A community is defined by its people. It is one of those things that is greater than the sum of its parts. I admit, I never really thought of the people who commented on HP as a “community”, until they started rising up and taking their stand. All of a sudden, their faces became clear. Their voices became heard. Their stories at times, touching. Their disheartenment and their loss, tangible. It felt as though on Dec. 10, HP had triggered bombs on their own territory, and the remnants of the homes and the people in them, scattered to the four corners of the internet. I don’t know how many members were displaced in this way, from the policy changes of December 2013. But each major, long-term member on HP was reporting the loss of dozens and hundreds of fans and friends along the way. So much destruction and harm, to reduce the troll population by 0.09%.
Each of those members that fell off the face of the Huffington map has a story to tell of why that happened, and what they lost. I wish I could tell them all, because they are all saying something. But I can only touch upon a few of the stories that I happened upon, that for me, paint the picture in bold colors and bring it to life. Its the sort of thing you won’t generally read on The Huffington Post site itself, because… well, it makes them look bad, so they don’t like to allow that.
n.b. If you want to share your story about having to leave the HuffPost communtiy, by all means…
Sharyn G. (“Super User”, approx. 3,400 fans):
Sometime after Dec. 10, I was responding to a comment someone named “Sharyn G.” posted, and as I was about to send it off, I was duly informed by the HP killbot that the comment I was replying to was already deleted. “You have got to be kidding me”, I thought. The comment was a one-line affair, completely innocuous, absolutely not offensive or against published guidelines. She was simply telling her friends and fans at HP “goodbye”. So I reposted Sharyn G.’s comment in the thread, to embarass the brass and show people what kind of oppressive rule we were living under.
I have defended comment deletions a few times in the past, when I was responding to a perfectly civil comment that the moderation deleted before I could get a chance. I later learned that this member who’s comment I defended was a vibrant and passionate young woman, struck by deafness in 2008. Her community place on The Huffington Post was in many ways a refuge of normalcy for her. A place where she could just hang out and be one of the guys, without being treated differently due to her visible disability. Simply because no one knew about it on the internet.
She stuck around a bit longer on HP, after the deleted goodbye post. I presume to express her remaining feelings about the mistreatment we all felt at the hands of HP. Sharyn has since been banned from The Huffington Post, however. It came switfly and silently, within one hour of writing a comment regarding her opinion of how the policy change was not due an imagined “troll emergency”. 
But how much money HP stands to make from a deal that garners Facebook an improved stock portfolio from the number of accounts HP was adding to its roster. And the woman came with facts, she wasn’t playing around. I in fact took her facts and ran with it myself on HuffPost.
As of this writing, I have not been banned yet. Proving it was clearly not a policy issue, but a personal thing someone on staff had against her. Something tells me that “someone” is community director Tim McDonald, who had her banned. Prior to that, Sharyn went on his Twitter account, with her complaints about the policy changes. Oh, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence (cough).
USAGramma (Member 2 years, approx. 2,00 fans):
USAGramma was a survivor of The Huffington Post. But surviving the violation of her privacy rights by HuffPost was nothing, compared to what she suffered prior to that. USAGramma was a survivor of the most extreme kind of domestic violence imaginable. She had married a maniac, who stalked her, attacked her, and very nearly killed her. She was left with numerous physical disabilities, brain trauma, and PTSD.
With her reduced mobility due to the attacks she suffered, USAGramma found great benefit and therapeutic value from getting in touch with her online community of subjects and supporters on the old Huffington Post. But once the advent of the convoluted new commenting format and “conversation carousels” arrived, USAGramma had to reduce both her comment writing and comment reading on HP. This was due to the extra difficult clicking mechanisms brought by the new formats. Neither compatible with her virtual keyboard or limited physical abilities.
Come the new changes of Dec. 10, she knew her maniac ex would finish the job if he knew where she was. All she had to do was allow the unconcerned Huffington Empire to post her real name on her HP messages on the internet, and that would have been enough to track her down and get her killed. Given how no one that I had personally heard from ever succeeded in begging The Huffington Post for their alleged anonymity exemption for those at risk, I am not surprised that USAGramma is no longer a member on HP.
ForPeace (Member since 2006, 4,330 fans & friends).
“ForPeace” was a model, exemplary citizen of Huffingtonville. So exemplary in fact, HuffPost itself made an example of her in an article they wrote, while propagandizing the place to condition some minds for the upcoming sweeping policy changes!
Our best HuffPost users create colorful identities that they wear like vanity license plates on their comments identifying their inner selves with usernames like “forpeace” and “Patriot1942”. These users build up a fan base and a solid reputation. If all Internet users had the integrity of “forpeace” and “Patriot1942” we would not have a problem that we need solve on our pages. – John Pavley, CTO, The Huffington Post. “Free Speech and Identity Verification: Combating the Challenge of Trolling“
John Pavley was right. “ForPeace” is a person of integrity, and above all, truth. This is why she responded to HP’s many unpopular site changes in John’s very article thread, thusly:
But, if you follow her comments on that thread, we see once again that reality and truth are in bitter disagreement with the lies and spinning spew coming from the fingers of Huffington Post editorial staff, speaking on their policy changes. For in direct contradiction to their own words in their own article highlighting this model member, the HP moderating staff even considered their exemplary citizen, “ForPeace”, an uncivil troll with a bad-attitude hell-bent on destroying the “Peace” of the HP community. Thus they moderated the hell out of her comments on that thread, and everyone else’s, in order to give the impression of the thread “naturally winding itself down”. Which btw, is the very same thing they are now doing on a related thread, Tim McDonald’s “Turning The Page on Anonymity”.
Here is “ForPeace”‘s reaction to having her comments and opinions on the thread subject moderated out of existence:
So what happened to ForPeace? The same thing that has happened to tens of thousands of HuffPosters since the introduction of the oppressive comment, moderation and registration policy changes that have been frustrating and alienating the HP community since August. After many years of contributing some 30,000 serious, and extremely civil opinions to the site, despite doing so under an anonymous handle, she ended up leaving The Huffington Post. As an act of defiance in reaction to their utter disregard and contempt for their readers. I thought ForPeace’ departure, announced on the article that exemplified her, was a very bittersweet commentary underscoring the complete and utter failure of HP’s over-zealous ad-centric policy changes and ideas.
Patriot1942:
Honestly, I’m not exactly sure why this member is on this tribute page. He had not crossed my personal sphere. Never even heard of him through the stories of others. But he is the other model exemplary citizen mentioned in John Pavley’s article. So I had to do some research on him to find out what his story is. And now I know why I’d not heard of him….
Patriot1942 has exactly “0” fans. 0 fans and 10 friends. Amassed from 102 comments over a three year period. I think I did 102 comments on my first day there. But out of the literally millions of examples he could have used, John Pavley thought to mention Patriot1942 as one of those who “built up a solid reputation and user fan base”. One who had so much integrity, that if we could all be like him, then maybe members at risk of getting killed like “USAGramma” above, would still be able to post to HP. Yup, that’s their argument and their sticking to it. So I took a look at the 102 comments of Patriot1942. Honestly? I didn’t see anything that “exemplary”. But, I’m not an expert on civil social behavior, so you be the judge:
“And the winner for most integrity and un-troll like behavior is…. ‘LIKE GOD CARES’. Come on up and collect your prize, sir!”
I admit. That sounds a lot like something I might have written. And I’ve been banned from more forums than not. That’s why I say, its hard to believe this guy won the admiration of HuffPost’s CTO for “model citizen of Huffingtonia”. But maybe that one was just a fluke…
…..Or maybe not. Ok, so Patriot1942 may not be the second coming of Jesus. But what’s his story, anyway? Did he continue being a shining example of what a HuffPoster is supposed to look and sound like after the new policy changes? Well, hard to say. There are no more comments from him after Dec. 10. After Dec. 10, once the lying new policy requirements took hold, and everyone needed to verify a cell phone and a Facebook account, there were vast numbers of people that just seemed to have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. I take it that Patriot1942 was probably steering the ship.
It’s kind of sad when you think about it. Because according the top honcho CTO of The Huffington Post, there are no more citizens to hold as exemplary models of behavior on HuffPost.
wildcanadiangeese: (Super User, 2,000+ fans & friends)
It’s a good thing he likes cemeteries. ‘Cos he’s dead to HP, now.
Another HP member who’s account profile has been deleted, a search for his name now leading to a virtual gravemarker saying “Profile has been removed”. WCG’s story is another one of genuine concerns about retaining your right to privacy and anonymity on the internet. When he didn’t one day, on a thread discussing Canadian geese of all things, one member investigated his name, and discovered a link to a workman’s comp site. WCG was then attacked by said net-stalker for trying the cheat the compensation board. When WCG complained about it, he was told “nothing on the internet is private”. Meanwhile, even the Canadian geese are saying “Hey, can we get back to the subject of us, guys? You know, quack, quack?”. WCG came across another similar situation on Facebook with a military-type gun nut psycho.
I can say, I know WCG’s story well, because I had forumers without a life try to investigate me as well (the operative word here being “try”. I always knew better than to post my name on an internet forum. Or use the same moniker twice).
William Holder:
Member William Holder is not someone who had anything particular against HP’s new “real names” policy, as he appears to have always used his real name on Huffington Post. All the same, he did not survive HP’s war against its own community, and as a result is no longer posting there. Mr. Holder is one of the HP community members who is chronically ill, homebound, and has neither need nor finances for a cellphone. Which is required for the new, hip, advertiser-driven Huffington Post. Thus, HP has no need for him, you see. “Sorry, Bill! Call us when you become a key demographic!“. As Mr. Holder so eloquently writes about the way things have been going these days; “Opinion is the province of the affluent. I hope this doesn’t start a trend of disenfranchising the least fortunate around us.“.
I don’t know, Bill. Is TechCrunch, The Blaze, Slate, YouTube, Facebook, The Huffington Post and South Korea big enough to start a trend? Well, not if their users vote with their feet, I would think.
blueeyedbull (4,200 fans):
Here’s a member you could trust with your newborn child. You know that, because her genuine nature comes through in her online comments. There was a time, when she related some very, very personal, painful experiences she lived through. She may have done so to help others, or herself, heal from that. But above all, she did so under the guise of anonymity. It’s not the sort of thing you would normally expose about yourself under your real name.
However. Here’s the problem. After Dec. 10, The Huffington Post applies your real name to all your comments. New and old. They don’t care. They have a team of high priced lawyers that gives them all the confidence they need to do that sort of thing to people. As a natural result, members like Blue Eyed Bull can not continue in the online community they once loved that was The Huffington Post. On account of the exposure it would mean to the things they wrote while believing their comments and conversations were anonymous.
PeeganR:
Peegan’s story is an important one, and a cautionary tale for other sites thinking of going the way of Huffington Post. But it deserves to be featured on its own page, and that page is here.
“Rasta seh – guidance forever!
But backra seh
‘pay the difference due’
Rasta seh – guidance everlasting!
But backra seh
‘pay the difference due’
A wah dem a go do when the time comes around?
A wah dem a go say?
My people are in a mess!
(You suffer, and dem call it slack)
But nobody wants to know.
(You suffer, and dem turn their back)
‘Cause when you’re down and out and oppressed
(You suffer, and dem call it slack)
You’ve got to fight your battles from the lowest of the low.
(You suffer, and dem turn their back)
So keep your distance and take your stance.
‘Cause this could be your utmost chance.
You’ve had all night and day
to consider and pray.
You’ve brought fire ‘pon my head
and now you must pay.”
– “Babylon Makes The Rules”
Steel Pulse
Many of the other articles here talk about the egregious and excessive moderation you run into, as an active member of the Huffington Post commenting community. It’s been a thorn in HP’s side for years, and it’s up to suffocating levels since the Dec. 10 2013 policy change. But for this page, I’d like to shine a little more light on an even more serious and disturbing aspect of The Huffington Post news site: outright censorship of commenters. The reason i would like to do that, is because the people of The Huffington Post do not like it when you shine a light on them. They scatter to the darker corners where they feel more comfortable, and hide there.
The Huffington Poster 