Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious [LWN.net]

Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious

Posted Apr 10, 2011 8:17 UTC (Sun) by bjacob (guest, #58566)
In reply to: Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious by FlorianMueller
Parent article: Groklaw shutting down in May

> Someone who participates in highly public debates, claims to provide more transparency about suspected connections and comes up with conspiracy theories concerning people like me (although my background is well-documented and verifiable) must also present themself at some point at a public event and explain their professional background.

"Citation needed". Why do you state this as a fact, when it is just your personal opinion about how other people should behave? It seems just fine to me to stay pseudonymous, even as a high-profile public writer. And there are numerous precedents for that, too.

> On the occasion of the announcement of Groklaw's shutdown (which for now is just an announcement), many people appear to think only about the good that Groklaw presumably did and tend to forget its dark side: its devious censorship ("sandboxing") of user comments designed to suppress dissent and fabricate consensus in its community in the eyes of third parties.

Since when is it a bad thing to moderate/filter comments on one's own site? You might have personal ethics according to which this is not acceptable, but other people might disagree and in the end this was her own site.

to post comments

Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious

Posted Apr 10, 2011 8:24 UTC (Sun) by bjacob (guest, #58566) [Link] (1 responses)

> On the occasion of the announcement of Groklaw's shutdown (which for now is just an announcement), many people appear to think only about the good that Groklaw presumably did and tend to forget its dark side: its devious censorship ("sandboxing") of user comments designed to suppress dissent and fabricate consensus in its community in the eyes of third parties.

Holy cow! Actually, not only your link is just a vague accusation and not a conviction; but actually the source for this accusation, as quoted in this link, is... yourself!!!

Don't you agree, that quoting oneself as citation is useless? And that it only makes things worse, that you used a third party (who quoted you) as proxy for that?

Its loss of relevance was obvious and its censorship, notorious

Posted Apr 11, 2011 0:24 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

It's not useless. It helps create a certain perception of relevance. Now usually when this sort of thing happens there is an extra layer of indirection. Where a government agency or business entity wants to build a certain perception for a policy or product. They'll leak some information to the media on an anonymous basis. Someone in the media will parrot it in a sound bite with some hand-waving citation, a second media source will rebroadcast and then the original entity will point to it the media coverage and spin it to build the perception they want in their talking points.

So not useless at all. Unethical and manipulative..but far from useless.

It's actually sort of refreshing to see someone quoting themselves without the typical layer of indirection. It's a very Donald Trump sort of thing to do. And by that I mean "classy{tm}."

-jef