Free Speech and Censorship in Online Communities
Earlier this year, I blogged about some of the ongoing debates I’ve seen regarding online communities and free speech. Some users seem to think that the right of free speech applies everywhere, when in reality, it doesn’t. In fact, the very same right of free speech that allows people to say whatever they want also allows discussion list organizers and online community owners to choose not to carry certain kinds of speech. In fact, read the user agreements of most online communities and you’ll find a whole host of prohibited speech that you might be able to say in other venues.
David helped me flesh out my original blog post into our latest column over at FastCompany.com:
yes, but that doesn’t prevent free speech does it? You still have your freedom, you can’t say it there. but you stillhave your freedom…simplistic I know…but all of us have rules and regs…nothing we can do about that.
Comment by carole — 5/21/2007 @ 1:15 am
yvyvyny.wordpress.com
Shameful and Cowardly aSmallWorld Management
As an FYI. This is with regards to my position on how aSmallWorld is being run. Let me know what you think.Its been well documented that the web admins on aSW are 5 women, named interiuer police by a recent French magazine, run apparently by Erik’s wife, Louise.
—>This is an important note: The quality of people on aSW and diversity is undisputed. Good people all round. Unfortunately something is rotten in the state of Denmark… and management must realize that what was built on such great grounds is now handled with one of the poorest rudest style of management I have ever come across.
Well, many aSWers have seen my postings across various threads in aSW either as a tongue in cheek/ “boundary-pushing” author or as a genuine participant in the community contributing to informative threads, connecting people and directing folks where I think they can find information.
I don’t need verification or pats on my back for that. But here’s the unknown part of my story, that I will tell everybody which will reveal how unprofessional and cowardly the management is.
In Feb 2007, I approached EW proactively with some advice and some feedback re; murmurs about how he or Louise is being too strict with the community. In my words, I said there is too pervasive a culture of fear in the community. I know theres value and I love the value of the community, but I said it mimics too much the feeling an Old Communist state has. I said, as the founder, he should be the brand ambassador, the goodwill gatherer who is like the grand old father of a network, and not be accused of any heavy handed regulation of what is in itself a vibrant community.
Through conversations, I began to develop, pro bono, a complete set of recommendations on how the network could stem the blood loss, the membership leakage through an iron-fisted web administration. A web admin that seemingly harks of new age/ Internet age ideals, but run like some old rusty Nazi like mechanism. The web admins, I know, are people too, but because they choose to conduct themselves as cold merciless second rate readers of English, I will treat them like the tools they are.
– e.g., When I would be sarcastic and played the persona of what were some aSWers’ cheezy pickup selves, I was pointed out as being a cheezy slimy pickup artist. There was no attempt to read what preceded that “statement” or comment.
– e.g., Some people might have discomfort in jokes made, but lets regulate ourselves. A fellow member should be able to say, hey, that was not too nice and such. A graceful person that I am trying to be, will admit going too far if I did. There was never such kind of feedback. Instead, it was always “thread deletion” or “warning” imposed. Measures that every modern forum moderator today will tell you is not the way to do it.
At the same time, I recommended the following, some of which were executed but the advice never acknowledged with a kind thank you.
1. Members who were helpful in organizing get together should be rewarded with invites - check.
2. List more emails and forum threads per page, “for goodness sake” if your web design team can’t do anything else - check.
3. Create channels of recourse with Member Advisory Board, whereby members had local representatives across geographic or time regions, who understood the people, could dissemintae corporate messages or provide feedback to management. These members would serve as arbiters in the event the wed admins executed what were erroneous judgements and punishments. - Not Done. No Check.
4. Make web admins consistent in interpretation of all threads. Members could tell whether 2 would like this, or 5 would like that or frown on what. We should never be able to tell them apart because the standards are consistent, clear and easily understood. “Quality we expect” is vague. Are we really conforming to what I understand are Middle East countries yardstick of what passes through their proxy servers? That doesn’t sound right?….
a. The membership and forum guidelines are no clearer than the rules specified in a neighborhood nursery pool. No jumping, no splashing, no running - safe yes, vague oh yeah.
b. I recommended elaborating on each and every single rule, e.g.
Section 3, part 1 (b) Use of profanity, words include f***, c***, b****, a******, retarded, p****, c*******.. etc *list all*, should not be utilized in any context, paraphrased, quoted or altered to retain meaning *e.g., f*%k* [Editor’s note: Apparently I don’t have some of these on the bad-word list for WordPress… will be remedied shortly.]
– Not Done. No Check.
5. I recommended the creation of an Office of Member Relations. A function to calibrate invitation standards, address member issues, manage the Member Advisory Board, serving the membership as its sole client. This office defends the community against finance/budgetary concerns, reviews guidelines continuously, staying on top of what is a continually changing society.
– Not Done. No Check.
Then the web rollout.
6. I said you should test it out with the super users to illicit feedback. — Not Done. No Check.
ASW Watch Enthusiasts tab, font color, still no search function makes me speculate if someone’s grandma was doing the programming.
7. Create group functionality so people can communicate better. No need for elaboration since every other group out there has this. — Not Done. No Check.
8. A dubious dropping of all LGBT related threads among a peppering of others. I went down hard on management on this. Why? Because I am a believer in non-discriminatory practices. I’m a minority. If gays go first, its women, and minority next.
– Why was a public admonishment within the community necessary? Because it gives any outsider looking in an impression that there is at least balance, or a conscience within the society. Had everybody stayed quiet in fear, we would have all been guilty of being homophobic. One would think professional diplomatic experience would have covered that. — Not appreciated.
– I played my part in trying to find out where the ball was dropped, appeasing certain LGBT parties to not go to press. I passed along emails and voicemails raising concern. — No response
– Magically, the LGBT threads are restored.
9. A few days ago, I said I was going to reward aSW if I found a business opportunity through there, a 2% equity stake as fomders fee. or if its project based, a 2% headhuntes’ fee, both to show my reward and potential gratitude. — Thread deleted because it was too “:commercial” — No brains. No loss to me.
Two days ago I posted something that was objectionable to another member. It was the perfect opportunity to strike.
a. I got my posting rights removed. I couldnt defend myself. Let alone retract, apologize, explain how the writing was purely in character. In character the persona whined about women, and blames his girlfriend for cheating on him with his pet dog (kissing for 10 seconds, thats where the reader should know its a joke) and that his gf knew Ferraris because she was shagged often in them. It was a persona below the quality expected.
I ask our Middle Eastern prozy servers and investors.
1. Blondes and Brunettes
2. My Oldest Toy
3. Whats on my mind?
—> those are high quality threads? vs mine accounting colorfully, the pickup strategies of cheesy men? Hmm. So another female member can say “meet you at Pole Position” and that is more tasteful that my writing? Ok, sure. No good judgement.
10. My friend staying with me told everyone online that she was sleeping over using my laptop and when she was passing it back to me, told the webmaster as well. When I logged onto, my laptop was pinged continuously for an hour. I couldn’t do work because the laptop kept getting pings for IP and MAC address. I PMed the web team to ask them to stop becaise I need tp work. My friend’s account got suspected of being dubious. ie. I’m Asian but I can also be a tall hot blonde. No such metamorphic skills.
She told them, and yet they still used the very same technique to conclude I was her and she was me.
Then I got kicked to aBW, and then I got my profile pick removed. I called Erik W and Joe R the new CEO. Both hung up in my face. That after doing some good work voluntarily. You’d think theyd address me given my contribution. No, Louise’s crack web team was the one standard we measure our response by.
I thought I would get a courtesy call today, but instead I got it from aSW support saying I should go find something else. Yes. Something else more professionally run. I truly believe if one didn’t think they agree with my behavior, that theyd explain it to me on the phone. It was an easily 100k job I did for free, I dont even get a professional courtesy call.
What ingrates. What cowards. What kind of people are those people. Find you want to paint yourself as more than you are. Then I will make it my mission to paint you in the real light you are. We will see who can SEO and outblog each other. I can spare another 50k of time revealing the true hypocrisy of the network. How management does not have the grace that it expects its members to have.
When you have cowards and ingrates at the top, and you try to attract smart people, you gonna get called out all the time. You only want good press but not real journalistic pieces on you? CNBC, Swedish DocuTV, Dubai TV Channels. — Let me show you what a fair and balanced report is. Let me also remind you I copyrighted my recommendations to a T. Its the print at the bottom.
You think all I am capable of is low grade humor. I will show everyone else how aSW mgmt is a a low-rent tux of a joke.
You have unceremoniously kicked out your last one night stand. Guess she got knocked up this time. And now you have the baby devil to deal with.
I quote my favorite fruitseller: How do you like them apples now.
~ by yvyvyny on May 26, 2007.
One Response to “Shameful and Cowardly aSmallWorld Management”
1.
Its a pyramid scheme/
Celebs who arent on it, if listed by press to be on it
aint gonna call themsevles out
they dont know what the consequences are?… so advised…
listen if they’re that cool they didnt need to erroneously list you as a member
yvyvyny said this on May 27th, 2007 at 5:14 pm (edit)
Comment by MyConsiglieri — 5/27/2007 @ 11:00 pm
Kien:
I appreciate your perspective, and it may very well be that there are serious issues at aSW management – not being active myself or closely involved, I really can’t say.
That said…
> 3. Create channels of recourse with Member Advisory Board…
I think this is a great idea conceptually, but difficult (and expensive) to administer in practice. It’s certainly not the norm in social networking sites – not Ryze, Ecademy, LinkedIn, MySpace, or any other that I know of.
> a. The membership and forum guidelines are no clearer than the rules
> specified in a neighborhood nursery pool. No jumping, no splashing, no
> running - safe yes, vague oh yeah.
I think many social networking administrators long for (as I do) a return to the simple common law concept of “do no harm”. I don’t think they want to get into excruciatingly detailed legalese which precludes them being able to just use good judgment in each situation.
> b. I recommended elaborating on each and every single rule, e.g.
> Section 3, part 1 (b) Use of profanity, words include […] etc *list all*, should not be utilized
in any context, paraphrased, quoted or altered to retain meaning
Ditto here. I don’t know of a site that does this – simply “no profanity” really should suffice. With slang developing as rapidly as it does, and considering foreign language translations as well, I don’t think you could really keep it up to date – again, you’re putting a big maintenance burden on the administration. And again, I think trying to spell it all out eliminates the ability to simply use good judgment – both on the part of users and moderators. Consider all the nuances you would have to spell out… for example, “fag” meaning a cigarette or a bundle of sticks is OK, but to mean a homosexual isn’t? Unless it’s a gay man referring to himself or his partner? I’d rather not spell it out – I don’t think it’s really even feasible to do so.
> 6. I said you should test it out with the super users to illicit feedback.
This is an important issue – I’m going through the same thing with LinkedIn. It’s non-trivial, though, to present some users with a beta version and others the production version, using the same data – and if not using the production data, will users really test it? I agree with you on this one – just saying it’s not necessarily a quick & simple solution.
> 8. A dubious dropping of all LGBT related threads among a peppering of
> others. I went down hard on management on this. Why? Because I am a believer
> in non-discriminatory practices. I’m a minority. If gays go first, its
> women, and minority next.
Agree completely with you on this. Hey… I’m straight, and I’m the one who bitches at people in my favorite MMORPG whenever someone uses the word “gay” as a generic insult. No place for that kind of prejudice, even on a dating site. I suppose if it’s a fundamentalist religious-based dating site, maybe not, but that’s not the case here. :-)
> 9. A few days ago, I said I was going to reward aSW if I found a business
> opportunity through there, a 2% equity stake as fomders fee. or if its
> project based, a 2% headhuntes’ fee, both to show my reward and potential
> gratitude. — Thread deleted because it was too “:commercial” — No brains.
> No loss to me.
But that’s their rules, and you knew that (or should have) beforehand. You may not like it, but I don’t think you can hold it against them for enforcing their posted rules.
> She told them, and yet they still used the very same technique to conclude I
> was her and she was me.
That’s a problem, and I understand where you’re coming from. My wife and son and I swap machines all the time, so any of the three of us might be on any of the three machines at any time. I understand sites trying to prevent double accounts, but it’s easily solved with a one-minute phone call.
> It was an easily 100k job I did for free, I don’t even get a professional courtesy call.
But they didn’t ask you for it, so have little, if any, obligation. And while I know you put in a lot of time, I’m sure they get a lot of input from a lot of users. At what point does it merit a professional courtesy call?
> but instead I got it from aSW support saying I should go find something else. Yes. Something else
> more professionally run. I truly believe if one didn’t think they agree with my behavior, that
> theyd explain it to me on the phone.
I probably wouldn’t. I’m not saying I would have told you to go find something else in this particular situation, but if I were running a site and it had gotten to the point that a member was being ejected, I would instruct customer service to say nothing more than something to the effect of: “We feel that your purpose and behavior just isn’t a good fit with the site. You don’t seem to be happy with us, and we’re not prepared to resolve that to your satisfaction. I hope you find another provider better suited to your needs.”
What else is there to say? Hashing through the details is just going to create an argument, and the decision’s already made. Would you change your behavior based on what they tell you? And going through the details also sets up a whole potential legal issue, and really, they’re completely within their rights to simply drop you as a customer, like any other business can. And smart businesses fire their difficult customers. Taking good care of a customer on one or two issues helps build a good reputation and loyal customers, but people who are chronically unhappy with you, you don’t want as customers.
> I can spare another 50k of time revealing the true hypocrisy of the network.
But why?!? What will it really accomplish? The members who are happy with it as it is will continue to be happy with it as it is. And do you think aSW will change because of this? They’ve already heard what you have to say – there’s nothing new here for them.
Now, if you can find a bunch of other people who share your opinion, that’s another matter. But if you’re a lone voice, it won’t matter how many different places you say it.
You might also give some thought to how it reflects on you. Do you really think it shows you in the best light? Do you want to be known as “the guy who bitched about aSW”? Or might that time be better spent building your own reputation and finding (or creating!) another community better suited to your tastes?
Your choice.
Comment by Scott Allen — 5/28/2007 @ 4:21 am