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Comcast has assigned a customer-service employee to monitor Twitter for the passive-aggressive whines of tech-savvy insiders. A tipster forwards us evidence of the Twitter-stalker in action in the screenshot below. Meanwhile, another sighting of this rare customer-service animal in the wild comes from bilious blogfather Dave Winer, best known for arguing about which obscure Internet technologies he invented. Yesterday he posted a rant about how the Internet service provider abruptly cut him off. (The cause: Software he wrote which inefficiently downloads Flickr photos en masse.) After Winer complained over Twitter, the stalker, a Philadelphia-based customer-service rep named Frank, reached out, but couldn't help. So Winer called Comcast's hotline for Internet miscreants and recorded the call (MP3). During that conversation, a Comcast rep threatened to shut down Winer's connection. "I asked if I could get this in writing," Winer reports. "He said no."

This image was lost some time after publication.