archGFX » censorship

Desaparecidos: WordPress.com Sucks

adam — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:55:18 +0000

This is non-news. I have nothing new to report. Everything I have to say has been said by the people directly involved. I am repeating this only as a gesture of solidarity because I am so offended and disgusted by the actions of Automattic, inc.

Timethief is a wonderful person, who was one of the first people I met on the wordpress.com forums. Had it not been for Options, I would never have visited them in the first place. Timethief has amassed over 7,000 posts of wonderful support for the bloggers at wordpress.com. So I find it completely shocking that:

Both of them were asked to leave the forum
Shortly thereafter, their forum accounts were suspended
Timethief's blog, WPBloggingTips (yes, it's a blog that archives the helpful advice she gives out on the forums, so that the google-inclined can help themselves) was marked as "mature"1 .
Timethief's IP was blacklisted in Akismet's spam database 2

I'm honestly not as surprised that wank and options were banned from the forums. Their blogs, like mine, focus on highlighting issues with wordpress (theirs more the .COM side). The idea that automattic would go out of its way to silence Timethief, who has always held the community as her highest priority, is nonsensical.

This is a warning to anyone considering the use of Automattic's services: They do not have your interests in mind, and if you are ever displeased with the service you receive, they will not hesitate to use those services as weapons against you. Even for people considering the use of just Akismet, it should be disconcerting that you are not subscribing to an anti-spam service, you are subscribing to automattic's vehicle of censorship.

For your own sake, use Defensio, use Vox, tumblr, or blogspot, but stay away from wordpress.com, akismet, and wordpress.com stats. They will violate your privacy, and they will revoke their services at signs of your dissatisfaction.

The mature flag, if you're not aware, is the means by which blogs on wordpress.com are hidden from public view and denied the use of categories or tags. This, rather than the sensible solution of putting up an "Under 18" warning that blogspot employs.
Since Automattic, Inc. does not follow up with ISP's (or bloghosts for the splogs that are advertising via spam), she has no recourse with Telus.net to get a new IP address. So much for automattic caring a wit for the health of the blogging community.

All your wi-fi are belong to Big Brother

adam — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:42:38 +0000

I might have to change my mind about Ron Paul. This bill might make sense1 if there were anything resembling a clear notion of what is illegally obscene.

besides C|Net's objection to the terminology surrounding who is providing such access

Free Speech for the dumb

adam — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:52:27 +0000

There's been a lot said about Turkey's wholesale blocking of wordpress.com, because of a few possibly libelous blogs hosted there. It doesn't interest me much, because unless the state-owned ISP and firewall is dismantled, there's not going to be free speech anytime soon. Not to mention, I can't read turkish, and thereby determine whether the blogs in question are indeed libelous1. What does interest me, is the Section 2257 legislation that could be passed in 3 days. Since wordpress.com, and most of the rest of the sites I visit, are hosted in the US, this is far more invasive, and far more likely to genuinely impact "free speech" as it exists on the internet:

The regulations would require the people running a site to get and maintain personal information from every user (that means you) who posts a “sexually explicit” photo, including your photo ID (driver’s license, passport, or military ID).
The regulations would allow the Attorney General to conduct warrantless searches at will on the sites’ records, including your personal information.
There are few safeguards over what the FBI can do with the information it obtains.
If a site operator fails to comply with the regulations, he or she would face a prison sentence of up to 5 years.
For more detailed information on Sec. 2257, go to http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/misc/2257_fact_sheet.pdf.

Alberto Gonzalez may have resigned, be we are not out of the woods, by any means. The US is picking and choosing what her citizens can and can't say. For them, it's sexual activity; for Turkey, negative comments about Adnan Oktar.

not to mention, according to matt's statements about opendomain.org, Adnan Oktar had every right to demand that all domains containing permutations of his name be ceded to him, on the basis of him owning his own name

This is the last time, I swear

adam — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:53:35 +0000

There's no reason I should still be posting about wordpress.com. I guess I'm just annoyed that I ever thought it was a good place to blog/journal/post. The exclusion of anyone who's not a child or a christian has reached a fever pitch. They've just released the following guidelines 1:

No inappropriate titles. Do we suppose this means that if you're posting about the really hot sex you had last night, you should make sure the title is "fluffy kittens for everyone"?
No profanity or nudity. This means that my cuss-like-a-sailor-because-it-makes-people-respond-not-just-think-about-it tactic is definitely outlawed. I hate to think what it means for ICHC.
No extraneous categories. I'm sure my 2.0 category was causing serious consternation. let alone "cult-of-matt". In fact, only the officially sanctioned categories are allowed. Anything else and you'll be relegated to the dustbin, because then you won't drive traffic to our ad-laden tag pages.
And really, you should only post to one category at a time. nevermind that wordpress.com categories can't be used as categories, since the links lead out of your blog 2. if you use categories as tags (meta information), you're definately going to be banned

Basically, if you're not an aspiring member of the web 2.0 a-list-aspiring echo chamber, you're not welcome on wordpress.com. fantastic. glad i left. now I'm off to find the 11 most relevant tags for this post.

taken to their logical extreme, with commentary
do I really need to explain what a horrific user experience it is to click on someone's category in post meta and find no posts at all?

Buckshot

adam — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:23:57 +0000

How is it that automattic can complain about users not knowing the difference between their commercial service, and the open source blogging tool, when they continue to blur and erase the line themselves? and if we assume that it's not a mistake, and they meant to use their 2nd most popular plugin to advertise wordpress.com in user's sidebars, wouldn't that contradict Matt's whining about PPP and TLA?
Reverend Ted has novell's jab at the mac vs. pc ads. Novell continues to distance themselves from other linuxes (linuxi?) by not taking a whiny nerd-boy stab at apple, but actually shifting the discussion. making linux a woman makes apple immediately look sexist. remember the one woman in the mac ads? she was a peripheral(second class citizen much?) and involved in substantial confusion between networks and peripherals (typical of most mac fanboys, in my experience).
i don’t know what these stats are. or why they keep showing up in my dashboard. they could be my overall stats if the years were different.
I really like the ideas forum. as much as opensearch and noindex could be theme competencies, they make more sense as wordpress core competencies. i really don't want to be responsible for correctly addressing introspection.
this slide is brilliant. yet another reason i love last.fm. i'm not quite sure why that woman has become such a "receptacle for people's rage" (the wifest's words). lettting that sort of slander be a defining characteristic of last.fm's service was bringing them down.
i have a twitter page now, but no use for it. other than keeping track of the wordpress.com servers.
i'm using mr. messina's filigree graphic everywhere, because it's so easy to color. i need to find a GPL replacement for it, or draw my own, though. GPL graphics are damn hard to find.