Posted on 06/25/2002 3:42:21 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:
Subject: The Future of Our Free RepublicDear Fellow Free Republic Member,
Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.
Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.
Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.
We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.
If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:
StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts
Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.
Sincerely, StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
(we seemed to be criticizing the same genocidal poster, back to back) I thought it was kinda funny.
Liberty Forum is not an anti-Freeper site, Jim. There are folks there who are against this site, there are people there who have no problem with this site. There are people on both sides of many issues, expressing strong and sometimes even offensive views. People there tend to police themselves when someone gets out of line. I have yelled at extremists and idiots myself several times.
It is important to emphasize here that there are people over there who are also over here -- and who want to remain a member of the Free Republic website. I am one of those. That's all.
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