What “community standards” did this comment breach? #15
I don’t comment on the Guardian anything like as much as I used to, it has become largely pointless due to the massive and dishonest moderation. But the recent spate of rather retro anti-Russian articles caused me a brief bout of sarcasm under this article, headlined:
I thought nothing in Russia could shock me. Then I went to a television broadcast
It’s a forgettable book-plug, neck-deep in condecension, telling the story of how – in horrible evil Russia – there’s a person that tells the audience when to clap and when to stop clapping. The fact this is exactly how television all over the world works is not mentioned.
I posted the following comment:
Natrually, I was immediately called a “putinbot” by the sort of high-minded individuals who, 500 hundred years ago, would have been having epileptics burnt at the stake:
Interestingly, when it came time to remove comments, it wasn’t the abusive response that was removed, but the whole section:
Anyhow…
- Does it “misrepresent the Guardian and its journalists”?
- Is it “persistent trolling or mindless abuse”?
- Is it “spam-like”? Or “obviously commercial”?
- Is it “racism, sexism, homophobia or hate-speech”?
- Is it “extremely offensive of threatening?”?
- Is it “flame-wars based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations”?
- Is it not “relevant”?
If none of the above – why was it taken down?
see our archive of censored comments. And if you see any egregious examples of the Guardian censoring its “free” comment sections – email us at [email protected], and send us screen caps if possible
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There’s a special bubble that cannot penetrate Jessthecrips little fantasy world, at the same time she is gobbing off the most awful things about almost anything or anyone she deems the enemy.
Just shows again what a bunch of liars these people are when they feel they can get away with it.
I got banned for arguing with two odious twerps: fishgirl23 (who’s a bloke) and andypandy1969. Both are rabid remainers who work in conjunction with posho ‘radleyman’, to get any comment they don’t like removed. I think andypandy has mental health issues and ‘fishgirl’ is an unemployed fantasist who writes angry denunciations of people like Johnson and Gove to get upvotes. My point is, it’s all so childish. The debate has disappeared, to be replaced with silly insults which get replies like “I love you fishgirl23″……who’s a man.
How do you know that fishgirl23 is a bloke?
everyone knows ‘fishy’ is a man
Lately he’s tried to boost his graun cred by pretending he’s also black
Fishgirl23 sounds female to me. Either way, they’re a nutcase.
Try commenting on Climate Change when RockyRex is in the room. Sceptical comments will be disappeared ad hoc. It seems he’s a moderator himself, a former schoolteacher with conventional, fixed views on climate disaster. He will brook no dissent, especially from me, so having been ‘moderated’ once to many times some time ago, I packed it in, I no longer read nor comment on Guardian articles.
Too bad, one less reader for the Guardian, and yet another small nail in its coffin.
Apologies if this has been noted earlier.
It pretty much mirrored in the Express these days. Any mention of Gina Miller, pro or against is immediately deleted. Commenters of long standing disappear for long periods usually after a posting a well received criticism of MPs from minority groups.
I stopped commenting in the guardian a couple of years ago when it became apparent any anti EU comment was met with little more than a barrage of personal taunts, slurs, jibes, insults and jeers accompanied with almost no constructive responses.
Just been banned again for unstated reasons. I presume it is because I mentioned Ahed Tamimi and Palestinian women imprisoned in Israeli military prisons on the Women’s Day article.
The comments stayed up for quite a while and there were quite a few linked comments (mostly against) but they were wiped out completely a few hours later and I was then besieged by trolls on other threads and my account was disabled shortly after.
My account on the DE is disabled for much the same reason. It’s hard to get heard anywhere these days.
The Guardian’s moderating procedure is basically flawed in several ways detrimental to their “free comment” proposition.
(1) Comments that are removed and marked as such in the comments (“BTL”) section simply disappear from the associated profile, at least for email logins – I don’t know about Disqus logins, but I do know that Disqus itself supports both the marking of removed comments in the users’ profiles as well as BTL and that when the associated users are viewing their own profiles they (can be) shown their original comment in full, as well as the “removed” notice. However, as the Guardian operates, it is impracticable for readers and commenters alike to keep or establish a cross-referenced track of removed comments, making the imputation of inappropriate public utterance and or the traduction of “journalistic reputation” (whether identified or anonymous) very easy for anyone inclined to do those things.
(2) Individual comments are, putatively, removed transparently against an enumerated list of “Community Standards”. But if a comments marked BTL as being removed because they breached one or more of those “Standards”, without specifying which particular, numbered “Standards” prompted their removal (as is the case), then not only is the transparency essential to civilized public discourse also removed for all parties, but – amongst other downsides – casual presumptions of poster reprehensibility as well as unjustified trashings of “journalistic reputation” mentioned above and the exposure of individual moderators to potential, ethics-based “moral hazard” are all facilitated. In many cases, the simple – and, in context, simply – unethical (but not uncommon) total “disappearance” of postings, rather than their “moderated removal“ could be seen as generally preferable, however lacking in transparency it might be. I don’t know if a workload-friendly attachment of moderation “reason numbers” to deleted posts is available as part of Disqus’s functionality, but even if it is not then adding it Guardian-side would be a relatively trivial programming and coding, but disproportionately ethical, exercise.
There are other unsatisfactory aspects of the Guardian’s moderation procedures that are – in context – less than desirable, but just the above two are more than undesirable enough. It becomes less clear, in view of their persistence through year after each successive year of CiF operation, just what the Guardian”s “respect/contempt for its readers” rating really is.
Reminds me of when I got banned from CiF ages ago for commenting on an article about the pregnant asylum seeker in offshore detention who was transferred to Australia for an abortion and then immediately changed her mind about the abortion upon her feet hitting the tarmac in Australia. The Australian Govt had returned her offshore before her lawyer had a chance to urgentpy lodge documents with the Court in an attempt to allow her to stay in Australia. These are the facts which were stated in the Guardian article itself.
My comment merely said words to the effect of “Can’t blame her for trying to create a delay so her lawyer had time to lodge papers in an attempt to stay in Australia but also can’t blame the Aussie Government for preventing her lawyer from exploiting her situation to get around the ban on asylum seekers who arrive by boat from ever staying in Australia.”
I still fail to see which “Community Standard” this comment breached, so I can only conclude it was interpreted as criticism of someone whom the Graun considered to be immune from any hint of criticism whatsoever as a member of several PC minority groups?
On the positive side it was this experience that led me to do a bit of googling on how frequent this kind of over zealous censorship of unwelcome viewpoints (I.E. ‘reality checks’ in many cases) is on CiF which in turn led me to discover this excellent OffGuardian resource where comment really is free!
Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, went on hunger strike (one day) in support of the Palestinian hunger strikers. Tom is very media savvy. He is also overweight so there were many comments about this – not censured.
I asked if he could inject himself with cholera in solidarity with the children dying in Yemen. That one went pretty quickly.
The article about Gorbachev.. sorry a book plug about Gorbachev
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/11/gorbachev-his-life-and-times-by-william-taubman-review-the-mysteries-remain
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/11/gorbachev-his-life-and-times-by-william-taubman-review-the-mysteries-remain#comment-110706200
The comment you requested could not be found.
A very unPC comment i guess, here it goes:
Between 1990 and 1995, an estimated 7 million premature deaths occurred in the countries that emerged from the USSR, rivalling the number of deaths attributed to Stalin’s politically induced famine in 1932–1933. Mortality rates rose by 12.8% in men and life expectancy fell to 64 years in 1994, the lowest level in the post-war period.
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-human-cost-of-economic-policy
He was better at selling PizzaHut, didnt kill as much
At the time of writing that comment still seems to be there
I’ve recently rejoined and had a few exchanges on economic matters that went OK. But commenting on a cartoon about Syria invited an attack from one of the resident zionist trolls, “Twinsen”.
Despite being very careful and not reacting in kind to the anti-semite barbs, my posts were variously moderated and/or disappeared and my account put on pre-moderation, The abuse from Twinsen was disappeared altogether but he clearly still has full posting rights.
The manipulation of the conversation by the moderator/s clearly shows a zionist agenda as they’ve made it appear that I was the aggressor having posts moderated for abuse.
if you remember to make screen caps of your posts we can feature any that are unjustly disappeared.
I think they’ve started making comments disappear to disguise the extent of their censorship
I’m having disappearing comments all the time. Yesterday, in the middle of an exchange about anti-semitism in the Labour Party, my reply was censored, There was no sign that I had replied. When I tried to tell the other person that I had replied but was moderated,
that reply disappeared as well. Incredibly frustrating when you’re trying to defend people from false accusations of anti semitism. Meanwhile, the mods had ignored an accusation that if Corbyn won an election, Jews would be asked to leave.
It seemed very ironic that later in the day, in a reply to a Guardian opinion piece which argued that Levinson 2 would interfere with freedom of speech, I suggested that the Guardian practised political censorship. Of course it immediately vanished, as I knew it would.
I asked them if they would have the decency to at least acknowledge that I had posted a reply by showing the comment deleted box. They said that on some threads there are so many comments deleted that it would look odd to do this!!!
The level of censorship at the Guardian has reached peak levels – they even removed a direct quote from John F Kennedy the two times I posted it, even though I had provided 2 or 3 links to show where they came from and when he made the statement. References to neo-Nazis and the far right in Ukraine have been vanished almost instantly – they are terrified of people knowing the truth about the coup in Ukraine. They know, as a pro-EU newspaper, that it will not look good to show that the EU played a role, alongside the US and IMF, in staging a coup in a European country. Their anti-Russian hysteria is also, frankly, pathetic.
Censoring historically accurate information because it does not fit the narrative is an incredibly dark and scary thing. The Guardian are not a liberal or left wing newspaper in any sense.
Just had a reply from the comments department.
“A moderator might have considered it to be anti-Semitic as it was dismissive of claims of anti-Semitism, and cited your ‘unease’ about the JLM. Community standards advise that we won’t leave up any posts that appear prejudiced:”
Therefore any defence from accusations of anti semitism is anti-semitic!!!!
And unease about any groups activity is suspect.
It really is appalling.
The censorship of opposing views is really getting too much. I’ve been posting on the Graun for many years, and I’ve noted a real crackdown in recent times.
I had a comment removed yesterday from Gary Younge’s article about his extremely underwhelming confrontation with Richard Spencer. I simply pointed out a contradiction in Younge’s discourse, namely that he first claimed membership of the group that suffered slavery and then, a minute later, claimed membership of the group that did the enslaving. I wanted to understand how he resolved that contradiction. It was a genuine question, asked politely, but removed in two minutes flat.
And I saw that plenty of other comments, very few of which could be reasonably said to have breached any of the rules, suffered the same fate. All too common these days, it seems. They have a narrative to push, and they’ll be damned if they allow anyone to contradict or even question it.
I had up to 9 comments moderated this morning on The Graun when I pointed out that the UK’s membership in the EU resulted in it having to take a discriminating immigration policy line against non-EU citizens in the UK (hence motivating me to vote for Brexit last year), and that the current scandal of outsourced workers being exploited by their companies has been heavily enabled in recent years by Freedom of Movement from the EU into the UK. Got slapped with my third pre-moderation stint. Already written in to the Mod Team asking them for a good explanation as to why they seem to be condoning a concerted effort to silence me BTL, and that they can either lift my pre-moderation status or delete my account outright.
I’ve come up for air here!!! I thought it was only me. Over the past several years I can’t really count the number of times the Graun’s stasi mod squad has deleted my comments, disabled my comments, placed me on pre-moderation and banned me and my avatar. Oh and then there are those stealthy ‘disappeared’ comments.
The latest censorship twist at the Graun is to simply limit comments to only ONE article . Usually a cotton candy, cream puff issue. They seal off comments on virtually any and all articles that even come close to scratching the surface of crucial issues. Polite comments pointing out this ‘kettling’, so to speak, of comments, the paucity of article that are open for comments are ‘REMOVED’!!!!! And any mention of ‘moderation’, ‘moderators’, ‘community standards’ results in comment ‘REMOVAL’!!!!
Anyhow, got that off me chest!!! And as ol’ Hunter wrote, (and I’m sure he had the likes of K. Murphy at the G. Australia in mind):
As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.
Hunter S. Thompson
me too. and i ended up with a new profile.
i don’t think journalism remotely pertains to that corporate sponsored astroturf tabloid. buzzfed is better than that.
i know what standards my latest deleted comment, that sent me straight to premod as well, breached.
being injurious to the possible profits/monopoly of our sponsors.
one of those little ” pharma sometimes is a little bit bad” alibi articles where you’re not allowed to say how very bad they actually are.
I was banned for a comment simply saying “Mods over moderate and censor opinions” on an article about free speech. Most of my opinions are in line with the Guardian, apart from articles proposing to reverse the democratic referendum vote.
Group-think prevails at the Guardian again – today mods are furiously deleting comments that deviate from the corporate definition of ‘fake news’.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/10/fake-news-social-media-current-affairs-approval
What makes it worse is a recent series of articles in which past and present editors say they have been doing a great job policing comments, usually accompanied by a self aggrandising photo-portrait next to the column (with the churnalist looking particularly smug and self-satisfied for some reason).
It is utterly pointless trying to enage with them, although BTL there is always some great stuff, at least until one of the politically programmed moderators censor any point of view not given prior approval by the advertisers.
In these dark days we need a news outlet that is not shit scared of the real issues.
Why does the Guardian tacitly prop up a rotten system then expend so much energy whining about the consequences of abusive elites?
Because the Guardian is “owned” by pro Zionists and Israel is behind much of the ME atrocities of war being waged by their accomplices. In case you haven’t noticed, the BBC and Channel 4 are also pro establishment which is governed by – Israel and the US elites.
It really is that simple.
I don’t know much about Scott Trust Ltd or David Pemsell (who is apparently paid >£700,000) but he’s definitely not getting my fiver until the Guardian drops its policy of censorship, and failing to report honestly on international war crimes.
Over Christmas the Guardian claimed that they had raised many hundred thousands of pounds for charities – I have yet to see a single article detailing what they have done with all that money. Probably sent it to the ‘rebels in east Aleppo and Asov Battalion in Ukraine.
Some of these, perhaps?
https://www.skatehut.co.uk/brands/sfr/sfr_essentials_helmet_matt_white.htm?
“the Guardian is “owned” by pro Zionists”?
Not during operation Cast Lead 2008-9. Hundreds of articles pro Hamas/Palestinians and anti IDF. This is where the sudden focus on “children” started, which is still being used in anti-Assad rhetoric. There was massive anti-Israel censorship @ CIF.
The videos from Gaza were quite revealing to me and others living in “poor” countries by the way : towering high rise and villas with some damage. Western rich only saw the damage.
I have just been banned from the Guardian CiF and I haven’t a clue why. My views are very centre-ground, and I am always polite in my comments. I didn’t even get pre-moderated. Just banned.
I heard of UKIP supporters getting banned, but my narrative was largely aligned with the Guardian, so it is odd they censored me.
that is weird. maybe a mistake? mind you, i’ve had comments deleted that agreed with an article. those underpaid workers are probs exhausted.
they banned me the other week for stating that gardasil is a serial killer of young girls but let me comment again after a few days which i found out accidentally.
don’t know if it was a temporary ban, or mistake.
of course i’ve had comments deleted, and been premoderated plenty.
i like the latter. at least somebody reads my comments 😉
i am being pre moderated again.
The Guardian view on vaccinations: a matter of public health
this morning i find thread already closed, comments and replies deleted.
pathetic!
what a farce this site is. liberal fascism!
You committed a heresy; You spoke the truth, which MSM bird cage liner outfits like the G are allergic to.
I don’t know the idiot who wrote that Op-Ed and I’m certainly no fan od Vladimir Putin, the Butcher of Chechnya – but I would like writer to judge Putin based on what Rabbi Aleksandr Boroda, president of Russian Federation of Jewish communities, said about Putin: “if Putin is ever removed from power, Russian Jews will be facing serious danger.”
Needless to say that while all leaders of the Christian Western world need Jewish support for their political survival – in Russia, it’s the Jewish community that needs Vladimir Putin for its survival….
https://rehmat1.com/2015/05/07/rabbi-russia-will-be-hell-for-jews-without-putin/
Whats wrong with Putin, sure he wiped out us/uk backed terrorists in Chechnya – and so he should – good for him
To be perfectly honest, the fate of Russian Jews is not in doubt. Try the Palestinians.
Its based on verifiable facts
UNO: The anglo-zionist narrative of xenophobia anti slavic nature is all falling apart
IE: The FIFA fiasco has their hands deep into the deception so that rabbit hole of theirs is being exposed in spades
DUE: The sheeple in the west have hit the 16 percent and are verging toward 20 percent in total skeptism with any narrative they try to formulate in their grand scheme of WE ARE EXCEPTIONAL AND THE rUSSIANS ,iRANIANS AND THE CHINESE ARE EVIL PERSONS NON GRATA.
TRE: The Petro-dollar ponzi sheme is coming undone as the Qatari’s are no longer following the anglo-zionist script and will be joining with Iran in constructing a single Pars gas pipeline thru Syria
QAUTTRO:. The Syrian fiasco is coming to an end hence they cannot longer keep up the Narrative ASSAD MUST GO He IS such an evil dictator
CINQUE: Last but not least Docius In Fundem. UKRAINE what a bet noire it has become for the anglo-zionist least of all for the EEU
In chess this is called game set and soon to become match. Petro-dollar waining London cabal proto fascist regime coming under real scrutiny by its citizens and the whole United Europe project unraveling as we speak. The French are going to be for a real shock and awe wuth their Chicago school of economics coming home to hit them were it counts. Labour laws and universal citizen rites being challenged at every sector of society. Macaroni man is their guy and the French fell for it hook line and sinker . Oh well it’s not like they did not know better . They cannot claim ignorance .
Post Scriptum : You cannot make this stuff up any more for more and more sheeple are starting to wise up.
THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES. One could call it the Marie Antionette moment in western fascistic corporate death . Fingers crossed. As Gramsci used to say Trotskyist are the whores of the fascist. Well globalist are modern day Trotskyist.
Falcemartello
Any chance you could acknowledge that Trotsky was wrongly maligned and certainly misrepresented?
I thought game, set and match was tennis and check/checkmate was chess?
Other than that, couldn’t agree with you more and hopefully we will see a dramatic shift away from the current paradigm and towards a model that actually serves mankind rather than the rich and powerful.
@Mohander . Not to sure if you can say he was much maligned. I myself am a follower of Gramscian style leftism as apposed to using the term marxism. Gramsci did not believe in rather debunked the famous dictum of Engellian/Marxist paradigm of determinant dailectical materialism. Gramscian form of leftist principle is based on the masses and coming from Italy was based on peasant culture. Hence most of the leftist organisations in Central and South America follow a similar paradigm. IE Chavismo and Guevarian philosophy.
Gramsci had real issues with Trotsky’s philosophical premis and it’s global character. Gramsci was an ardent follower of Gianbattista Vico who believed in the sovereign and how it functioned. Hence sovereign states are all important systems in order to maintain reason and logic with any form of society . Gramsci recognised this and hence his famous essay on hegemony which gets wrongly interpreted by many people in the west. Thats why Gramsci related to Vico’s philosophy of the UNIVERSALITY OF LAW AND CUSTOM’S.
La Nuova Scienza. Is Vico’s book . I suggest you have a read . It is really good and will show you the light. The Other one is Il Nuovo Principe by Antonio Gramsci . Here we see Gramsci moving away from Engellian doctrine.
Cheers
falcemartello.
Thanks for the response. Have studied some of Marx, trotsky and Lenin and the Russian Revolution(wholly misrepresented by Hearst and Solzenytsin but am intrigued by Gramsci, I have read some of the ideology behind the Chavistas and Guevara, now I will try and wade through alternate thinking.
Susan(Mohandeer)
Duh Masses= 50% stupid, 10% evil, 10% noble, 30% UNDECIDED.
QED
Strictly speaking the stupid can also be evil which confuses the figures somewhat, as for the undecided I haven’t made up my mind yet !!!
Nice one, Kev!
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Yet another example of The Guardian’s egregious moderation of it’s comment is free section.
It’s like visiting a pig farm where all the pigs are wallowing in the mud oinking approval of the quality of slime of which they are all partaking.
that site is embarrassing now. and they want me to pay?!
Yes the Guardian has become a parody of itself. They are begging for money from their readers/customers.
Any business has to first think of the product and not the profit. Secondly they then have to identify their target customers and then provide a service for them. Without a satisfied customer you have no business.
However I think this is all a ruse as they surely receive funding from their most influential customer… The customer who shamed them into smashing their hard drives.
Such a public humiliation by your owner is not something you come back from in the eyes of the public readership… So I think their begging campaign is somewhat trite.
Going to the Guardian is really embarrassing now. As you say, the hard drive smashing raid by the secret service really got something on their bosses or editors.
I’m not a vindictive person but I find myself wishing that all Guardian journalists and editors end up on the dole or as vagrants. They really do not understand the evil and harm they do to the innocents.
Are they still begging for subscriptions? Oh dear. I read the print version is going tabloid… most appropriate I think.
I was banned in 2011 I use another moniker there but rarely except to plug my blog. I always though that the Graun was a Labour paper, it isn’t. It’s for well paid public sector professional workers and the left wing of Neo-Liberalism, same agenda but a bit kinder especially for the required busybodies to make it run.
It was never a Labour paper. An analysis of the G’s voting endorsements over the years shows a clear bias towards the Liberal party, but definitely not the Labour party (certainly not the left side of the Labour party, in any case).
The Guardian has not been anything but right wing for many years. The only truly honest left wing political reporter – Seumus – was ousted when they tried to tell him how to be more right wing and supportive of the Blairites. It is anti Russian, pro Israeli and very far right of centre.
the left wing of Neo-Liberalism
That’s what the Labour Party is.
Although the “left” part is wearing a bit thin.
Kit you’re right it’s another plug for a book a “G-Lab” piece dressed up as journalism. Harding anyone?
The piece itself is totally Hardingesque: plugging a book, sensationalist, full of misdirections and untruths.
Roxburgh, Mentions the anti Putin demonstrations, was he there? Were they really so big? The one I saw in Ekaterinburgh was tiny, I’ve seen bigger pensioner demos here.
But hang on he got arrested in Nizhny Novgorod for, er WORKING while travelling on a tourist visa. Always a problem for you if you think you might be high profile with the police in any country. It is a visa violation. As he admits himself, “My job as in-house “expert” was to lead the discussions and help the participants get a feel for Putin’s Russia.” Clearly an idiot. Hardingesque or what?
And then he was invited to Anatoly Kuzichev Studio 1 political talk show on Channel One To, er sit in the audience? Big deal. I watched the programme and it was actually about Russian War graves and memorials being both desecrated and torn down in Poland and Ukraine. It was only communist symbols because of the historical period. And why are they now being banned there, in Poland and Ukraine? Roxburgh, doesn’t bother to tell us. Well, maybe it’s something to do with the rise of Fascism in these two countries. So you can imagine if it’s explained properly to you how you could begin see how the Russian’s and a war veteran like Artyom Sheinin might get a little hot under the collar. (29 million Russian’s died fighting Fascism!)
The Guardian’s Russo-phobia is legend and more insidious than other news rags because it pretends to be liberal and progressive. Yet somehow it manages to espouse a racist and mono-cultural view of Russia, a position it so much condemns in others and on other issues.
Strangely, as Roxburgh’s article exemplifies in spades, when it comes to Russia cross-cultural understanding goes out the window at the Guardian. In fact the opposite occurs and he actively condones and promotes a Russo-phobic view.
Why is this with the Guardian? Well some of it is, as with CNN, for the ratings/views/click bait. But also its an ideological problem as they now subscribe to a world view which is unipolar, liberal academic and elitist. So many Oxbridge types these days in its ranks, its unbelievable.
But also its an increasing world view which is purely Anglo-centric and false. The falsity lies in its desire totally these days to follow the establishments narrative. A view most of its readers don’t actually subscribe to and never did.
I read the piece. It was a straight forward visa violation. End of. What the person was doing was NOT tourism. The rest of it was just dishonest.
Same thing happens to me all the time. However the Guardian is not as popular when I first started commenting on the Syrian crisis 5 years ago. There are hardly any story that we can comment on, apart from Brexit.
In that rate pretty soon commenting will only be allowed on local issues.
Ah yes, one of the marvellous and completely surprising effects of Globalisation, parochialism. The groundswell of this are the comments that link any subject to football, they may not be many yet at The Grauniad but they are coming. I stopped going to that Zionist rag/erag so I do not know.
The young, thinking voters of Britain have put a tiger amongst the vultures with their resounding support for Jeremy Corbyn.
The vultures are looking for ‘carrion’ wherever they can find it.
Good response, Kit, to Orientalimp. As zerohoursuni I too have been called a Putinbot, asked how the weather is in Moscow etc et-yawn-cetera.
I agree about the dishonesty of Graun moderation. I had three comments removed last week. None breached any of the stated rules but each contained a single URL to a different and relevantpost on my own manifestly not</>commercial blogsite.
There is more to it than this-The Guardian is certainly pursuing a political agenda-but underlying all is the unfortunate fact that our species is plagued by the sort of authoritarian personalities who gravitate towards positions such as those of Policeman, Prison Guard, Inquisitor or moderator of blogs.
There is something about such people that triggers their reactions. They are, first and foremost, conformists: they don’t notice heresy when it is wearing a suit and tie and speaking in an approved accent, they will often miss things that contradict everything that their employers stand for but they pounce on anything that appears to contains anything savouring of originality or novelty in analysis. It is that which frightens them and that fear is the reason that they volunteer to police others’ thoughts.
That is an excellent observation, and one I don’t often see when these things come up. Sadly, it doesn’t take much to get someone on the side of the angels to behave pretty much the same way. Which accounts for the fact that the expression of heretical views descends into cattiness and tribalism on both sides with alarming regularity. Which, in turn, gives squirrel-cheeked moderators chewing bon-bons and doing god’s work perfect cover to banish any dissenting analyses that might threaten the orthodoxies they’ve been contracted to promote.
@Bevin – Police people are actually a diverse bunch these days and many of them these days are not police “men.” Some of them are actually very interesting, creative and deep thinking people with a genuine desire to help people. Please don’t sully the image of Police people by comparing them to the Guardian’s appalling moderators.
Really miss your opinions on Craig’s blog – he’s made a bit of a plumb of himself over his big Le Penn flounce off. Typical liberal behaviour that was too.
Join the cookie crew, I too miss reading Bevin’s observations & seems he does not post on Lifeboat.
The “Putinbot” accusers don’t have valid arguments so they use ad hominems to poison the well. If the whole poisoned well of debate gets moderated indiscriminately as a result then their job is done. All the better when all traces of their provocation are removed.
UKIP spend 1/2 a million quid on paid trolls, so does Campbell’s Portland Communications, and the Tories closer to 2 million, it seems they all now congregate on cif, and between the three of them no one else gets a look in. I believe they stay there because it’s too hard to AstroTurf via Twitter, Corbyn supporters mantra of “block don’t bicker” seem to put pay to Campbell’s sock puppet saving labour pretty damned quickly, Portland commas spent a fortune paying overseas organisations to troll Labour members with the exact opposite effect to those planned. I guess Astroturfing can only be successful when it doesn’t have a real grassroots movement to contend with, paid trolls cannot possibly have access to the vast political knowledge it would require to undermine genuine political struggle.
I don’t bother any more. It doesn’t matter what I say, it gets moderated so I presume I’ve become an unperson and some bot is automatically deleting my comments. I won’t waste any more time. Any time I might have spent previously on btl comments is now devoted to spreading the word that this journal is utterly toxic, much more so than the Mail or Express, which are like having acid thrown in your face. This is something much more insidious that pollutes your soul slowly whilst you are sleeping and tries to sow doubt and to turn your friends against you. So, no more comments – a wooden stake driven straight through the heart is the only riposte now.
Second that: well put.
The Off-guardian is guilty of removing articles it doesn’t agree with as well Kit.
Would you like to provide from some evidence for that assertion please?
I got ‘moderated for using “actual” quotes by Israeli politicians(their words, not mine), so when the Off Guardian is playing “Holier than Thow”, it is they who are just as bad as The Guardian, ie, hypocrites.
So you can’t actually produce any evidence (or indeed any correct grammar or spelling). Maybe some clue as what you said and when it was moderated might improve your credibility?
Your request is not going to be met is it?
How can one prove one was a comment was moderated on O.G.org as it is removed without trace.
Did you use quote marks, because I have posted statements by Ayelet Shaked and never been warned off? It might well have been you failed to make it clear that you did not share the vicious remarks made by Israeli extremist quotes?
Whenever I use a quote, I always us quotemarks, to indicate that it is a quote, and I always add the name of who made the quote so that it can be verified.
I encourage everyone who reads us to make screenshots of their comments here; that way, they can later post the screenshot of what they claim we removed. So far, no one who claims we censor their comments (by my count, it’s two people so far) has provided any evidence of it.
Examples please. Random statements are more evidence.
Brian Harry, Australia.
You have posted comments before(possibly elsewhere) and seemed well grounded, so this is a strange comment to be reading from you. Several people have had problems posting on the site but it is invariably a technical issue not on OffG’s end.
The only time I have ever seen it is when a troll is being repeatedly abusive and even then he was advised to moderate his ad hom attacks. The particular article was one I totally disagreed with and let it be known, but I wan’t warned off and certainly wasn’t censored. You should really justify the accusation, because I find it very difficult to accept on face value.