I was going to post about the movie THE MASTER tonight. I got on a streetcar and went to St. Clair & Dufferin to take the bus south to the Bloor subway to Dufferin station, then go west to the Dundas West station, then take a streetcar south on Roncesvalles to the Revue Cinema. I could have walked to St. Clair & Ossington and taken the bus south to Ossington station, but I figured that the Dufferin bus was more frequent and less likely to be delayed.
As it turned out, the Dufferin bus did have a fairly long delay, so when I reached the Dundas West station I already had little time to spare. Then there was ANOTHER delay on the part of the Roncesvalles streetcar, and I couldn't get to the cinema on time, so I went home. (I wasn't so sure I wanted to see THE MASTER, but I'll definitely have to see it now that I've made you readers curious!)
What shall I write about instead? Yesterday at THE HUFFINGTON POST I read a post saying "Many posters say the Dems won the election. The Repubs, however, were given a strong House majority. No one won, so each side needs to bend." So I wrote a reply: "Of course, the Republicans lost the popular vote and had to win through gerrymandering..." (I like putting an ellipse at the end of my post. Gives it a bit of ponderous style.) So someone replied to me: "I live in a reality based world. Redistricting is reality. Whining is unbecoming."
Such snark I can't take lying down, so I replied to him: "In other words, 'We cheated and won, so just shut up.' (Same as Bush v. Gore.)" But the Huffpost moderators blocked this reply, and I later figured out that the words "shut up" automatically get a post blocked, even in the context of quotation marks. I confirmed this when I rewrote the post with "say nothing" in the place of "shut up," and it wasn't blocked.
Moderators, you need to make a public announcement of all the terms that'll automatically get you blocked. (I wish they'd send a message saying something like "You can't post this because it includes the words "shut up.") I know that a lot of the people who post at the site are bothered about their posts being blocked for reasons they have no idea of.
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2 comments:
I couldn't agree more. I've had several unobjectionable comments scrubbed. It's pretty shameful that Huffpo has so much difficulty in drawing the line between allowable free speech and hate speech - if computers are doing the screening that might go some way to explaining why.
Subject matter will also get your posts blocked, not just a given single post but sometimes multiple posts on multiple.
If during the heat of argument over the Trayvor Martin / George Zimmerman discussion you mentioned that you agreed with the jury's verdict, that was enough to get you called every name imaginable but also have none of your comments posted for hours. Most of them after that simply never saw the light of day no matter the topic even if the English were perfect and NO rules had been violated.
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