Posted on 01/15/2021 4:57:52 AM PST by Bonemaker
Yesterday, we announced that we are closing comments at American Thinker. We immediately received a couple of hundred very unhappy, angry, and sometimes insulting emails about that decision. Without divulging why we made that decision, here are a few points to ponder.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
There are conservatives/American patriots out there who see a potentially magnificant business opportunity with this ... a multi-billion dollar opportunity that I suspect is being developed as I type this.
I have to agree with the American Thinker.
There are plenty of blogging sites, like this one, and plenty of Conservatives will bring to those sites the articles found on American Thinker.
The best writers among bloggers might read an article on American Thinker, disagree with that article on whole or in part, and submit their own article to American Thinker, registering the different point of view.
I am thinking of doing that myself, after disagreeing greatly with a recent article of theirs.
Freereprs ought to remember how this forum itself depends on their donations and Jim keeps it running by not offering a lot of technical bells and whistles that a more costly site could maintain.
If American Thinker thinks their choice is to continue hosting readers comments, at costs they cannot afford, or keep their enterprise up and running, then I think they made the right choice.
Exactly so. Very juvenile and superficial to expect each site, many with small resources, to go down in a pointless blaze of glory and leave the internet without conservative input. Just Big Brother’s voice, which is after all the point of the suppression exercise.
AT will not survive the liberal onslaught. All opinion that does not follow the line will be banned; see the Great Chinese Firewall. Enjoy FR while you can. In a way this is good for patriots. They will be forced to engage with each other. Get ready to create samizdats. That will be the only way communicate.
They may have been threatened by the Server masters.
“Without divulging why we made that decision”
The only reason to say that is because they were threatened and they’re not prepared to reveal that.
AT will not survive the liberal onslaught. All opinion that does not follow the line will be banned; see the Great Chinese Firewall. Enjoy FR while you can. In a way this is good for patriots. They will be forced to engage with each other. Get ready to create samizdats. That will be the only way communicate.
I like AT’s layout better than TownHall’s. Also TH has too many articles on topics interesting to me that are behind its VIP wall.
“Effective compromise already in place: repost the articles here, and see if we can post comments of a high standard as should befit FR.!”
Sometimes the proper response is simple, easy and at a minimal cost for us.
Thanks
Not to worry..”they” will tell us what to think.
“They” will even provide the comments.
Now here is some government approved music..for your listening pleasure...
good post... and in this era the fine line between free speech and CMA has thinned considerably...
Quick correction. Free speech and elections ARE dead. We have arrived already.
See my tagline re end of elections,Tues., Nov. 03, 2020!
Our Free Speech basically died 6 Jan 2021 in the capitol.
“What I perceive is going on is that Antifa types have been spending a LOT of time and energy as Agent Provocateurs on conservative sites, posting comments that are over the line, and baiting others to join them, exactly as they did at the Capitol protest.
We have to take some deep breaths here, look around ourselves carefully, and figure out how we show these people up for who and what they are.”
Conservatives need to Defund the Left, that includes conservative businesses.
80 million need to vote with their wallets
From what I understand of their model, a lot of their - if not nearly all - writers are just people that submit essays. They look them over to see if they are interesting and of sufficient quality and post them if they are, largely on a yes/no basis as they don’t have enough people managing it to work with the writers.
Hardly surprising that they would trim off 3rd-party dangers they can’t moderate.
The Atlantic and NPR used to have lively comment sections. Both were shut down with some excuses that always sounded, to me at least, like evasions. The fact is that on both sites the liberals were being dominated by much better informed conservatives on most politically-oriented topics. Both sites attracted high quality participants and the tone was overwhelmingly civil. There was very little trolling; conservatives seemed to understand that they were playing in the other side's sandbox and mostly behaved themselves. When abusive and vulgar comments occasionally did emerge, however, they were overwhelmingly from the left, which will not surprise anyone here. My suspicion is that management at both organizations simply became embarrassed at having their staff writers exposed on a regular basis.
The upside is, we are discovering we can trust no specific entity to save us. The power is with us, the people.
Sites that have comments sections often see a “community” of regulars form due to that feature. It becomes an important part of the website to regular visitors even if the fools running the site arrogantly think everyone is just there for their content. Take it away, especially suddenly and with a poorly written explanation, and many will never return.
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