Boing Boing tries a little censorship after LITTLE BROTHER complaints
After a May 19 torrent of angry comments from readers tired of BOING BOING blogger Cory Doctorow posts promoting his newest book LITTLE BROTHER, the admins of the popular site responded by disabling reader comments from future posts of this nature.
Today, assistant moderator Takuan responded to one reader’s confusion with this comment:
Hi cory sorry for offtopic posting … yesterday someone recommended that I email you but for some reason it bounced – I am reading little brother finally and I wanted to leave you a comment but why cant I post anymore in those stories?
Dear Torrance
Comments were turned off due to irresponsible postings in an annoying volume. I am not sure why your email to Cory bounced, why not try Teresa Nielsen Hayden directly?
Pointing out the irony of implementing this policy at a blog that champions free speech, individual liberties and fighting censorship at every turn would be an obvious and redundant exercise, I guess.
For extra irony, (part of your recommended daily allowance), be sure to not miss the final comment in the May 19th thread where assistant moderator Avram states that he/she has deleted all complaints about the LITTLE BROTHER posts from two recent threads:
Hello, this is one of Teresa’s assistant moderators speaking. I’ve turned off comments on these two threads (”Little Brother tonight in Seattle’s Third Place Books” and “Little Brother at NYC’s Books of Wonder, May 25, 5-7PM”) for a bit. Teresa tells me she’s shutting down some other Little Brother threads as well.
You may notice that a bunch of comments have disappeared. They haven’t actually been deleted, they’ve been unpublished. The comments are still there in BoingBoing’s database, they just aren’t showing up. This gives Teresa a chance to go through and re-publish them if she decides I’ve been too zealous.
I’ve deleted complaints about the Little Brother entries, even polite ones, and the joking ironic ones, because they just encourage more rude complaints.
It’s possible that I’ve missed a few, since I just learned how to use the administration interface yesterday. And it’s a little clunky.
One of Cory’s comments was also unpublished, at his own request.
It’s Teresa’s decision when to reactivate comments for these threads.
I like Cory, and I’m a regular BOING BOING reader, but this sort of cognitive dissonance is really hard to take. Why rally against censorship and then practice it in your own sandbox?
As a book publicist myself, I can truly sympathize with Cory’s plight. He’s got to get the word out there about LITTLE BROTHER, and he happens to be sitting on one of the biggest soapboxes in the internet world. It’s awfully tempting to use -and maybe abuse – that sort of power, I’m sure. Maybe there could be some sort of compromise: perhaps posting once a week, or simply integrating some sort of sidebar or widget with this sort of information. In any case, turning off comments for these posts is probably not the right move.
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Wow. I totally agree with you. What’s amazing to me is that it’s BoingBoing; everyone knows that if you post anything at all on the internet, eventually you’ll get lambasted by someone who just hates you and completely disagrees with you. Everyone knows this, and BoingBoing should know it better than anyone. To censor anything at all, especially for them, smacks of elitism and too, too much hypocrisy. Ugly, ugly hypocrisy. I’m ashamed for them.
[...] Posted by Matt Staggs on May 29, 2008 The admins and moderators at Boing Boing have reinstated commenting for posts regarding Cory Doctorow’s new novel, “Little Brother.” If you recall, commenting was disabled for a short while following a wave of angry comments regarding a May 26 post. [...]
Pingback by Update: Boing Boing brings back commenting for “Little Brother” posts « Enter the Octopus | May 29, 2008 |
Considering he’s been posting it all over Craphound, I’m kind of astounded he’d do that at BoingBoing.
[...] Like Jim Harper at Tech Liberation Front, I get annoyed when people use “Big Brother” to describe non-coercive private actions. BoingBoing, as a private entity, is entirely free to censor their own material. They get a lot of flack for their overly eager moderating policy, but for the most part it seems to keep the trolls at bay. (Although, here’s an example of a heavy hand.) [...]
Pingback by Tomorrow Museum » Archive » William Gibson Completely Deleted from BoingBoing Archives | June 28, 2008 |
Boycott BoingBoing!
I just experienced BoingBoing censorship. They published a story about peanut allergies being some sort of yuppie hysteria:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/09/joel-stein-nut-aller.html
I went in and commented with this link, which they deleted:
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/hoffman.html
This suggest that vegetable oil based adjuvents and other foreign proteins used in vaccines might be responsible for cases of anaphylaxis when peanuts are consumed. I went back and re-posted the link in a non-linkable form:
www(dot)whale(dot)to(slash)vaccines(slash)hoffman(dot)html
They responded by censoring me – removing all the vowels! Here is an example:
“BngBng cnsrd my cmmnt bv, nmbr 203. Thy tk t rfrnc. Hr t s gn, lt’s s f ths wrks: www(dt)whl(dt)t(slsh)vccns(slsh)hffmn(dt)html . Ds Bg Brthr st n th cnsrshp brd f BngBng? s ths wbst hpng fr sm dvrtsng dllrs frm th Mdcl-ndstrl Cmplx?” (they missed one)
Just copying the above from my saved file caused BoingBoing to want to send me several cookies, which I denied. I no longer automatically accept them.
Originally, when I tried to navigate back to the page to check on what they were doing, my browser crashed! Never happens otherwise. How do they do that? Must be “Spooks.”
Boycott BoingBoing! This is a joke:
http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html
It is a popular site, probably invaded by the “intelligence community.” My computer probably has untraceable spy junk in it now. Even a Mac is probably not immune.
Moderating comments on a website/blog are akin to making rules such as not being able to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. If blogs aren’t moderated, then the trolls will take over. And before anyone starts screaming about First Amendment rights, that only restricts the government from censoring citizens, not private enterprises or even public companies doing so in their own places of business. If you don’t like me disagreeing with you, you have every right to delete this comment, but then you’d be a hypocrite.
Dear Leoman/Jim:
I tried to email you, but I didn’t get a response when I did, so I’m leaving this comment here as well:
Thanks for your comments on my old Boing Boing post here. Why ever would I want to delete your comment, though?
I assure you that you’re always welcome to visit my site and comment freely, in agreement or not, with no fear of censorship. You’re always welcome here.
Your pal,
Matt
BoingBoing is a joke. I just had my second login name disabled by Boingboing because I posted some comments that disagreed with their general point. A site that champions free-speech my a$$. They silence any voice of dissent on their site unless it falls in with their party line. I’ve never made any post on that site that was libelous, threatening or otherwise…just didn’t agree with the general sentiment and got banned. What a f$%#ing joke.
BB.net has become so transparent in their biased shilling that I am no longer going to frequent their site. Hypocritical waste-o-time.
Indeed. I was just over there and left an initial comment. It was posted, and replied to. I replied back, defending myself in a polite and appropriate manner, only to have my comment deleted and my account closed, even though other folks had already replied to my second comment. Their replies are still there, now referring to a deleted comment. None of my comments contained profanity of any kind, they were on topic and polite. But apparently they went against the party line, and so they were deleted and my account closed. Hope they enjoy the echo chamber…
My main problem with BoingBoing is kinda embodied in that Takuan guy. I always feel that moderators are supposed to be moderate presences in a thread that keep the conversation reasonable and on topic and since they’ve got extra powers compared to everyone else it’s ok to hold them to a higher standard. It’s weird when you find mods being the most outspoken commentators there. If a mod wants to give their opinion they put their regular user hat on. That’s what secondary accounts are for, surely?
Y’know, I’m fine with “disemvoweling” for impolite comments, wherein obsessively rude or trollish comments have their vowels removed. It’s a way of making clear the standard of discourse for the site without stooping to Orwellian methods like removing posts entirely without disclosure.
I’m not bothered by the repetitive posts on BoingBoing (including the individual chapters of guest books occasionally posted) because I’m mighty liberal with the page down key, but if somebody is they’re a part of the readership and deserve to be heard without being zapped out of existence.