Thursday, February 08, 2007

groundviews 'justifying' censorship

groundviews had made an attempt to justify their censorship in a post entitled “hey groundviews, keep that censorship button on mate” today (february 8th) making use of some 'caustic' comments submitted by one 'ryan' (who seem to have played right into their hand by submitting such comments). they predictably fail to give any of my censored comments (which you can read here) for the purposes of such justification, because they are probably not, as you may judge, 'caustic' enough.

whether all the censored comments were 'caustic', irrelevant to the issue being discussed, spam, abusive, personal attacks, or ignored the posting guidelines, and thus justified censorship may be judged by reading them. those comments were just mine. i have no doubt that others too were censored and they were not in the least 'caustic'.

fact is groundviews engages in censorship of comments that argue against, question, differently interpret, point out errors, or raise concerns about some of their posts. most of such posts (indeed the most of their posts) advocate or imply a particular point of view that peace can be obtained by appeasement of terrorists, or peace is worth any cost (i.e. peacenik position). that point of view also happens to be the point of view of ngos and some foreigners funding it (see previous post for some details).

as to be expected from any kind censorship, the groundviews' implementation is also highly subjective and arbitrary.

as i have said before, blogs being private property, blog owners are completely free to do what they like in them, but if they make certain claims about their blog through media, it is but right to point out the difference between those claims and reality. again see previous post about the claims made on behalf of groundviews, by sanjana hattotuwa in particular.

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below i give the comment i left on their thread. whether they will publish it or not is their choice (it is on moderation queue at the time of writing). anyway as i said before i will periodically publish comments that are actually censored by them separately .

"fact is groundviews engages in censorship of even relevant comments with a different point of view. anybody may judge for themselves by reading several of my comments that they censored. 'curiously' they never give those as examples for justifying censorship here, choosing ones from one 'ryan'. who btw by posting such comments plays rights into their hands.

as with all censorship this one is also highly arbitrary and subjective.

as for who really engaged in posting of spoof and scurrilous comments in moju and against whom, please read that blog ( if you can find it in an internet cache). and judge for yourself. read the thread on 'call for immediate action on trincomalee situation' in particular and esp the admin's and sanjana hattotuwa's responses to such comments."
you may read more about their moju antics here and here. a google cache of the moju post i referred to in the comment can be read here.
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update

sri lanka: a land like no other blog has also written a post dealing with the above referred groundviews post concentrating on the privacy concerns. read

notice
this post is in kottu popular list partially through the idiotic repeated clicking by someone unknown to me, probably under the mistaken impression that it will be a good way to discredit me and make me stop blogging .

more details and ip addresses of those who engage in this activity can be found here ( see the update below the post). all future ip addreses and any further details of anyone who engage in this will be published until they get tired of clicking.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

They are trying to cover their naked censorship with the fig-leaf of Ryan's expletives. What a sorry sight!

Anonymous said...

Once upon a time a white man told a lily boy, "Hey you, get laid in my bed, I pay you". Ever since that day, this "lily boy" continues to blog, betraying his country.
This is the simple truth....

Anonymous said...

ahhh - good to see you are trying to keep indi, kottu and your own blog alive by picking silly fights with each other.

I haven't been able to leave a comment on indi's blog for a while.

Well - I've been away for quite a while so that has a lot to do with it too. I don't seem to be able to login as ashanthi either - tell you what doesn't take long before you loose touch.

Either way - drop us a line - be good to here what you're up to.

PS - I do think you should give indi a kick up his hairy dark scrawny backside but i do also wonder about your motives.

Talk soon and take care

Ashanti