Saturday, October 25, 2008

Banned?

In an addendum to one of my comments at Al-Arianna about the McCain campaign, I sarcastically noted that I had reached a milestone, 400 censored posts out of approximately 2200.

I snarked a few other times over the last couple of days about the heavy handed and arbitrary nature of their moderation and now I have noticed that my archived approved comments started disappearing as well as the ones that were blocked. I believe that is leading up to a ban for not meekly taking my soma and putting up with something that is anathema to progressives, snuffing free speech in the name of a moderator's personal predilections even when those posts don't violate their stated guidelines.

In fact, often what gets wiped are long and thoughtful posts about an issue. Then when I answer a conservative troll with a pretty vicious pithy and ad hominem shot, that is permitted to survive scrutiny. What the fuck is up with that?

HuffPo's moderators have their heads up their asses and it is eventually going to drive people away because nobody can figure out where the line is. The only reason I am there so much right now is because I am obsessed with the presidential campaign. Once that is resolved, I am mulling just staying away. I can only put up with so much frustration.

4 comments:

Steve said...

I agree with you 100% about the seemingly arbitrary nature of moderation. I just assume they have interns doing much of it and they don't audit them.

I used to email them to ask for more specific rules with examples, to no avail. I've only had 127 deleted out of 2600ish; you must be pulling your hair out.

EmJay said...

I had a hard time signing up for your blog. They insisted on using my gmail name, mjones, and wouldn't let me add another name. Anyway, I'm not Mary. and I'm not even sure why they thought I was, but for here, it looks like I will be. Please don't assume I'm a female.

SmolderingRuin on huffpo

EmJay said...

When I posted this on the cheney "We still have a few days left to catch bin Laden" thread, it got put in pending prison:

Stinking, rotten liar and war criminal got something up his bloody sleeve?

But when I spaced it this way a few minutes later, it got right on:

Stin king, ro tten li ar and wa r crim in al got something up his bloo dy sleeve?

Carol Turner said...

I am also puzzled about why some seemingly inoffensive comments disappear while others go through. I've seen porno make it through their filters, along with spam. It seems totally arbitrary to me.