’s still only one way to attract readers: churn out articles that people want to read, and hope that some readers will come back. This is our goal here at Deep Thought. And I pledge to you, our readers, as long as I am editor-in-chief, Deep Thought will not participate in such deceptive PR stunts. I guarantee it.