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Censorship Revisited
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Censorship Revisited Ironically, I had planned to post an essay about censorship on June 24. Instead, I got a belly full of frustration. I ran up against the new screening software installed by the administrators. The blog entry I managed to get past the new software got clogged in the weekend blogjam on Friday night, and again on Saturday morning. So only ten people saw that abbreviated entry when it was posted. Maybe one day when they fix the software, I’ll get my original essay through. I have to say, the tone is a bit different than this venting screed. I am now reconsidering what I wrote. Perhaps I was too nice. Too even-handed. The new software apparently is looking for a list of banned words. However, nowhere in the blog guidelines or the FAQ are these words listed. You have to find them through hunt and peck. Personally, I don’t have the patience for that. Some do however. When the software catches their posts they go back edit them down, and slowly feed them back into their blog in the editing process. By being that meticulous, GB-Cple discovered that one of the banned words was farmhouse. At this writing, 14 percent of the material on this blog has encountered some problem with the censors at one time or another. A bigger concern that keeps readers from seeing the material here is the shaky technical state of the website, especially the blog area. My memory told me it was better than the statistics reveal. However, about 31 percent of the posts in this blog had some technical problem: pictures that wouldn’t load, sections that disappeared, or posting during blogjams. Blogjams are what I call the times when the current posts board on the blog page just freezes for hours, sometimes for more than 12 hours. When that happens, the only people who will see your post are the regular readers of your blog, certainly not anyone new. Why post if no one will read it. I’m not posting for comments (although I appreciate them) like others might be here, but I am posting with the hopes that someone finds the material interesting. (The remainder of this post will conclude inside.)  |
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Part II If 45 percent of the material here is facing some sort of technical difficulty or censorship, one wonders two things: 1) how many more people would have read this material and reacted to it; and 2) when will my patience snap? In my original essay, I had speculated that authors will accept having problems up to 25 percent of the time. But 45 percent is stretching it. In the comments section of my very first post on this topic (“Censorship?” on March 2  [blog rollingrock55] wrote in a long response about the change in mood on this website. He noted that the mood was shifting to one of control. How can you try to control expression on a sex site? Isn’t sex the ultimate form of expression? Controlling speech is the beginnings of controlling thought and expression.At the time, I wondered if he was over-reacting a bit. Now, I’m not too sure. Likely, this is just some overzealous programming, or some programming that didn’t consider all the implications. But as usual, free expression is trampled while the folks making sure you aren’t passing out phone numbers or e-mail addresses go happily on their way in their restrictive mission. They never considered the larger implications of their actions. Of course, I am writing this in proprietary space, so the corporate owners of this space do have a say in what gets printed. However, censorship and censoring programs are antithetical to blogs and free expression. When they wake up to that, they’ll understand how to keep the burgeoning blogging community happy.
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They call it dollars and cents! Negativity curves the money flow. No cents about it. Vitual world of friends here on this site. It is very interesting to actually read how difficult it is to actually make friends and get to know people here. Isn't it interesting for a site devoted to sex and nudity there be a cover up?
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6/27/2005 8:27 pm |
It's hilarious... you can post these words (and variants): fucking, pissed, shit, but farmhouse was trapped? The blog I couldn't post last night went up tonight, but splitting it in half and simply amending the second half to the first one it had cleared - no changes to the text that was rejected. Psychotic 'bot
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