The Boing Boing “controversy” and erasing posts
Popular blog Boing Boing has recently come under fire because they erased dozens of posts that linked to sex blogger Violet Blue.
There was no initial public explanation for why this happened, and once it was discovered it gathered a lot of steam. I think the reason that the story blew up the way it did was because Boing Boing editors are information radicals and tend to frown on this sort of thing when large companies or governments do it. Some where claiming they were engaging in hypocrisy.
Today they issued an explanation, sort of:
Bottom line is that those posts (not “more than 100 posts,” as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago. Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.
We hope you’ll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private. We do understand the confusion this caused for some, especially since we fight hard for openness and transparency. We were trying to do the right thing quietly and respectfully, without embarrassing the parties involved.
In my 5+ years of blogging I can think of at least two instances when I erased a blog post after publishing it — it’s just so easy to publish something without giving it a lot of thought as whether doing so is a good idea.
Of course, my blog isn’t read by over a million people, so I’m not sure if that makes the situation different.
And I never heard what instigated this whole thing in the first place. What did Violet Blue do that BB objected to?
Is it just me, or does it seem like censorship is becoming a four-letter word on the internet.
Oh wait, it’s been that way for years. I think the folks over at Boing Boing need to wise up and be open and honest with their community. If you want to take something down, tell them about it and why you’re doing it. Maybe even leave the post up with a retraction notice linking to the explanation. Anything less and you just end up looking like “the man,” which is not a position they can afford to be in.
i found the use of the term “unpublish” used by xeni to be interesting. smacks of censorship/deletion/eradication to me.
what i understood from reading VB’s site, she wasn’t aware of the missing posts until a reader pointed it out to her. she then asked for an explanation and posted about it in her blog. that is when the sh** hit the fan.
i have been periodically reading both sites to see how the tempest is brewing since both are blogs i enjoy daily.
Seriously Simon, what was the reason for removing the posts?
Was it personal differences? Or do you think Federated Media was putting pressure on Boingboing to remove NSFW posts?
I skimmed the overlong boingboing thread and two of three of the LA Times articles, and I still have no clue what is going on.
All they need to say is: she said some outrageous things, or we don’t like her anymore, or she’s been criticizing us in inappropriate ways, and be done with it.
Robert,
Quite frankly, I think it’s most probably a conflict between boingboing editor Xeni Jardin and Violet Blue. Xeni was the only editor pretty much linking to her, the two have been photographed with each other and were acquaintances. Xeni also dropped hints of such in one of those LA Times articles.
If I wanted to get racy, I would say that given Violet Blue’s subject matter, the conflict may be of a sexual nature. The way that the word “personal†keeps on getting thrown around every five seconds, something tells me this had nothing to do with a blog post or article that Violet Blue wrote, but more of a face to face issue.
Aha, here’s part of the scoop mentioned in this comment . coincidentally, I was attending this same panel at SXSW in Austin. It was about sexual privacy, and actually I found it a little dull and walked out of it (the podcast of it should be available).
Hey, you should attend SXSW sometime (if you haven’t already). I blogged about it a few years ago for the Houston Chronicle.
Another side issue. I always wondered why boingboing didn’t use comments. Now I see why. They probably need to hire someone to manage them. At what point do commenters take over a blog? Yes, I know, taking over is too strong a phrase, but for certain types of commentary, a person’s time is not well spent responding to vacuous remarks.
Actually, they did hire someone to manage them. The author of that post is Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who was hired to moderate their comments. She’s famous for her “disemvoweling,” basically removing all the vowels from a troll’s post.
Update: I think another contributing factor is that Violet Blue sued a porn actress for using her trademarked name (even though the actress was using it before she was). More at this news article about the adult film industry here . (might be NSFW). Corey et al hate people who use trademark to harass people.
If “troll” = “Anybody who dares to disagree,” yes.
I was going to mention the same thing that R.Nagle mentioned. About the time that the Violet Blue stuff was “unpublished” (an Orwellian term, no?), was the same time that VB the Blogger was suing to have VB the Actress “erased”.
Keep in mind that VB the actress had left porn, and was trying to raise her kids as a single mom. She’d been using that name before VB the Blogger used the name, and had done over 200 films.
In fact, after leaving the adult industry, she couldn’t afford lawyers to fight VB the Blogger and *because* of VB the Blogger, the original VB has lost almost her entire income stream.
VB the Blogger did something despicable by lying in court and getting an injunction that has practically made a mother and her children homeless. I can’t imagine that Cory et.al. would support or give credence to VB the Blogger after actions like that. Especially since VB is a made-up name for both persons. Neither of them have that name on their birth certificates. It’s a brand, nothing more.
That said; it should have all been above board, there should have been a statement about what they were doing, and if it was about this travesty of a case, then they should have publicized it, and maybe VB the Actress could have raised a legal defense fund.