Censorship On The Internet - February 25th 2007

IT'S BROADER THAN YOU THINK

The internet is generally regarded as an anarchic, eclectic collection of the interesting, the challenging and the weird. It is not generally regarded as a medium that is subject to much in the way of censorship. There are some topics that should rightly be censored of course, including things like child pornography. But it seems to me that the amount of informal censorship is rising. And by informal censorship, I mean things being removed without good reason.

Let’s take Craigs list as an example. Crags list consists of a jumble of local small ads which can be posted free. It is widely and popularly used to procure everything from nuts and bolts to casual sex. The website has very few formal rules that can result in ads being banned. The usual reason for ads being removed by the Craigs list staff is that you are not local to the location where you are posting the ad. Fair enough and a clear violation of the Craigs list terms of use. But, there is also a mechanism whereby users can vote for the removal of content. A mere nine votes is required to get an ad removed and voters do not have to give any reason for their vote and are not identified in the Craigs list database. This means that it is very easy to set up a small cartel to ensure that your competitors’ ads are removed as quickly as possible. Craigs list management are aware that this cartel practice occurs but under their present setup are almost powerless to stop it.  There’s no doubt that censorship of this kind is occurring on Craigs list. I have personal experience of it and it’s an insidious invasion of the right to free speech.

Craigs list is by no means the only site being corrupted by individual interests. I have had my blogs repeatedly bumped from being listed on blog directories. Why? I have no idea. The organizers of those directories don’t reply to my questions and don’t even have the courtesy to send an e-mail when a link is bumped. My blogs are not offensive or libelous although they do generally contain criticism of the “powers that be”. Perhaps that is the reason. Who knows? I have had some of my topics removed from public forums. Why? Again, I don’t know and it seems there is no way to find out. Sure, I can move on and take my expertise and opinions elsewhere but what’s really dangerous here is that most users of the internet are totally unaware that what they are viewing has (or might be) censored in some insidious way.

I fully support the concept of free speech.  One of my favorite quotations, generally attributed to Voltaire is: “I may not agree with what you are saying but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I won’t censor your comments to this blog (as long as they’re relevant to the topic) so go ahead, have your say and let me have mine.

Comment by Kjell Bleivik on March 18th 2007

I think the way to go is in the direction of niche forums and portals. You do not start a political discussion on a professional eCommerce site.

I will give you one example that is very strictly censored. More than 1000 members have signed up so long. I am left with 60 so long, of which less than a half is serious members in my view. Here is the story:

Read the rules on my forum:

http://www.forumnorway.com/viewtopic.php?t=2

These rules mainly defines what is being censored there.

Note the following rule (the last part in read): "It takes time to moderate a forum. For that reason we use the following rule: We deny everything that we do not explicitly allow according to these rules".

In my view, since we stress that this is a professional forum, it would be unprofessional not censor the forum according to these rules.

(If you want your own subforum in the international relations category, you can get one where you are moderator).

I made comments to a post on WPW

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=73019 on how to fight a forum spammer. That may be relevant to this post since it shows how I censor the forum. I do not like the word censor. Edit, like a newspaper editor is IMO a better word.

Since this is so important and since, I personally wrote the points and I cite the source, I repeat the points here:

My first post:

I use phpBB on my forum and starfoxtj with the ability to delete multiple users and all their posts with a single mouseclick.

Some points:

• Require image code and email verification. That blocks 90 % of the spamBots.
• Block IP' (in severe cases IP ranges using .htaccess).
• The phpBB Admin toolkit if you switch to that forum software has other filters to block spammers, bad words, emails etc.
• Use DNSstuff if you are unsure whether a member is a spammer. IP lookup on country different from registered country is one example. Delete members with, redirections, broken links and pop ups in their sigs and write about it in your TOS.
• You can copy (part of my) .htaccess here."

• You fintune the forum in the Administration panel.
• Forum Admin + Permissions are very important. There, look up the forum in Advanced mode, and only let registered users be able to post and comment posts.
• Do not have too many subforums at the start. Extend later. It is done in a few minutes to add a new forum with subcategories.
• User admin is also very important. There you can (un)ban user names, host names, IP addresses etc, disallow names set permissions etc.

• You can sort users on different criteria, descending on data joined, gives you an easy way to check the latest members that have joined.
• Only joining (with a fake or a valid email address) without activating the account, a visiting date registered in Starfoxtj is another nearly 100 % secure sign of a spammer. I check their names and delete them all after a while with a single click with the mouse. It takes me seconds, together it takes them minutes / hours.
• Only joining, confirming the signup with the email link and only visiting the date of joing is another indication that this is a spammer. I think that is a spemmer in 99 % of the cases. I check them with tools menitioned above and delete them after a while.
• Be sure that you install the latest version of Starfoxtj. It has a lot of other options, among them checking for spam posts on all the forums with a single click with the mouse. Green on all forums indicates no problem.
• Googling a member is another way to detect a spammer. I googled a member, and at once I saw from the hits (first on my forum) that (s)he was a spammer.
• I have about 65 members. Without these and other measures, I would have had more than 1000 members. Note, I block IP's in .htaccess, since that is on a lower level. I don't block IP's in the Admin tools.