Huffington Post Censorship of Facebook Comments

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derrickdj

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I am a regular commenter on the Huffington Post. A few years ago they required everyone to use Facebook if you wanted to comment on the Huffington Post articles. Everything was great and I got a lot of Likes too for my comments. One day my Facebook Likes went dead on the Huffington Post comment section. I couldn't figure out what was wrong and didn't think I was banned. I might not be a Bernie supporter but it doesn't mean I should be censored. And I could see my comments on the articles, just no Likes.

I asked my friend to go to the Huffington Post article and Like my post. When he went there he said that he couldn't see my post at all!!!!! When I showed him my login screen he was really confused. I don't know how they are doing this but the Huffington Post is probably censoring Facebook comments or filtering them out.

I looked at the Huffington Post comment policy. Frequently Asked Questions

I wasn't in any violation and I didn't receive any notice. My comments were still visible. But only to me. And then I found this article on Facebook stealth censorship at the Huffington Post.
Stealthy Censorship at the Huffington Post

It is frustrating to invest in being a commenter and participating at a website. If they break their own terms of behavior or legal terms, what are the consequences? I am interested in knowing if legal terms are worth anything at all or if a website can put up anything in their legal terms and not abide by them. I can't say for sure what is going on at the Huffington Post but something is wrong if my smart posts can be made to disappear because they aren't in their political agenda.
 
Your "hypothesis" or your "suspicion" is probably correct.

Bernie and Trump appear to be this year's outsiders.

The insiders use their underlings to ensure their will be done.

Time will tell, if the supporters of he outsiders prevail, or are vanquished by the insiders and their subordinates.


Zuckerberg isn't the only "overlord" that is trying to "rig" the election, r censor opposition.


The HuffPo refused to report anything about Trump on their news or political pages.

HuffPo said Trump's campaign was merely entertainment.

It wasn't until well into the primary season that HuffPo changed that edict and began reporting Trump's campaign as news, and/or politics.

I find this election season to be very entertaining on all fronts.

I'm sure many more shoes will drop before the respective major parties convene their nominating conventions.

As mother used to say, "Son, keep your eyes and ears open. News is made when you least expect it."

As far as legal penalties against these various sites, forget it unless you're a billionaire and want some publicity.

Read this, mate:



'They sell you a dream': tech workers protest Clooney event for Clinton


Facebook denies that it would ever try to influence the election



http://gizmodo.com/facebook-employees-asked-mark-zuckerberg-if-they-should-1771012990




Why There Is No Reason to Believe Facebook's Promise Not to Influence Voters Against Trump - Breitbart
 
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LOL @army judge - seems like you are completely on top of the political news. :) It's actually the exact same from what I'm seeing. That's an awesome collection of political observations and news articles and I love the comment about "rig the election" LOL.

@derrickdj - If a website doesn't abide by its own legal terms then it may not be able to shield itself using the legal clauses that give them protection. I can appreciate your frustration and it's certainly possible that the Huffington Post might be using Facebook in a manner that filters out comments and which some may call censorship. You are not the first to say this before and I have also wondered about why some Huffington Post commenters seem to disappear. They are certainly pro-Bernie Sanders and have an immense dislike of Donald Trump and Republicans. Much of the home page seems to be dedicated to articles criticizing Trump and the GOP. But many do refer to the Huffington Post as a blogger site and not a new site. It's their website and if they don't want to present even-handed news stories, their agenda is their prerogative. And if they want to censor comments by making borderline decisions on comments against their liberal interests, they can probably do so as well.

I don't think you have any recourse against the Huffington Post for your comments being stealth censored, meaning fooling you into thinking others see your posts when in reality they may not be visible to others. You can certainly bring it up to them and ask whether they are filtering out posts in this manner. I'd be interested in hearing the Huffington Post's response, if you receive one. You may want to write to Facebook as well and inquire about whether this can occur - although controls Facebook may provide to large publishers like the Huffington Post may not be shared with you.
 
LOL, Michael.
I've always enjoyed the election season, especially presidential elections.
Mother and father were political junkies, and I was fortunate to have grown up in a home where we discussed politics.
Mother and I would stay up into the wee hours of the morning on election night watching the returns roll in.
Father went to bed religiously at 9:00 PM. LOL
He loved politics, but always said he had to get his beauty rest.
Memories are one of life's many blessings.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.
-- Bob Dylan

When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old.
-- Bill Clinton


To this day, I have the most fond memories of some of my old toys.
-- Michael Keaton
 
I've watched part of the debates just for the sake of curiosity and to see how they were reported. Personally I thought Bernie Sanders took it worse than Hillary Clinton but the Huffington Post would have had you think that Sanders decimated Clinton while taking just a few missiles - at least according to the few reporters aka bloggers that I read. I try to get a rounded perspective by reading a few articles from different news sites with diverse political stances.

It is not surprising that the Huffington Post seems to have a number of censorship complaints, as many outlets do but this type of stealth censorship - if true - would be disturbing. I wonder whether it has to do with an algorithm or the fact that there appears to potentially be a comment review period in effect at the Huffington Post according to what I have read. The only thing I noticed recently at the Huffington Post is that clicking their ad close boxes seems to launch the ad anyway - which on my own advertising income reports would usually be written off as an invalid click or click fraud.
 
I just read an article that seems germane to the OP's original post.

Bloomberg has decided to eliminate the reader comment sections on all of their websites. That's their cure to raucous posting. I suppose some might see that move as censorship.

The Bloomberg article went on to say that the founder of MP3 has another twist on reader commentary. He wants to CHARGE readers for each comment. Frankly I see as much success in that idea as I did when newspapers sought to get readers to SUBSCRIBE to read the news. Yeah, that idea never got traction. LOL

Anyway, here's the article.

You decide:

News Sites Start Charging Readers to Comment on Articles
 
I don't think Bloomberg going comment silent is akin to censorship at all. Newspapers don't come with reader comment sections, news websites didn't have specific comment sections either and many don't have them at all. Moderation can be difficult and potentially not worth the effort. Delfi AS v. Estonia is one lawsuit (albeit in the European Union) that sounded a warning alarm to news sites. The European Court of Human Rights might be suggesting that news websites may be required to police the comment section if they have reason to believe that a story will eventually result in defamatory posts. And as you know, where the pockets are deepest there will be more attorneys scavenging for dollars.

Very interesting link - I am not confident that SolidOpinion is going to generate revenues by people paying to state their opinion. They believe users will bid to have their comments on the top - which is worse than censorship. It basically promotes the notion that the bigger dollars get to be seen in news stories. Pay for editorials. I can't see any legitimate news site being able to justify that this isn't censorship by commerce and avoid being labeled as a biased news entity - a death blow to an industry that survives on credibility.
 
Humans do possess egos.
I suppose many will pay to post, even bidding to be on topof the compost pile. LOL
 
LOL. Interesting that much of the company seems to be located in Ukraine and many of the few reviewers giving 5 star reviews at Wordpress.org for their plugin are in Russian. ;) I guess this puts an interesting close to our discussion on censorship complaints at the Huffington Post!
 
Michael M. Wechsler said:
LOL. Interesting that much of the company seems to be located in Ukraine and many of the few reviewers giving 5 star reviews at Wordpress.org for their plugin are in Russian. ;) I guess this puts an interesting close to our discussion on censorship complaints at the Huffington Post!
Click to expand...

That's what I thought. LOL

I accept that each site owner has the lawful ability to manage all content, that includes booting undesirables.

Quite crafty of Bloomberg to simply disallow any comments.
Your analogy to newspapers is almost spot on.
The exception is the old school, letters to the editor page.
Those are subject to censorship for brevity and civility.
That might also be the solution to posting, an editorial pass through.
Some sites operate that way.
 

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