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10:57:00 AM CDT
Trouble in AOL-J
Many journals with far larger readership than mine have helped spread the word about what happened to Un-Common Sense. For those not familiar with this journal, it's a wonderfully articulate journal that expresses conservative political and social views, and its author is always open to discussion and debate. He's the originator of the Hellbent for Greatness Award, a huge proponent of free speech, the U. S. Constitution and an all around good guy I take pleasure in disagreeing with a good bit of the time.
To summarize the story, Armandt wrote an entry in his journal about customer service and AOL. He went out of town for a few days and when he returned, his entire journal had been pulled for an alleged TOS violation. You can read the entire story here at Un-Commonly Senseless at AOL. Un-Common Sense has been re-established, but minus the eighteen months of entries that had previously compiled the journal.
Needless to say I am outraged. The reason that was given for Armand's journal being pulled was said to be a link to a pro-bulimia website. That turned out to be a pile of garbage. The link was to an AOL provided webMD site on bulimia.
First, I feel that if someone wants to be pro-bulimia in their journal, that is their right, as sick, twisted and destructive as it may be. I would never encourage it. I would speak up against it, but a person has the right to think and say what they believe. On the Journals page, it says http://Got something to say? Record your words of wisdom in a public or private Journal today. Who is to say what someone's words of wisdom are supposed to be?
My second thought, and I hope I'm wrong here, was that a liberal saw an opportunity to strike at a good conservative writer by creating a false complaint. That idea is just as disgusting that AOL would jerk the journal because Armand had the guts to discuss customer service. Anyone who calls themselves a liberal who would do that has no idea what the ideas and goals they claim to promote really are.
Armand deserves to get back his eighteen months of entries. They have to be cached somewhere other than Google, and it shouldn't be his responsibility to restore what was taken away from him. Beyond that, with as large and diverse as the journal community has become, AOL-J needs a clear set of standards to prevent this from happening again. If it could happen to Armand, it could happen to me or to anyone else.
I would like to see a rating system that integrates with AOL's parental controls. When my daughter first started blogging, it was with a different blog provider. She used a mild swear word in her blog, and Parental Controls wouldn't let her access her own blog without my permission. Oh, how I enjoyed that teaching moment. We need clearly written TOS standards for journals. Different communities within AOL have standards above and beyond the standard TOS rules, and we should too for clarification if for nothing else. I think it would also be a good idea to have AOL-J community leaders who could serve as a first filter for complaints about TOSable content. Let the community set the standards and review them before someone loses their journal, and our community loses another voice.
AOL-J has exploded since it first came on the scene, and there have been incidences that the early bloggers never anticipated; harassing comments, some stalking even, people have lost their jobs over their journals, journals have been set up to mock other bloggers, porn spam in comments and more. It's not always the friendly refuge it feels like to so many of us, and to keep it a good and welcoming place, we need clearly defined standards and rules.
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I don't think it's fair what they did to him. If they have a way to give him back his journal they should do it. I've read some journals that would make a sailor blush..how come the "word police" let's them stay on? I've felt terribly sinnful just using a few teensy words...wondering if I would get a tos or not. There is no ryhme or reason to it....Sandi http://journals.aol.com/sdosc
her458/LifeIsFullOfSurprises -
Sis,
Thanks for spreading the word on this!
If I may sidetrack for a moment, Neil still just doesn't get it. I'm not unkind to people with opposing views. I'm unkind to people who persistently twist my words and engage in food-fight politics. I don't tolerate illogical debate. And I receive more commentary from my left-sided readers than from the right. He's one of a few whose forte is ad hominem and I make no apologies for raising the BS flag on his kind of thinking. // I realize I don't need to give you my resume, but - as usual - I'm not going to let someone get away with persistently mischaracterizing who I am and what I do.
Speaking of not letting people get away with BS, that brings me back to AOL.
Their reasons are completely bogus.
They tank a journal with a reported pro-bulimia link in the comments?! They stood oh-so-firm on that "fact" until I unleashed on Mark, who was surprised by the fact that I had located the google cached posting and pin-pointed the "offending" link. His smug attitude and unwillingness to admit a painfully obvious mistake told me more than enough about AOL's "commitment" to their customers.
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I'm more inclined to side with Neil on this one. AOL /thought/ they could get away with the bogus TOS violation (which explains Mark's surprise when I told him about the google cached site) following my several entries highlighting service problems at AOL during my week as #1 on the J-Ed's list.
Sure it got someone's attention. It hacked them off and they found a way to show me how it's going to be.
And now we're supposed to pretend we believe that they don't have the ability to restore my journal?! With all of their technology, they're "unable?!" Who do they think they're kidding? They either think we are stupid, or someone there is incredibly stupid for having not implemented a contingency plan for wrongfully terminated files, journals, etc... but that brings me back to the whole "recovery order" issue. Circular...
If AOL wants to make it right, they can. So far, we're not seeing any results.
~ Armand
http://journals.aol.com/armandt/sense -
It deserves what it gets.
4/23/05 1:16 PM