Reply To: Blocking Users

[Wolfie65 1275xp 1]

Until about 2008 or so, the internet was more or less a free-for-all cyber version of the Wild West. Free speech as it is meant to be,  everyone could say (type) whatever they wanted while everyone else was, of course, perfectly welcome to completely ignore them. The first case of this changing that I noticed was the Thorn Tree travel forum of the Lonely Planet series of travel guides, which used to be a highly informative and very entertaining forum for people from around the world freely exchanging thoughts, tips, reviews and general banter related to (mostly) traveling. Nothing was ‘moderated’, no one and nothing was ‘banned’, no one was ‘blocked’, in other words, it was more or less like meeting fellow travelers in youth hostels or campgrounds in the real world.

After the change, you had to walk on raw eggs so as not to ‘offend’ any of the keyboarders and keyboardettes with egos the size of mountains but skin as thin as rice paper-always a bad combination –  the forum became bland, boring, very uninformative because posting the actual truth about anything would get you blocked and therefore totally useless. Might as well just read the official chamber of commerce ad about the place you wanted to visit and trust that they were being truthful…..

This disease has spread to almost every corner of cyberspace, finding true free speech sites is getting more and more difficult by the hour. Do you REALLY want to go there ?