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Comments Posted By TechYes

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Huffington Post Goes NSA on Its Members

Too right, Ad! I remember back when I first joined HuffPo it was RARE that a comments thread was moderated at all, except for the self-policing done by the community. I noticed a HUGE increase in the number of moderated threads after the AOL deal, and in the last 6 months it’s gotten increasingly more heavy-handed – to the point where comment were spiked as soon as you hit ‘send’. It’s insulting to those of us who were around ‘back when’ to tell us that our experience of a free-wheeling HuffPo never happened.

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 9:32 am

Imus!! Nice to see you! Glad you’re here!

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 9:21 am

Well said, sir!

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 6:23 am

Good points! I often wondered how it was that certain posters who were obviously trolling got their usually very offensive posts past the mods, while replies that didn’t violate the stated comments policy were spiked automatically. Seemed like it was either a set-up (to deliberate spark controversy and conflict, hence more clicks) or the trolls had figured out to by-pass the mods.

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 6:19 am

Good to see you Murph! I agree with some of what you say, but I don’t have a FB account for professional privacy reasons: many companies, bosses, HR departments, recruiters routinely search out FB accounts of employees, and opinions expressed there (or on HP or even linking to HP) could be problematic. I believe that my opinions are my own, not my employer’s. Trolling is an unfortunate side effect of free expression. Sites like HP could deal with it more effectively by publishing clear rules on how to deal with trolls within the posting community (‘don’t feed ’em, flag ’em) and by enforcing those rules when the community acts on them. That would, of course, require time and money to be invested by HP, which is, IMO, why they opted for the cheap FB ‘fix’ instead. But the result is that instead of dealing with a relative handful of bad actors, they’ve compromised the privacy of EVERY member. And this now-former-member isn’t going to stand for it. The last straw was the lame ‘things change’ excuse given by Tim McDonald for reneging on the grandfathering of existing accounts.

On the bright side, in the last few days, I’ve found several new and engaging sites like The Planet and, apparently, so have many of my old HP friends. I’m starting to be GLAD I was forced out of the HP box!

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 6:13 am

Hey, old friend! Welcome to the land of free expression! Good to see you!

» Posted By TechYes On December 13, 2013 @ 5:55 am

Hey there, CAdawn! I know for a fact that I’ve lost over 2100 fans and friends because when they wouldn’t let me post without being herded into FB, I left.

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:45 pm

I think the loss of so many long-time posters with their strong opinions and willingness to engage on them has resulted in pretty dull threads which will continue driving people away. Nobody likes to be bored!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:42 pm

Setting our own standards and self-moderating the community USED to be the way things were on HuffPo in the good old days.. You know, back when it was fun to be there and the conversations took place in real time and were lively and engaging and stuff. I’m glad to have found a place where that dynamic still exists and is valued!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:38 pm

Then it’s nothing like my family! Heh, heh!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:23 pm

It’s quieter than a graveyard over there today. I’ve never seen so many articles with ZERO comments.

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:17 pm

Thanks, Killgore! It’s nice to be out of kindergarten! There IS life after HuffPo! Ahhhhhh…….

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:15 pm

Music to me ears, Kalima!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:14 pm

Thanks for the warm welcome, AdLib! It will be nice to post on a site that treats adults like adults! Huffy looks like a ghost town today. To quote a famous political philosopher, “Oops!”

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:13 pm

VietVet! It’s great to see you and all the other HuffPo survivors here! Just like old home week!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 3:09 pm

Hi there, HLL! Nice to see so many of the old HuffPo gang!

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 1:56 pm

Couldn’t agree more with your comments, RF! I got so fed up that I took a long sabbatical from HP over the summer and couldn’t believe how heavy-handed the moderation had gotten in that time. Lots of my very innocuous comments got spiked, but every “‘make millions from home on the Internet” spam got through just fine. Something was wrong. When I first joined HuffPo several years ago, very few articles were moderated at all; it was up to the community to self-monitor, and we did. But by last summer, EVERY article was subject to heavy moderation and comments would be deleted as soon you hit ‘reply’. It became impossible to have anything like a real time conversation – especially when they initiated the new ‘conversation’ format to overwhelming derision. So, here I am and very glad I found a ‘cell’ of former HPers who, like me, decided to that ‘Enough!’ and deleted their accounts. (BTW, there is another group of HuffPo survivors over at Poynter).

» Posted By TechYes On December 12, 2013 @ 1:54 pm