Monday, July 25, 2011

Moderation or Censorship?

I'm don't have an axe to grind here because it's never happened to me that I know of, but I've noticed that some bloggers who I follow share a particularly nasty habit:  they remove comments from their blog and their Facebook wall. 

No, I will not divulge the names of these blogs because I'm not interested in driving traffic their way or starting an internet bitch-fight with someone who I don't even know.  Besides, I think we all can agree that women are bitchy enough to each other in real life so there's no need to act cunty toward a stranger who's never personally done a single thing to me.

Why would someone want to delete comments from their blog or their FB wall?  It could be that the comment is spam, in which case it's perfectly understandable why someone would want it deleted.  Unfortunately, I find that all too often comments are deleted because the commenter is being combative or because the author of the blog simply disagrees with the comment that was made.  Whatever the reason, the author of the blog justifies their decision by indicating that it's their space to moderate and they can delete whatever they'd like.  I don't disagree with that sentiment though I wish they'd be honest about what they're really doing when they remove comments.

What is it that they're doing?  What habit do I find so distasteful?  Actively engaging in censorship. 

I'm more than a little disgusted that creative individuals would purposely censor others.  I'm not against moderation, but I am against censorship and removing disliked comments is most definitely censorship.  If you think I'm incorrect, please enlighten me and let me know what else it should be called.

My blog only has 20 followers and I've sometimes received comments that I think are a little dickish.  That's life, right?  It's true that I can't imagine how irritated bloggers with thousands of followers must feel by daily dickish comments made by women who have so much bitchiness that it overflows their real lives and spills out on the internet.  However, as adults we generally accept that everyone doesn't always agree with our viewpoints.  Get that?  Everyone who hears or reads what we have to say is not going to agree.  And, FFS, you should expect to receive flak if you write about something controversial.  You would be a moron if you don't expect a strong counter to your own strong opinion.

I don't live off of asskissing (either variety) and think that life would be really boring without a little debate every now and then.  As the tired saying goes, "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen."  I think a nice alternative is, If you're intolerant toward a difference of opinion, why are you busy voicing your own?

No comments:

Post a Comment