All posts tagged Huffington Post

Secret Censorship Of The Huffington Post

Screen Shot 2014-01-18 at 00.06.47Many 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.

But sometimes, light manages to find them. Two years ago, change.org started a petition against censorship tactics used by HuffPost. It reached its goal of gathering over 200 signatures. n.b. The Huffington Post did not permit me to reference this petition on their site, or any other petition against them.

” Comments on the Huffington Post (HP) that are perfectly in compliance with the site’s published policies are regularly censored. Over the last four months we have documented examples of this out of control censorship on the blog: Banned From HuffPo Blog

The many examples documented on this blog are just the tip of the iceberg.  For each example there are thousands more.  These examples reveal a pattern of arbitrary censorship extending far beyond HP’s published moderation policies.

Specific patterns of censorship include:

    • Censorship by Artificial Intelligence program. Although HP has never discussed it openly, moderators have told us via email that the site uses an AI system to pre-screen comments. This AI system regularly censors comments that in no way violate the site’s published standards.
    • Censorship to stifle criticism.  Some HP authors practice routine censorship of comments that point out errors in their reasoning or offer alternative points of view. Specific authors who do this on a regular basis include Deepak Chopra, Amy Suskind, and Robert Lanza.
    • Censorship of comments about the Huffington Post. Any comment that discusses the censorship policy of the site or other issues about how the site is run are almost certain to be censored.

So that was two years ago. HuffPost never cared what its members thought of them, and felt they could happily ignore all the petitions brewing against them. Indeed they could, as their numbers still grew. Their arrogance may however have gotten the best of them this time, for their numbers are no longer growing, but dropping. Posting to Huffington Post today is an even greater excercise in futility and frustration than it was years ago. Because even though they seem to have done away with their “community moderators”, their outright censorship of commenters has never been greater than it is now. Here’s a few more recent examples of what I mean:

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Censorship on comments about the AOL buyout of Huffington Post.

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Censorship from those on the ground in New Orleans, on the handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

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Censorhip of criticism of HP policies by “forpeace”. The user exemplified (in one of two examples) in an article written by HP’s CTO John Pavley, as the type of member all HuffPosters should aspire to be.

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Extreme censorship (by way of banishment) of a member of 6 years good standing, for posting links to a YouTube video he created. The video is a satirical statement, critical of HP policies.

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Censorship of yours truly, on an article glorifying Arianna Huffington. Knowing there was nothing I could say critical of Arianna, I said the only thing I could: that HP would not allow anyone to say anything critical of Arianna Huffington. They proved me right by not allowing that comment through. After several days, there was still no one commenting on her article. Apparently, no one else had anything good to say about Arianna either.

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….and of course, they censored this one as well.

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Censorship of farewells of people leaving HP.

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Censorship of farewells of people leaving HP.

“Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and not hiding behind anonymity,” Huffington said shortly after her latest journalistic endeavor was announced.

While Huffington’s certainly justified in this statement, the logic that reinforces it suggests potentially perilous behavior, especially as the integration of media and web brings about more struggles.

A person’s right to voice their own opinions isn’t rooted in their intentions; it’s rooted in their humanity.

Our rights as citizens aren’t variable to how we plan on using them. While Huffington’s latest policy isn’t quite an infringement on these rights, it’s certainly a step in a perilous direction.

The annoyance of online trolls is universally undeniable. However, as technology becomes increasingly integral to our lives, it’s absolutely critical that we’re able to differentiate between basic regulations and a decision in the premature stages of becoming an infringement on our basic human rights. “

– The Daily Cougar

9 Comments
by forrest grump on January 18, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by forrest grump on January 18, 2014

https://thehuffingtonposter.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/secret-censorship-of-the-huffington-post/

Identity Exposure vs. Anonymity

Screen Shot 2014-01-08 at 01.57.32I know I’ve talked about the reasons for anonymity in other articles here. But I’d like to use this page to focus on a more methodical and objective approach to the issue. It deserves a critical look, because as people’s privacies are being eroded from everyone from Target and Wal-mart stores to the NSA, it’s becoming an important issue. It is a trend that is beginning to take over our beloved internet. The Huffington Post is not the first or only site with a discussion section, turning to social media, or other means of stripping people of their privacy and anonymity.

A study was done by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers involving 103 news blogs over 63 countries, that outlines the issue at hand. It was reported:

“Real name registration vs. allowing anonymity is a divisive issue, with no consensus of which was preferable.’- “Online Comment Moderation: Emerging Best Practices“. WAN-IFRA
“in times of financial difficulties, a costly initiative such as comment moderation, without any immediate and obvious financial benefit, is not always a priority. However, there are many organisations which see them as an essential element in fostering a real community around their publication or a niche topic. Comments are believed to increase reader engagement, both in terms of time spent on site, and in terms of loyalty.” – WAN-IFRA Report.
 

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It’s reported that younger generations care less about their privacy being eroded, and HP cares more about younger generations. This may have emboldened HP to try the real identity policy out, if they intend to target a younger audience. However, HP themselves have reported that Facebook is no longer very popular with younger audiences these days.

We have a new generation comfortable using Facebook and other mobile apps and who, according to recent survey data, are quite willing to share personal information with companies and brands in exchange for value provided. They are also relatively unconcerned about the security of data they share on social networks. The bottom line is that this type of authorization-based relationship between brand and user is likely to become the norm. – “Why Permission Marketing Is the Future of Online Advertising“

The erosion and hijacking of hard-fought personal rights and freedoms of expression for citizens is happening far beyond the confines of The Huffington Post. Far beyond the borders of the United States. It is occurring with the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), with several of the world’s major countries battling for control of freedom on the internet at large….

” The right to be anonymous on the internet, as a means to protect one’s identity against government bullying or to be able to express one’s opinion without hindrances, is waning in the United States of America. But the battle for the freedom of speech on the Internet has wider, global implications, the impact of which we are now seeing on Huffingtonpost.com for example.

Internet freedom is increasingly under attack in the ‘free world’, with the US battling it out against the United Nation’s ITU for control over the Internet. The battle for such control, and over who really owns the right on how the Internet should be governed, became nastier in 2012 with Russia and China entering the fray. ” – “US: The right to be anonymous”, Kazi Mahmood, World Future Online.


Results of the HuffPost Social Engineering Experiment

Screen Shot 2014-01-06 at 13.20.24It’s hard to get scientific numbers on the drop-offs in membership since HuffPost enacted its verified-Facebook account policy. Only they  can issue accurate membership stats. And given reports by many members that their accounts were not deleted when requested, and the suspicions this raised about HP keeping accounts to raise their membership profiles, they may not be trusted to do so. So Poynter did an informal research into the impact of Huffington’s “real identity policy”. They wrote:

At HuffPost, where homepage stories used to routinely attract thousands of comments, relatively few front-page stories seem to be cracking quadruple digits now, as HuffPost “ex-pats” have rather gleefully — and anecdotally — noted. (For a nonscientific example, contrast this mid-day homepage from mid-November with this one from mid-December.) Certainly being able to divert fewer resources to comment moderation is an advantage, but HuffPost seems more concerned with the quality of comments than the quantity. – “HuffPost policy banishes trolls — and drives away some frequent commenters” – Poynter

The first headline article in November had 1,885 comments. The one posted on Dec. 17 had 90 comments, by the time it was locked up. The above statement does reflect anecdotal evidence I and others have heard from members of The Huffington Post, about the dramatic drop in commenting numbers on most articles seen on the home page. Indeed, on other editions of Huffington Post, such as HuffPost France or Quebec, comments have dwindled down to a smattering in recent times. On Al Huffington Post Maghreb, they are nowhere to be seen.

Do “Real Names” Promote Civil Dialogue?

Screen Shot 2014-01-05 at 11.54.59Well, you can ask Lizz Winstead that question. She’s an American TV personality, comedian, and blogger. She takes to Twitter at times, and posted a “tweet” that was a satirical commentary about the anti birth-control movement’s reaction against Obamacare; saying their only answer to unwanted pregnancies is to “hot-glue gun your knees together”. That’s pretty tame by my standards, but uh…. not by the birthers. According to them, you just killed Jesus a second time. The responses got pretty ugly, but according to Lizz Winstead, its par for the course. Some were “tweeted” under anonymous names, although they may well have used their real photos in their avatars. But here’s a few using real names and sometimes photos. Let’s see if posting under real names really prevents people from acting like the fucking creeps that they are….  – Source: “Lizz Winstead talks to Raw Story about the creepy men who make the Internet a hellhole“

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Q.

Since Huffington Post uses Facebook to keep people in line, the next natural question would have to be, does posting on Facebook make people behave?

A.

Not on your life. Stories of bad behavior on Facebook, where everyone is “supposed” to be using their real names, are far, many and wide. While I’ve never heard of that happening on Huffington Post, people posting comments on Facebook have killed people.  One example shows teens creating a hate page on Facebook wishing another teen dead (they almost got their wish). In another example, bullies did manage to kill another teenager through their Facebook comments.

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Q.

So if real names do not prevent civilized behaviour, why does it appear more civilized on Huffington Post since Dec. 10?

A.

In a word, moderation. But the first question to ask is, is it really “civilized”? After all, people have been reporting seeing the same trolls and even commercial spammers since before the policy change. But there has been a marked change in the quantity of trollish comments. Some of that could well be due to the change in the number of comments, period. But since Dec. 10, even though comment guidelines have not changed, there appears to be a much window of allowable opinions. A lot less that Huffington, or their AI comment software “JuLia”, will tolerate.

This being the case, The Huffington Post example is not a good one, for showing correlation that “real names” stop trolls. In fact, as many times as I have asked commenters on The Huffington Post to defend their argument that half-assed attempts to eliminate fake names will eliminate trolls, no one yet has been able to post a valid study demonstrating this in real world terms.

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by forrest grump on January 9, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by forrest grump on January 9, 2014

https://thehuffingtonposter.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/identity-exposure-vs-anonymity/

“I Married A Comment Nazi”

Number 12 looks just like youThe March of the Modzi Killbots

There are a lot of reasons why from Dec. 10, The Huffington Post will never be the same again.  I could forget the cash-grab member-bullying schemes of demanding your cell phone numbers, birthdays, friend lists and Facebook signups. Done so HP could give you permission to continue commenting and maintain your relations with your HP friends and fans, while they sold your personal information to advertisers to exploit you. I could forget I was ever lied to, and told our real names would never be posted on our comments. I could ignore the massive data trackers they tag on you when you are on, or perhaps off, their site.  I could pretend the comment sections were as populated as before Dec. 10, and there was not a fraction of the participation I was used to seeing. I could even ignore the sense of betrayal I feel, and the immense contempt I now have for the greedy callous bastards that make up the corporation that is The Huffington Post.

I could go back to the days before August 2013, when I never really thought that much about how HuffPost works and who was doing what to whom in that company. Where I never thought worse of the corporation that is HuffPost, than “they suck”. But there is one change from Dec. 10 I will never be able to surmount: the moderation nazi killbots. This will never change. Except, to become even more restrictive in the future. Tonight, I share what I know about that, and what I have learned:

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 23.05.59The Huffsters have always liked the idea of excessive moderation. Almost as much as the idea of paying little for it (their senior moderator, “Rob S.”, explains they don’t have money for more moderators. Who knew the $315 million AOL invested isn’t enough to pay the staff?). That’s why early on, they bought out “Adaptive Semantics”, who created the “JuLia” bot comment moderating system. Even way back in 2007 and 2008, HP gained such a notorious reputation for unjust censorship, that websites and petitions started springing up around the net.

But by 2010, the “excessive moderation” grew to “unbearable and inexplicable” moderation. Some members rolled with the punches. And as a member of Huffington Post, you could always expect to get punches from the administration. Those members may not have liked it, but they didn’t hate it enough to leave (exactly what HP knew and was counting on). Others reacted with indignation and outrage, to the excessive restrictions of the moderation system. Some posted their outrage where people could hear; on the site itself. But of course, the moderation system saw that most of those were obliterated. Some just left in protest, realizing HP does not care about its members and won’t budge on their policy changes.

killbot 2All this is bad enough, but it becomes mind-numblingly bad when you find out that…. the “comment nazis” may not actually be human. It appears there is very little of human eyes that reads your comments. Even the responses you get from complaints you make to HP are not likely to be from humans either. Think about it. You have 70 million comments sailing through per year on HP. And there are only 40, maybe 50 moderators handling that.

The Mandate Is From The Corporation

So this “JuLia” modbot system they have in place (“Just a Linguistic Algorithm”)… well it appears from what the moderators themselves are saying, she handles the vast majority of comments. Not just the ones that trigger her flagged word list. The humans are only going to handle the ones that JuLia lets through. This may be why you might think “Wow, one of my comments actually made it up there! I must be special!”… only to find it gone hours later. A human moderator may have decided that JuLia was being too permissive. JuLia is even designed to detect sarcasm. Sarcasm! Yes, The Huffington Post does not even want sarcasm in their comment sections. If you are finding the new Huffington Post bland and vanilla-like, there’s one good reason why. And if you think The Huffington Post cares about your silly opinions of their new moderating system, read this:

” ‘     We have a mandate to moderate’

Really? From who? Have you ever solicited the input of your users? I’ve been on the site since it launched and I don’t recall ever seeing any discussions or solicitation for feedback about the policy. I think this is what bothers me the most, that there is no discussion about the censorship policy. And any comments about it get censored! I think you should have an article posted by you or Ariana or your CTO describing where you are and where you are going and encouraging people to give their opinion.” – Red Dog

“The mandate is from the corporation. I wasn’t aware Huffington Post needed anybody else’s permission for how it moderates comments stored on its servers and displayed on its website.” – Rob S., Senior Moderator, Administrative, Huffington Post

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 13.01.57So yeah, that’s your soul-crushing corporation killbot mentality all right. Though they need your pre$ence to $urvive, and attract new client$, they don’t need your unsolicited input on any aspect of how they go about their business. And that’s what pretty much kills HP for me. Because as far as The Grump goes, “a day without sarcasm, is like a day without sunshine”. Indeed, after Dec. 10, I noticed that many of the comments I made that got deleted, had elements of sarcasm. There were too many to be a coincidence. So now I know why HP’s comment section is such a boring read these days! For all the reasons mentioned above, and this one, it is just no fun commenting on HP any longer.

Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 11 fxNot only did HP ignore their most serious users complaints about the moderation in 2010, but by Dec. 10 2013, they put it into overdrive. Where people were expecting less moderation due to having to give up their privacy and post under their real names, they got much more. Jokes, poetry, criticism against HP staff or policies, names of certain movies or bands, goodbye letters to your friends, passionate opinions, sarcasm, any mention of Arianna, anything that went against the grain (“grain” to be defined by the corporation)… all of it went into JuLia’s built-in commentary wood chipper. It got to where posting to HP felt like I was on an episode of Seinfeld. But instead of a “soup nazi”, I had to be wary of the “comment nazi”. Follow the line, be still, don’t talk out of turn, speak clearly, have your comment order ready, be prepared with exact change, don’t criticize the establishment…

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by forrest grump on January 4, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by forrest grump on January 4, 2014

https://thehuffingtonposter.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/i-married-a-comment-nazi/

The Comment Graveyard

Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.14.44The Huffington Post started its life out with an extreme focus on comment moderation. They invested in technology from Adaptive Semantics, a comment-killing AI bot system lovingly named “JuLia”. In addition, they hired 40-50 full time moderators. Then they allowed pundits and bloggers to moderate comments. On top of that, they ‘deputized’ almost anyone that wanted to be a “community moderator”. By now they had such a stifling moderating system, that the biggest complaint HP community members had, centered around the crazy, inexplicable reasons their comments were being deleted. Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.23.41The moderation was so bad, people were putting out blogs about how bad it was. HP responded by upping their game. They added a “FLAG” button, which allowed you to stick the offensive comment directly into the moderators eyes. You’d think this merry-go-round of moderation would finally come full stop when a “MUTE” button was added. If you read something you didn’t like, this feature gave power to everyone to make someone’s comments “sleep with the fishes”.

Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.19.55After all this, The Huffington Post now had the most censored, moderated discussion community of any news blog this side of red China. But Arianna still was not pleased. (So the story goes…). So even though there were a dozen things they could have done to put the power of deleting or hiding offensive comments in the hands of the community, they used the imagined problem of “trolls” as a pre-text to invade the privacy of their members lives. But at the same time, they really did impose heretofore-never-seen censorship on a Western news blog. Whereas the moderation on Huffington was suffocating before, now it was positively fatal. About 25% of your posts could be killed instantly by “JuLia”, the auto-delete bot, if it contained a flagged word. Unfortunately, some of those words were in the article you were responding to. Other “JuLia” flagged words you might have found in the ‘Journal of American Sciences’. And suddenly, just about every article on the news site became an article of a “potentially sensitive nature”. Whether the article was about farting puppy dogs, or the most calorific mac and cheese recipes on the planet, it was now of a “potentially sensitive nature”. Another way of saying “Hang on, chump. We’re takin’ our sweet time with this, now. So if you’re eager to find out if your comment got wiped out or not, expect that to take a long time”.

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Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.22.45Arianna Huffington said to an audience in Boston:

‘Freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they’re saying and not hiding behind anonymity,’ Huffington said.”

And people actually thought she meant it. But in fact, after Dec. 10, when everyone had to post under their real names and verify their identities, members were shocked to see an escalation of heavy-handed moderation tactics. Many reported comment-kill rates of 60-90% (mine were closer to 90). Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.19.19Ironically, you actually had more “freedom of expression” before the demand for cell phone numbers and Facebook accounts, then you did afterward on Huffington Post. After Dec. 10, no one could make out what the new guidelines were for commenting. Their comments certainly did not violate the published guidelines, nor any common understanding of civil behaviour. The comment kills were random, arbitrary, and sometimes appeared to be targeting certain individuals.Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 20.22.34

This page is about those comments. I will start by demonstrating what is going on behind the scenes of Huffington Post, by publishing a few examples of my own comments. All of the following were deleted by the team of 50 comment nazis (aka “modzis“). None violated HP rules and guidelines. Click on them to enlarge. Feel free to post your own here, if you have kept copies of them!

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6 Comments
by forrest grump on January 2, 2014  •  Permalink
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Posted by forrest grump on January 2, 2014

https://thehuffingtonposter.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/the-comment-graveyard/

Huffington’s War On The HP Community

A SHOT RANG OUT

hpmeme7On Aug. 26, The Huffington Post announced it would end anonymity on the site for new signups. This was the end result of extensive polling and two-way dialogues with the HP commenting community over the course of the year, and in true democratic fashion, the majority of the HP community agreed this would be a step in a positive direction for the blog and a welcome change.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Those dictatorial mofos did not even attempt to ask a single one of their members for feedback on this. Oh, and they love putting up polls. They didn’t even query member “Forpeace”. Whom they actually cited in one of those early announcements, as a model member that we should all try to aspire to be like. She was one of the first to leave, after expressing her displeasure over the oppressive and humiliating new policy. That was one of the first signs that this was not a well-baked idea.

The result? From Sept. to Dec., this member was on there most days. Covering a wide range of articles and sections, as per usual. I saw no noticeable change in the comment conversations, other than one peculiar difference. During this period, it was the first time I’d spotted professional spammers. Worse, they were new signups. That means they had no trouble circumventing HP’s new verification requirements.

PHASE 2: BURN THE BRIDGES

Then on Dec. 10, the boom fell. The Huffington Post actually rescinded their promise to allow older established members an exemption from their Facebook authentication policy. I believe the official reason given for that was “Fuck you. Next question”. Well, they actually never gave a reason. Later, they came up with some weasel words that sounded like this: ‘We realized we had to require all members to verify via Facebook, in order to require that everyone use their real names’. Except they don’t require that everyone use their real name. Built into the system is a rule exempting anyone in fear of harm or harassment if their real names are exposed.

So if they could make exceptions for some, they could very well have made exceptions for established members as well. As for making exceptions for those in fear of harm if exposed, this was actually more lying bullshit. Turns out, you practically need to be blessed by the pope, to get exempted from their real-names policy. Most members reported they were rejected; and not even given the courtesy of being told they were rejected.

So now all members, like it or not, had to go and get cellphones with text-plans, and open a Facebook account, to remain members of the commenting community. And while their Chief Executive Officer of Lying, Tim McDonald, said that all members were notified of this on login that day… that was simply not true. (But then, he’s just doing his job, isn’t he). As I can attest, the notification only came as a pop-up, that may have occurred long after you logged in. But only came up when you tried to post a comment. It gave you only two options:

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CRUSH OF THE WAVE, THE VICTIMS FIRST LOST.

hpmeme4And with that one pop-up, one of the world’s largest online commenting communities, millions of members strong, got torn apart like a Japanese tsunami. Destroyed by its own host, The Huffington Post. For me, it was like… I didn’t realize how many neighbors I had, until I started seeing their washed up bodies piling up. Many of us started feeling the change, registered in the body count. Seeing our fan & friend numbers dwindle by the tens, then the dozens, then the hundreds…

Most of the people that were lost to the oppressive new changes, were in fact not the vicious trolls and rotten spammers HP told us they were doing this for. No, they were the very people that made the community. They included:

‘super users’, with 10,000 or more friends & fans
moderators
community pundits
the Disabled
old ladies living alone
women with stalking ex-es
congressional staffers
political appointees
government employees
lawyers
psychiatrists
consultants
PR reps
award winning journalists
judges
politicians
police
whistle-blowers
anybody with a boss or an agency or a client where they can’t speak publicly without being seen as spokespeople
anybody living in a foreign country where Facebook is banned or social media comments might land you in prison
 

SEND IN THE KILL-BOTS

The changes HP effected on Dec. 10 had two components to them; external public changes, and internal private changes. ie. changes to the moderation policy. Massive changes. Here now is the skeleton of their ‘clever’ top-secret plan laid out bare:

Arianna Huffington announces to an audience in Boston, that she saw a few rape and death threats while ‘in London’. Turns out, she was only talking about reading some politically motivated threats from UK members on the Twitter that she once saw. They were concerning some controversy that brewed up around a particular figure. What did this have to do with her news rag? Absolutely zip scratch all. In 7 years of commenting on HP, I did not see any vicious trolls she talks about. And I never avoided controversial topics. Regardless, that appears to be enough to stand as her justification for obliterating everyone’s privacy on her news blog. Even though HP already had an “IGNORE” button (MUTE) that allows you to instantly block a troll. Plus a “FLAG” button to get him booted.

hpsadcatavtrThe HP community directors announce the site is now going to require “verification” and will post people’s real name on all their comments. Even ancient ones. They argue this will weed out the ne’er-do-wells and attract the “sophisticated grown-ups”. Of course, it does nothing of the sort. Both trolls and commercial spammers are reported running free, and there are no end of insolent comments exchanged between members. Most members opted to use only their first name. Well its certainly not seeing their first name that’s preventing them from being argumentative. So much for that all-out stupid “gut-check” theory community director Jimmy Soni explained would change the way people comment.

It didn’t change shit. However, what did change was that those insolent comments people were posting never made it through. Members reported 60 to 90% of their comments we’re not being accepted. The reasons for which could not be found in HP’s community guidelines. Indeed, the comments that got rejected went beyond anyone’s guidelines this side of red China. As I and most others reported, there was no rhyme or reason for the incredibly intense battle the moderators were waging against the commenters.

On the “Turning The Page” thread, that announced the new policy, I averaged one direct post a day. That’s the number: 1, if you didn’t get that. And I was posting all day. Trying hard be as inoffensive as possible (which is not easy for me, but still. I learned to fake it pretty good). It just did not matter. I soon realized it did not matter what my comment said. There was never a time when they allowed two of my comments to follow, in a direct post.

It also seemed like they simply would not allow me to direct post more often than x number of hours. In addition to the single isolated post, I might have been able to get one or two replies to someone else’s post, in a day. So that’s where I usually tried to fire my target. Get something in quick before anyone else responds, so that my response would still be seen without people having to enter the dreaded “conversation carousel”. Community director Tim McDonald stated in an interview we had “wide latitude” to criticize HP. That turned out to be a lie too, because after a few days, moderation clamped down on the criticism in Tim’s thread. We all felt the effects of that unspoken change.

Now their plan became clear: The change in anonymity status was not resulting in any major change of ad hominem and other verboten comments. So they implemented a major change in moderation directives. Anything that might upset commenters or upset HP staff, especially moderators, gets zapped. That includes anything deemed “negativity”, and anything that strays too far from the majority opinion. Now only shiny happy people that mostly think along the same lines are what the world will be exposed to at HP.

So much for the “lively and dynamic” conversations they promised would happen as a result of this change.

“THE INTERNET IS GROWING UP”: WHAT THAT REALLY MEANS:

hpmeme5No, the internet is not “growing up”. That’s a marketing campaign slogan Arianna and Co. used to justify their exploitation of members. On the whole, society is becoming more corrupt, mean, violent and cynical. These are the types of children and adults our societies are now creating. The internet is excaerbating the problem by removing social barriers. Hence the problem people are having with YouTube comments.

The internet didn’t start out this way, when society wasn’t as corrupted in the ways it is today. Back when the internet was mostly made of geeks, academics and military personnel, feuds weren’t really a problem. What the internet (and society) is becoming is more commercial. I was there before the virtual shopping carts, before all the annoying ads. So I saw and very much resent the commercialization of the internet. Now commerce is taking over the www, and thinks that it owns the place. Before sites on the world wide web were free, non-commercial and educational. Now companies owning commercial websites condition you to think you should be grateful they exist and willing to pay to visit their site. Or at the very least, sit back and let yourself be exploited for their commercial gain.

So “the internet is growing up” really means commercial interests are taking over the internet, cracking down on copyright infringers, becoming less tolerant of factors that harm their financial plans, and deciding that the internet had too many freedoms. Thus they are cracking down on free speech, which is what the promise of the internet was, in the very beginning. A place for the average person to share their voice. Whether or not it was something you wanted to hear. Now, netizens are simply seen by these interests as eyeballs with pocketbooks.

THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS TRUTH

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 03.44.37It was hard enough to put up being lied to over the “grandfathering” of member accounts, and giving whatever privacy and security you may have left today over to a notorious exploitative organization like Facebook. But it became quickly evident to the battered remnants of the HP membership, that we were lied to about the reasons for destroying our community. It had nothing to do with “trolls”, vicious or otherwise. It had everything to do with ad metrics.

When they told us with this change they were after a “sophisticated” audience now, it had nothing to do with trolls or “civils”. It had to do with what they told advertisers on advertising sites: “If it’s just blue-collar people they’re selling their stuff to, [advertisers] shouldn’t come here.”- Jimmy Maymann, CEO. That explains why they did not give a damn to hear your sob story about how you can’t afford a cell phone. If you can’t afford a cell phone, you certainly have no business being a member of the new Huffington Post Country Club. And if you don’t have a Facebook account, then you’re not who they want. They want Facebookers with large social networks to spread their advertising to.

“Oh, are you disabled? Is the new “conversation carousel” commenting format hurting your widdle disabled wrists, on account of all the new clicks and popups? Oh, cry-cry, you poor little disabled. Get the hell out of our club, Cripples! The Huffington Post is now an exclusive community. So all you riff-raff can go hang out with your friends at Chuck n’ Cheese. Here, we’re targeting rich stupid sheeple with full motor capabilities, plump bank accounts and plugged into today’s social networks. ”

Oh, and those “conversation carousels”? Yeah, guess what. They lied to us about that too. They told us it would make the threads look cleaner and more organized. Everyone hated that change too, but HP ignored them. Well if you hate it now, wait ’til you see the future changes. It was designed so that it could hold more advertising than what would normally be on the page. And that advertising is said to target readers more directly; captive audience and all that.

More changes in store for 2014; they are planning on hiring additions to their large crew of “native advertising marketing agents“. In other words known as “sponsored content”. These are the insidious in-house authored articles that are starting to creep up around HP, that are simply thinly disguised ads. The articles might mention some cure-all solution to dandruff, then present you with a list of brand-named products who’s companies they have business arrangements with.

Welcome to The New Huffington Post. You’re in AOL’s world now, sucker.

“Oh a shot rang out
Fire up above
There’s one leg left
That you stand upon.”
– Emily Jane White
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by forrest grump on January 2, 2014  •  Permalink
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HuffPoster’s Guide To Privacy on Facebook

ImageDON’T LET THE HUFFINGTONS PUSH YOU AROUND

So you were locked out of the Huffington Post on December 10th were you? Or maybe you’re still an active commenter there, but…. what’s that? You think Arianna and her boys can go kiss your Kentucky-fried ass if she thinks you’re going to give up all of your rights to privacy, for the privilege of selling your personal info to Facebook? Well you’ve come to the right place, then. Today, the Grumpster is going to show you how to open up a verified Facebook account, without having to give anyone your primary email address, real name or cell phone number; and without paying a cent.

OPENING AN ACCOUNT:

For privacy purposes, open a Facebook account only for HP. If you already have an FB account you want to keep, you’ll need to get a disposable cell number (see below) to open a second account. Don’t add an avatar to the FB account; as it may override the one you have or will add on HuffPost. Remember to always enter a fake name for your identity on Facebook, for the temporary FB account you will be associating with HP. This is a sick, dangerous world we live in, and it is only getting more sick and dangerous. Not less.

VERYIFYING A MOBILE:

This is the tricky part, but it is very doable.  For the verification to work, you probably need at least access to a mobile smartphone; ie someone willing to let you use their smartphone for a few minutes. But you won’t be giving out its real number, and it does not require a text plan.

There are sites such as this one that allow you to receive text (SMS) messages on the site. People use them all the time for registering on sites that require a cell. But I have never had that work for me. Facebook won’t send it through, even if my mobile will. Better to use a smartphone and install “Hushed” for Android, or “Burner” app for iPhone.

They will allow you to receive text or even voice calls through a disposable number you create during the trial period for the app (so it is free for this use). You do need a working cell account for the disposable number to work, but Facebook does not ever receive your real number. Instead, the app receives the call and transmits a different number that you choose, to Facebook. This later gets registered into your FB account.  Facebook won’t easily send their confirmation code via voice call, but they can. I found it might take several tries to get the link that offers you the option of text message or voice call. Here’s the link if you need it: Voice Call Option. 

FACEBOOK ACCOUNT SETTINGS:

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 17.57.30To Access: Extreme upper right corner of page,Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 17.58.22 click gear wheel icon to change configuration modes. The rest of the action will be on the left hand sidebar. n.b. Set all this before linking your account to HP:

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.01.36

WARNING: You will have to battle a small army of dwarves, brave and true, each one fiercer than the next, before Facebook will allow you to disable your privacy settnigs.

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.01.03PRIVACY: Set every option that you can in this order: “ONLY ME”, (failing that) “FRIENDS”, (failing that) “FRIEND OF FRIENDS). Then DO NOT FRIEND ANYONE.

 
 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.02.04TIMELINE: Same as above. “Review Posts”:DISABLED
 
 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.03.15NOTIFICATIONS: As Above. Email: “Only Notifications…”
 
 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.03.36MOBILE: Remove number (only after your FB account is verified on HP. The FB account can then be unlinked from your HP settings page).
 
 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.04.03APPS: Turn OFF App platform (this should only be done after linking your account, else the linkingn won’t work).
 
 

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.05.14PRIVACY SETTINGS:

Same options/order as Account Settings.
Set “Who Can Look Me Up: OFF”
Set “Who Can Contact Me”: STRICT FILTERING
 
 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.05.30ADS: “NO ONE”
 
 

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.03.47FOLLOWERS:

PAYMENTS:

I don’t know, but in case I need to say this: don’t ever give any money to Mark Zuckerberg! Give it to charity or throw it down the waste disposal, before you give it to him.

 
Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18


LINKING YOUR ACCOUNT TO Huffington Post:

c4c29a22During the process of asking you to link your verified Facebook account, Huffington defaults to using your Facebook avatar. UNCHECK the option to use your FB avatar. Then you can use the avatar in your HP account. You can here, also choose whether to use your full fake name, or just your first name, last initial.

UNLINKING YOUR ACCOUNT FROM Huffington Post:

Screen Shot 2014-01-09 at 18.23.48

This shows the general area at the bottom of the page where the “Unlink Facebook account” button would be (just above “Remove My Account”). Its not shown because I have long sinced removed the Facebook account from HP. It can’t be restored afterward.

Yes, once linked, you can now kill your Facebook account. You

will still be able to comment on HP, as HP only “officially” accesses the FB account on registration.

Unlink the Facebook account in your HP settings page. Then go to Facebook and completely delete your account. Facebook makes this super tough to do, with a hidden link they do not want you to use. Here is the link unhidden: https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

n.b. They will keep your account active for 2 weeks and reactivate if you sign in again; so don’t sign in again. After that, they will still retain your information forever it seems, but at least no one else can get to it.

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by forrest grump on January 2, 2014  •  Permalink
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The REAL Reason HuffPost Is Ending Anonymous Accounts

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 20.20.41

Because nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

Even if they are a minority, I’m saddened at how many HPers who bought the line of goods Arianna and friends were selling, concerning the reasons why they were ending anonymous accounts. If people can be that easily manipulated, my God. No wonder they figured they would get away with it. On Aug. 23, managing editor “Jimmy Soni” explains to the HP community why they were ending anonymous accounts. He explained that people will “check their guts” before posting comments, and that will put them on their best behaviour. Voila, a nice clean magical end to trolling. Then of course Pan will play his flute and all the happy children will sing along in magical harmony. Kim Jong-Un will also entertain them by telling stories by the campfire.

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 17.38.50

Mr. ModerateCentrist On Huffington Post agrees. There is always that “gut check moment” when you post under your real name.

Just ignore the fact that Soni is only talking about exposing member’s first names (since HP made sure people weren’t obligated to reveal their more identifying last name), and as people have noticed, HP has no intention of banning accounts with obviously fake names. There is no shortage of obviously fake-named members on HP now (see example above, note date). Never mind that no one thinks about their name every time they post a comment. We are living in Huffingtonworld here. Logic need not apply, there are no jobs for you on the Huffington board of advisers.

WHAT THEY FORGOT TO TELL YOU

Screen Shot 2014-01-04 at 02.27.47There is some important aspects to this that Jimmy Soni did not explain. This was clearly a mistaken oversight on his part (busy man I’m sure). So I tried to explain on the comment section of his HP article about the other gains that were reported to come with these changes. I don’t know why, but I was “politely restrained” from sharing this information on HP by some pretty mean-looking moderator kill-bots:

“Meanwhile, HuffPost has been trying to position itself with advertisers as a premium site, hiring marquee journalists and doing more original content as it, like publishers everywhere, grapples for a profitable model for online news. “I want to sell as much premium as possible,” Maymann said in an interview. “If it’s just blue-collar people they’re selling their stuff to, [advertisers] shouldn’t come here.” – John Maymann, HP CEO. “HuffPost Takes More Control of Destiny With New Ad Staff Separate From AOL”

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 12.53.32So now we know what Jimmy Soni meant when he said Huffington Post was looking for more “sophisticated”, “grown-up” users for 2014. He meant if you can’t afford a cell phone buddy, then you’re no longer welcome as a member of The Huffington Post Country Club. Take your blue-collar ass to 4Chan or whatever, who cares. And if you don’t want your life exposed to Mark Zuckerberg and his pals at Facebook, then you’re not going to be helping us to spread our marketing to your friends. You are certainly not the user we need to justify padding our ad team with 30 more native advertising staff in 2014. So get lost, and take your privacy-loving friends with you.

On Dec. 20, 2013, HP published their own article about why Twitter was becoming an insignificant entity to advertisers:

Unlike major competitors such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, Twitter lets a single human being control more than one Twitter account. Ultimately, advertisers only care about the number of eyeballs behind all those handles, not the aggregate number of accounts. – “One Statistic That Shows How Small Twitter Really Is“

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 17.39.52

Maybe the moderators just wanted to hear the rest of the story of how to make $5000+ from home.

What better way for Huffington Post to show their advertisers just how many “eyeballs” are attached to their site, rather than accounts, than to count them by cell phone numbers? People share computers, but not usually cell phones.

If that is not the reason, why demand cell-verified Facebook accounts? Even Facebook does not demand cell-phone verification! If HP does not know that cell-phone numbers can easily be spoofed, then they really shouldn’t be in the news business. In reality, they already had the tools in place to minimize trolls (you can never eliminate them on a site this large). The “MUTE” button they had already in place pretty much deals with the problem decisively, by allowing you to ignore them instantly. Plus, there are any number of ways they could have dealt with the problem, without punishing the non-trolls, which made up the vast majority of their user base. One member had a good suggestion of a community flagging system, whereby a certain number of flags for a bad comment gets the comment hidden or deleted. You don’t need much more than that alone to spare the feelings of the more sensitive folk among us, if the comment is really offensive.

Here’s another related reason for Huffington’s shotgun-wedding to force people to marry Mark Zuckerberg and his “Facebook” empire. It’s called “permission marketing” and is said to be the new big thing in corporate manipulation of people and professional extraction of their money:

” So what exactly is the data and advertising opportunity for sites? The Huffington Post is the poster child for this new social data-based permission marketing approach. Readers register on the site using their existing Facebook, Twitter or other social identity, thereby giving HuffPo access to data with which the site can personalize the user experience.

For readers, this means they can see what their friends are reading and sharing on their site, giving them a powerful social filter for relevant content. It also means The Huffington Post can sell advertising on their own site based on everything they know about the user from a social perspective.

I had a chance to meet Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau at last year’s IAB leadership summit, where publishers get together to talk about the future of interactive advertising, and he shared with me that their integration and application of Facebook Connect and similar technologies to create a social news experience has been the key driver of their phenomenal traffic growth over the past year plus. Social advertising is also a key source of their revenue growth. HuffPo considers their site to be in the category of social media, and structures their ad sales team to serve that unique buyer. For publishers and advertisers, this approach has the power of Facebook ads, yet is superior because it combines the best of both worlds –- deep context plus social data.”  – “Why Permission Marketing Is the Future of Online Advertising“

 

YES, SURE. IT’S ONLY ABOUT “TROLLS”.

zuckerdance

Arianna Huffington does a victory dance in celebration of the fact that her idea to banish trolls from her news blog is working. Or that she gained another $30 mil in stock options from brokering the “verification” deal with Facebook. We’re not sure which.

Far as anyone can tell, the thing that officially kickstarted this move to remove anonymity on HP was Arianna Huffington’s lecture to a Boston audience, in which she said, quote:

“Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier, and I just came from London where there are rape and death threats” – Arianna Huffington “Huffington Post to end anonymous comments“

She was referring to comments on Twitter, and that was said in 2013. But… time travel back to 2010, a full three years before she saw violent threats on Twitter, and we see she was singing the same tune. This was hardly a reactionary decision, but something the administration at HP had been planning for 3 years!:

“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”… “There is a younger generation that doesn’t feel the same need for privacy.” “Many people, when you give them other choices, they choose not to be anonymous.” – Arianna Huffington, NY Times, 2010.

Huffington Post has been trying to push members to link their Facebook accounts to HP since way long before any of this controversy about relinquishing privacy ever started. No wonder. It helps advertise their product(s) to a network of other eyeballs, as well as gain information on their customers (aka members) for ad metrics. It was not a particularly popular idea among the HP community. So what better way to force all members to do this than tell them it’s only because they don’t yet have the infrastructure to do the verifications themselves? Ok, well then you can well wait until you do!

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 20.31.50With all the moderation systems in place, there was not an “emergency troll problem” on Huffington Post, that couldn’t wait for a better solution that doesn’t alienate the vast majority of the community you are allegedly trying to help. If anything, there was an emergency moderator problem. Most members were complaining about the heavy-handedness of moderation before the policy changes. Some quit their membership on account of this. And if only for the purpose of credibility, HP could well have used other third parties for authentication. Which they did not already have “business relationships” with. Aside from known large data merchants; ie. Google+,Twitter etc., there are any number of private third party security firms that would have been happy to do the authentication for HP. Arianna set the volley up to all this serving of lies to the media by giving a lecture to a Boston audience about how she saw “death and rape threats in London”.  She was talking about one single situation from a few UKers on Twitter! Talk about a lame set-up!

CONVERSATION CAGES

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 23.27.22“Conversation carousels“. That’s what they called their hip new conversation format in the comment sections. It felt more like conversation cages. When you wanted to follow a discussion, you got whisked up into a box that took over your screen. In order to see all participants in the conversation, you had to take notice of a little box that said “list all”. You weren’t shown all comments by default. Before you entered the box, it showed you the avatars of those involved in the conversation. But when you entered the conversation cage, you often found those listed on the outside had no comments shown on the inside. That’s because their comments had been deleted by the modzis, but due to their half-baked software, the “ghosts” of those killed by the moderators, remained remained in the form of their avatars.

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 17.37.55

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 23.23.53

The “conversation carousels” made it harder to follow sub-threads, just as the rest of the changes to the comment format made it harder to follow threads. It made it especially hard on those of use who might be disabled, and didn’t have the motor skills to be continually clicking on this and that, in order to see what their colleagues were saying. The change was actually a painful one for some users I had heard from, that took them right out of the conversation, and their community. It was as though The Huffingtons decided to build steps over a wheelchair access ramp to a rehabilitation center for the disabled, because they figured they could plaster paid advertisements on each step, to catch the eyeballs of able-bodied visitors to the rehab center.

Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 20.16.08Like the user policy changes of Sept and Dec. 2013, the word on “conversation carousels” was unanimous. Almost all members hated this change. Yet as always, HP say they made it for the community. The one that unanimously hated the changes. Maybe they should stop doing us these favors, if that’s always the result? Well, all bullshit aside, here’s the real reason they don’t care what the community thinks about that idea:

“The share-a-conversation feature serves to make order out of the comment chaos, but could also turn into a serious money maker for the Huffington Post. According to Pavley, the company will use parent company AOL’s ad platform to serve up relevant ads next to the conversations. Screen Shot 2013-12-29 at 23.04.41This is significant because the HuffPo will not only have more pages to monetize; it will also be able to offer advertisers the promise of “hyper-engaged readers.” This type of audience is being touted by companies like Disqus as extra valuable because readers are more likely to engage an ad if it’s next to a subject they’re passionate about — the idea is that, if they’re taking the time to comment, they presumably are engaged.”HuffPo’s new ‘Conversations’ will improve comments — and make money for AOL

The Whistleblower Exemption (aka “Appeal for Commenting Pseudonym”)

One other thing. HP built into the system a sort of media-backlash self-protection mechanism, whereby they promise that members who feel at risk by exposing their real names, for whatever reason, can fill out a form to apply for an exemption to the real-names rule. This means you get to post with just your handle on your comments. The anonymity request form is an amateurish Google Docs form, and looks something like this:

1Screen Shot 2014-01-01 at 15.13.53

 There are  few problems with this scheme, I’ll go through by list:

      1. It’s kind of stupidly hypocritical. I mean on the one hand, Tim McDonald explains they simply had to backpeddle on what Jimmy Soni promised. That current members could keep their anonymity, because that means not all members would remain anonymous. But then, if you provide an exemption for some members, not all members are remaining anonymous by design! If they were always willing to compromise there, it means there is absolutely no excuse why current members could not have kept their anonymity, and have the rule applied only to new sign-ups. As had already been done after Aug. 2013. It lends credence to the popular notion that this was a financial decision which had nothing to do with “trolls”.
  • In the article “Why Anonymity“, I detail one example by “PeeganR”, an ex-HP member who was stalked and threatened by a dangerous HP member, which the brass at HP was informed about. She applied for the above exemption and was denied. I had personally heard from numerous other members who were denied this exemption, despite having reasons to fear for their lives.
  • Nowhere in their all-too-brief explanation on this anonymity exemption policy, do they explain who qualifies for an exemption. So people are left wondering why they never received a response. Which you are supposed to take as meaning you did not qualify! (Or they never received your email, you have no way of knowing!). But in his “Turning the Page” article, Tim McDonald did say:

“And if, for whatever reason, you fear posting a comment under your name — if you are a whistleblower, or fear harassment, or any other reason — you can apply for the right to comment anonymously by filling out this form.”

Yet those who did fear harassment, and who had legitimate reasons to fear harassment, were denied by Tim and crew. Showing how they care more about a few people not being able to hide their real names on HP (which is childishly easy to do if you really want), then they do about their member’s personal safety or peace of mind. Now that’s what I call “evil”.

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by forrest grump on December 30, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by forrest grump on December 30, 2013

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