So there I was on Facebook just now, just trying to post a comment in a discussion initiated -- of all people! -- by Vadim Lavrusik, the Facebook community manager, on the Time magazine cover with the mom breastfeeding a standing 3-year-old.
I said something like how I thought breast-feeding was beneficial, but gosh, I found that by the time the kid can form full sentences like "I want to drink out of a cup now, Mom," you're done. Why prolong it?
But when I pressed "send," suddenly, a I got a blue screen with the message above:
IF YOUR COMMENT IS IRRELEVANT OR INAPPROPRIATE, YOU MAY BE BLOCKED FROM PUBLIC POSTS. PLEASE REVIEW YOUR COMMENT BEFORE POSTING.
I recalled Scoble's Facebook blog on this topic -- Facebook is butting in to our conversations!
This has to stop.
What does it mean to be "blocked from public posts" -- never able to comment -- ever -- on anybody else's public posts?! Only able to comment on my own wall, and maybe not that for long?
Obviously, it's a filter that is triggered from key words -- and maybe repetition of them, because I got the notice when I wrote "breast" several times, but saying it once again, to notify Vadim of my protest against this filter itself, it went right through.
Some geeks will find this unacceptable; some will cheerfully help build it and enforce it. Their intolerant culture is to blame for this; this is quintessential Silicon Valley betterworldism at its worst.
It's no good fleeing to Google+ -- the thin-skinned geeks there are even worse about deleting, muting and "disappearing" people even if the platform doesn't push that net-nanny stuff -- yet. It does something worse -- it has "recommended content" from its own ideological preferences which it pushes at you between messages.
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