…over at Mashable that the reports of Facebook’s demise were greatly exaggerated. I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the bulk of users never even heard about Beacon. It would take a much larger issue before the current crop of college-age people start taking online privacy seriously.
… about a week ago, I put one guy into moderation (via his IP address) because he had a habit of hijacking posts to let everyone at RCG know we had lost our way. I could tell from his comments that he was an agent who followed the tech news, so he was not the usual person I put into moderation, but he did a few things, like repeating nearly identical comments under different handles, that just rubbed me the wrong way.
I give this background, because earlier today an otherwise legitimate comment got sent into moderation. In checking out why I realized that this agent was writing from the same IP as the anonymous person I had been banning. A little snooping around his website convinced me that it is almost definitely the same person.
Tip: if you want to stay anonymous after being rude, then figure out how to cloak your IP. (There are much more advanced options, but one easy way is just to use Google’s translate service to translate a page “into” English because then it appears to the blog platform that the page is being loaded by Google’s IP instead of your own.)
I will share anything with anyone, which the censorious should take into account when making plans to dominate the globe with pandemic ignorance. But I’m not completely transparent. I draw the line at teaching vandals how to be better at vandalism. 
you are just too slick!! That’s pretty funny!
Greg: It’s a good thing that only good people are reading this blog! 
ines: Thx!
Part of the problem with banning comments is it forces the unwanted voice to find other ways to be heard, and often in disguise, as you suggest (a noble act on your part). So, in the end, you may accomplish nothing. [One of the unintended (?) consequences of free speech is you identify the radicals-- force them underground and you lose track of them, making them that much more dangerous.]
We once had a person who would routinely bash us for something– maybe it was zillow. We censored none of it– rather, we offered the contrary voice the opportunity to be heard front and center– we let him post his point of view on Sellsius — and he did it. He never bashed us again. This led to our Open Mike program. But I digress.
One of the underpinnings of free speech is the belief that the open airing of all speech (even hate speech) will result in the best ideas rising to the top and the crappy ideas falling by the wayside. Sorta like forging steel in the furnace. Censorship distorts that progress and leads to a majority voice circle jerk. What you get is cheap tin.
I may be biased on this issue due to a legal education which required the reading of 1000s of pages of legal opinions and legal philosophy. I guess I bought into it.
Now, one may argue that blogging is different. Yes and no. If you blog for business, moderation is understandable (though I still am firmly against it, except for libel and spam). But if you blog as a national voice– akin to a newspaper— your use of censorship and blacklisting makes you an outright dictator, or blogtator. One day your head will roll.
Paul Chaney 10:47 am on December 10, 2007 Permalink |
I have to agree as well. I’m sure Facebook Beacon is not a term my veteran FB user son would be familiar with.
I think I’m going to do some “man on the street” interviews and ask my son and his friends to share their viewpoint on all this brouhaha.