I'm going to ramble a bit, be advised. And, mods, I'll move or remove this if it's not right to have at a simple rules posting...
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I've always found it almost comical when hosts impose rules that go beyond what a law enforcement agency would care about. My board (ferbles.com) was hosted by Forumotion, a company that insisted that I obey the laws of France, among other demands on our behavior, QUOTE:
"The moderators of this forum will...edit or remove reprehensible
messages. ...aggressive or slanderous messages, as well as personal insults
and...any message contravening the French laws. ...If you post information
which come from another site, look first if the site in question doesn't forbid it.
...post your messages only once. ...make an effort on grammar and spelling.
SMS-style language (ex: r u sk8ing?) is not advised! ANY message
contravening the listing above will be...removed without justification (!)...
ANY abuse will involve the cancellation of the registration...informing your
access provider and/or the legal authorities... "
Kind of bizarre, eh?
So it's no surprise to see Proboards' demands go a little too far, when they say, QUOTE:
"You...shall not...post...defamatory...(messages)...racial intolerance,
use hate...terms, or signify hate towards any person or group of people...(and
you shall not post anything that is) in bad taste..."
Well "don't post anything in bad taste" seems just weird to say. And as to not
posting stuff which is racially "incorrect",defamatory or hateful, well that may sound ok on the surface, but it umbrellas too many normal situations that can occur so you could end up "deleted without knowing why", and in general this stuff really ought to be up to the board owner and their membership. I mean if you look at the letter of what they state, you'd need to be afraid to make any negative statements at all about a political party, for example. And if I say, "I hate clowns. Clowns are frightening.", have I defamed them??? How far might they or someone take this?
Of course Proboards is just painting with a broad brush, I understand that. But I've recently had cause to consider such things, and I feel if someone has an opinion which will strike some as obnoxious, still it's their opinion. Freedom of speech is important. So is the right to be what and where you are in your personal growth. So I think if someone says something defamatory, awful, hateful, incorrect and from a previous decade's thinking, so what. It doesn't have to be an invitation to get mad and fight over it. And one's opinion is one's opinion.
That's what I think of others' statements I may occasionally perceive as awful.
As for statements I might like to make, well..Though I've read Lin's thoughts on "self censorship" and understand, still, we censor ourselves socially all our lives don't we? What's important is to get along, and let the individuals be as they are (which is necessary for them to be able to grow), both - so I believe in self-censorship, sure, when it's "socially appropriate". ..when a situation could be defused instead of built. (Of course that doesn't mean if you post something terrible, I wont remember who said what! ;D ) But. I find grudges too heavy to hold, so..)
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In the United States, we have passed and attempted to pass some terrible laws that allow a mere business to delete a forum without warning or explanation. And we allow private groups to appoint themselves as civil authorities and start acting as law enforcement, which is wrong I noticed. (anyone ever hear of the "internet police"? There are some, and they are self-appointed, no one authorized them to do this. A lawyer named Parry Aftab is behind it. She is a bully, and yet she centers her campaign on being out to "
stop cyber-bullying". Well, that's just nonsense. She wasn't really interested in preventing bullying, she has been in court charged with bullying herself! No, all she wants is to take individual's control from them.
...I ought to post an article, rather than just loosely reference that, but I'll leave it at this: I had a friend who had an argument at a board one day. It was fairly tame and over quickly, but she got a call from her local police that night. It seems these self-appointed "internet cops" (they're off-duty volunteer police officers from around the country, BUT they aren't legally authorized, so they abuse their position to do this stuff)...get an IP Address, call your ISP and get your phone number and physical address, so they can call to harass you over something which isn't their business at all. (We did NOT assign police to referee personal arguments! That goes way too far. It's the damn Thought Police is what it is. But that this is self-appointed and without anyone questioning its legality or existence, that's what's truly bothersome.
But there you go - we allow individuals and businesses to set up as civil authorities, to declare themselves as such with no legal process. And the result is, yea you really can get your board deleted without warning and without notification as even to why!!
So, at Ferbles, I also had set up a non-public forum (like Vendetta), because while this situation is intolerable (the people should not accept it, they should fight and stop it), still, unless you want your forum to vanish, you have to ...not respect, but FEAR the so & so's.
And this situation caused me to fear making any political statements at all , so again, it isn't right, but I hid those out of fear of being erased.
I hate to say it. I want to be proud of it. But the United States sucks! Its laws regarding the internet and its use are abysmally wrong!!
Anyway, in the end, I made a backup of all important posts, so if needed I can rebuild the place. That's the only thing that finally allowed me to relax and post political speech. (I got threatened one day over it though. Some bozo (<-see that word? it's an illustration. What Proboards says can get you deleted includes things like saying someone is a bozo
) ...but, some "misguided individual" then, told me off because i didn't have the "report this" button displayed well enough for his liking. What he wanted to report me for was I don't like the republican party, and I think if a thing is wrong, we shouldn't just think so, we should act to eradicate it. Oh, he didn't like that at all! Wolf posted a video recently of Jesse Ventura's "Conspiracy Theory" which, said, among other things, that you can end up on a terrorist watch list for such stuff. And I believe it. That's why I keep saying America has become a weird scary place in recent years.
So this brings up the question: Are you safe if your board isn't hosted by or in the United States? Not according to what Lin said here about seeing boards get deleted.
I did warn you I was about to ramble a bit, didn't I? mm. Well, I just wanted to acknowledge having read the rules really. And I'll follow them. Whether from respect or unright fear, I will regard the risk...with the well being of the board, the community and the individual weighed and balanced.