Read this before it gets erased. Does anyone have an explanation for why Hillary Blogs are deleting diaries, erasing comments, and suspending the accounts of people left and right? Are any neutral or Obama-leaning bloggers doing this? I know that most Clinton supporters voluntarily stopped posting here when I came out for Obama, but the few that remain aren’t censored or troll-rated, and as long as they make good faith arguments they get good faith responses.
It just seems to me that this censorship at Hillary Blogs is a metaphor for something much greater. It’s almost as if they can’t sustain an open debate without being driven from the field on their own turf.
I know MyDD and Daily Kos have long had their taboo topics, which has always been somewhat problematic. But this is the first time I’ve seen people get banned for talking about a candidate.
It’s creepy.
Update [2008-4-30 15:14:16 by BooMan]: Bob Johnson’s diary wasn’t deleted, it was artificially taken off the recommended list. How do I know? Booman Tribune and MyDD are both driven off of SCOOP. While I had the recommended diary feature written separately from MyDD, they both work off a formula. It works like this. Each recommendation is weighted evenly. But a recommendation’s power wanes over time. You can tinker with the formula to speed up or slow down the rate at which a recommendation degrades, but they all degrade at the same rate. I have no power to alter the rankings. Whatever the community decides should be on the recommended list is what is on the recommended list. To take something off the recommended list I either have to delete it, put it in a ‘never display’ mode, or promote it to the front-page. But Jerome has obviously built in a feature whereby he can mess with his community’s rankings. Bob Johnson posted his diary at 12:39 and it has 42 recommendations. The top ranked diary at MyDD right now was posted at 11:07 and has 31 recommendations.
Depending on the setting for speed of recommendation degradation, recommendations on these diaries may have already lost some of their power, but the older diary would suffer more degradation than the newer. Therefore, even though it is possible for a diary to be ranked higher on the MyDD recommended list while having less recommendations, it is not possible that Bob Johnson’s diary is ranked lower than the highest ranking diary currently displayed at MyDD. That is because Bob’s diary is both newer and has more recommendations.
In other words, Jerome has set up a totally corrupt system for his recommended diaries. As a SCOOP man, I find this disgracefully unethical.
and the diary had evidence that Maggie Williams was on the board of WVWV.
has lost all credibility. It is fully clintonized, and the culture is rabid about Obama. TR for content is very common.
The CLintonistas are simply unable to tolerate dissent.
For saying that Obama won more delegates in NV. That was a fact and I got TRd.
opposing Hillary is the norm there.
Degenerate, and stupid.
The norm for Hillary promoters was great big lies, too. georgep and susanhu were the worst. Oddly enough, neither appears at mydd any more. Of course, neither do I. My rule is – get booted twice, stay away.
If, as I suspect, MyDD and some of its bloggers receives some, er, “gratuities” from the Clinton camp for its positions, this makes perfect sense.
I should add that I have good reasons to believe this might be the case, from personal knowledge of past experiences in this regard.
if such a thing is happening it would be recorded in the dispersal section of her campaign filing forms. Really we should give each other the benefit of the doubt.
Some people just think Clinton is a better candidate and would make a better Pres. I know many here in the pond have a hard time believing that, but it is so.
I spent a certain amount of time there in Jan. During that period, susanhu had diaries on at least 2 x /day, with pictures, and at least 500 words. Now, enthusiasm is one thing, but it must have taken 1 hr to put together such a diary. She had to be paid. Same with georgep.
Neither are there anymore. Why not?
Hey, they probably got stiffed like the rest of Hillary’s creditors.
Maybe they are self employed and can take some time for stuff they really care about. Remember in the very early days of blogosphere and it was rumored that Atrios was really Sidney Blumenthal? Or that James Carville of all people was really Media Whores Online?
Unless you know, you don’t know.
We self-employed people are the last ones in the world to take time off to blog for hours. I can barely afford to take minutes off to comment!
Double FICA taxes, no paid vacation, pay for your own health insurance if anyone will sell it to you, no retirement plan except what you squirrel away yourself, no sick leave—-
Not necessarily. In susanhu’s case, I think she’s retired and blogging is pretty much what she does now.
Money is not always the reason people do these things. If it were BooMan would be swimming in cash. (Speaking of which, see that little light orange “Donate” button over there? I just pushed it.)
Since January, diaries and comments have been deleted, and authors banned because they deigned to write something exposing a truth about Clinton. Pro-Obama stories are fine, but if they have a link or paragraph that shows something “sinister” about the background of a Clinton spokesperson or supporter, it’s gone. MyDD devolved into RedState territory months ago, but back in Feb. when Armstrong said:
I had to laugh because it proved that he was extremely weak in his positions. You don’t ban someone because they disagree with you, especially if you think you’re right. That entire post is worth reading only because it’s one of Armstrong’s only posts that makes Greg Sargent look almost intelligent and sincere. That, my friends, is history.
for some reason the firewall at work lets me go to mydd’s main page but blocks steveeboy at SG regularly finds his comments deleted, but I think he chalks that up to his snottiness making susie angry. My own haven’t been deleted and I’m no wilting violet either.
I suspect the reasoning is about the same as me sticking my fingers in my ears and singing “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” at the top of my lungs.
it’s not creepy, it’s a sign of weakness and insecurity.
I haven’t followed the controversies at MyDD and have no opinion, save that front page writers include Obama supporters. MyDD is one of the few blogs where both Clinton and Obama supporters routinely comment. I think Jerome has done a good job.
The Orange Frat House troll rated dozens of Clinton supporters, that is why the strike occurred. The current atmosphere at Kos is toxic, just plain toxic. If Clinton succeeds in pulling an upset at this late date, the bullies of big orange will share a measure of the blame.
As for the pro-Hillary blogs, like that Obama blogs there is a great deal of variety, from the flames of Taylor Marsh and Larry Johnson, to the snark of Corrente Wire, to the reasoning of Whiskey Fire and Suburban Guerrilla.
I think having a dishonest ‘recommended diary’ feature is a major ethical lapse.
blacks are racist, Obama is the affirmative-action candidate, that there is no oppression in the US, etc.. I’d say it’s pretty toxic there. In a National Vanguard or Stormfront kind of way.
sadly it was on the recommended list.
At Kos I have seen many openly misogynist remarks, stuff that made me flinch.
I don’t think the racial attitudes at Daily Kos are anything to brag about. They like Obama, but I have seen stuff there that reeked of condescension.
Actually I think it would be a fine thing if we all lost the low information voters phrase.
How is that even possible? In the second week of Dec. there were 5 racist diaries on the rec list. Susanhu wrote like 4 of them in the first week of Jan. In Feb. I counted about 7 of them on the rec list and I only visited the site 3 times that entire month.
One? I’ve seen more like 3 a day and dozens of comments. Obama really freaks some people out. But I swim over there regularly so maybe I see more of the muck in the pool.
I was not TR’d, but was told to take a hike by both Taylor Marsh and Big Tent Democrat of TalkLeft months ago. This was for the audacity of calling attention to errors made in their postings, asking for corrections. The sad thing is prior to the primaries I read both of them fairly regularly, before they decided to destroy Obama, but I haven’t been to either place for months now.
I’ll say this again. From what I’ve read about Taylor Marsh she is merely a paid propagandist who emerged to stir up shit for Hillary. Big Top Democrat claims to be supporting Obama, so he’s either a liar or deluding himself based on his posts at TL.
I take what’s behind door number 1.
I forgot Clinton’s earliest and most determined supporter. Clinton owes Bartcop a lot and should hold up one of his stickers in public sometime.
whoever thinks the DEM divide is gonna heal anytime soon is dreaming in fragments.
The GOP does have a headstart and we need not show up.
The consequences of a Clinton run for a third term.
Virginia had an intensely bitter primary in 2006, it did not heal, it still has not healed, but we won in 2006 and 2007 anyway.
When McCain resorts to campaigning in Alabama, you know he is in serious trouble.
I haven’t looked into this at all, but I would just like to point out for the sake of argument that this:
is not necessarily true. It doesn’t depend on how old the diary is, it depends on how old the recommendations are. So theoretically if Bob’s diary got all of it’s recommendations within 5 minutes of it being posted, while the other one crawled onto the rec list then exploded with 25 recs in the last 10 minutes, it could be higher.
I’m not making the argument either way on what I think happened – just pointing out that your evidence is not bulletproof.
Also: its NOT it’s
And, the fact that Bob’s diary is off the rec list entirely is the suspicious point, not the comparison to the highest rec’d one. Sometimes I focus on the trees and miss the forest…
actually, you’re correct about that.
It’s not remotely plausible in this case, but you’re correct.
The reason it is not plausible is that the we’re talking about 4 hours total time elapsed.
I think my setting has recommends degrading at a rate of 25% every six hours, and not at all for the first six hours. Daily Kos has so many diaries that their setting is a lot quicker. But even at their rate, there would be no difference between diaries posted within a hour of each other.
I agree, it’s not plausible. Especially because it is off the rec list completely, not just one spot behind an older diary with fewer recs.
Here’s the proof.
Jerome, Jeralyn, Marsh … all the same. HACKS….
Thanks for the info Booman…….Peoples REAL persona comes out when the going gets rough, and these so-called progressive bloggers have shown who and what they really are about …..not pretty is it???
Hillay is showing her real self on the O’LIElly clips circulating, but that isn’t news for smart people, we know why and what her motivations are……
There was drama over there back in Feb. about the same thing. Kid Oakland wrote a diary calling out Jerome’s sloppy reporting. Basically, Armstrong made a wild assertion, Kid Oakland followed up and proved Armstrong wrong. He had 60 recs, then it just fell off the rec list in less than an hour. Armstrong accused KO of attacking him.
That’s true. And that’s when I basically stopped reading MyDD on a regular basis.
I got banned from TalkLeft for deigning to catch Jeralyn in a misstatement or something. Subsequently, the posts seem to be spinning further and further out of orbit. No gravity, no math. At least at Left Coaster they allow alternate opinions in the comments section, although I truly worry about eriposte’s mental health.
I commented on this the other day. I think that the farther a group’s rhetoric departs from reality the more necessary it is to close out dissenting voices. Otherwise, you can’t preserve the illusion of truth in your group. You see it in religious cults, you see it in totalitarian regimes. Hey, you see it in MSM regarding all sorts of issues. The answer to the little boy who saw that the emperor had no clothes is to ship the little boy to Guantanimo. Or ban him from your website.
Yes. Jeralyn has gone cuckoo for Clinton. Her site has recently begun to attract the dimmer bulbs in the internet and now does very little except spit out Clinton propaganda day after day. It’s particularly unsettling to see the Talk Left readers band together behind Big Tent and lash out at anyone that deigns to disagree with his quirky analysis.
It just goes to show that the progressive blogosphere never was – and may never be – monolithic enough to continually play a major role in politics at the national stage.
Most of Big Tent’s writing involves slamming Obama, then he remembers every once in a while to mention disingenuously that he’s and Obama supporter, in order to lend weight to his criticisms. Not quirky, just transparent.
One of the reasons I’m not comfortable voting for Clinton is that I sense some very real totalitarian tendencies among Hillary and her supporters. The lying, the paranoia, the viciousness, the absolutely Orwellian spin. I’ve often joked that I wonder if Camp Clinton beams the talking points directly into their heads, because at drop of a hat they’re all filling the Internets with diaries saying the exact. same. things. It’s really weird.
I don’t know about totalitarian tendencies, but the robocall thing today just confirms yet again that Clinton and her campaign are using deception, secrecy, character smear and patently illegal means to win. These are not the tactics of a person committed to a democratic and open government.
As we saw with Bush and the movement conservatives, the way in which a candidate campaigns, shows how they will govern. It also reveals their disrespect for American voters, seeing them as weak, frightened, ignorant individuals who can be manipulated with sophisticated PR techniques.
Even if Obama weren’t the candidate opposing them, I would want them to lose, in order to discredit their “We’ll-do-anything-to-win” campaign philosophy.
Excellent observation, Carolyn!
Dubya campaigned dirty – remember how he trashed McCain in S.Carolina. Rove learned from the Lee Atwater school of dirty tricks. They were well organized in “brownshirt” fashion in Florida. What kind of a presidency did we get — neo-fascism.
With the Clinton’s its all about them. They’ll do or say anything for power. Note that Bill has made over a $100 million in some shady deals over the past 8 years.They have no beliefs or values – its all about expediency.
Obama is no knight in shining armor. He’s a corporate tool too and will sell us out at the drop of the first shilling. But at least he will have to develop his crony base and patronage network first. That will mean less hands in our pockets at least initially.
Hillary means putting our stamp on dynastic politics. We’ve lost so much sovereignty over the past 30 years and it has really accelerated over the past 8 years. At least we need to slow it down. Obama is the best of our bad choices.
I am a proud member of the elite club of banished MYDD readers. Somebody put up a very involved and elaborate pro-Hillary post on that site, with lots of graphs and colored pie charts, and I made a light-hearted comment about the fact that Jerome has always mocked us pro-Obama people as “the Math Club,” yet here his site was featuring just the sort of math-based perspective that he derided. Next time I tried to log in, I was confronted with a warning, and the only way I could be re-admitted was to pledge to behave better next time. I decided to seek other pastures….
God, with Clinton on the Rise and Obama seemingly being destroyed by Wright they’re going to be insufferable for a while…