Yahoo Nukes Man's Photo Over Obama Comments

[Maat]

Flickr user Shepherd Johnson was browsing the official White House photostream one night when he decided to post a politically-charged comment. Then another, then another. Soon, without warning, Yahoo's photo-sharing service deleted his account, complete with 1,200 pictures

http://gawker.com/5285064/yahoo-nukes-mans-photos-over-obama-comments

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Quite an interesting story.

[Mojorabbit]

1. Yes it is. Sigh. nt

[stop the bleeding]

2. Can I have more censorship please? Effing bs. nt

[Maat]

3. I'm not sure what you mean.

Please explain.

[stop the bleeding]

4. Unless I read the info in the link wrong.

This is a form of censorship IMHO

[Maat]

7. Oh, yes, now I get it.

That's right.

[gratuitous]

5. You should start your own message board

And then you can let anyone post anything they want on your bandwidth. Or you're a goddam censor, you are!

[stop the bleeding]

6. I'm sorry but are you saying I'm wrong?

If so that is all you gotta say. I'll admit I'm not the most coherent person right at this moment. I can also admit mistakes which is more than most people.

[gratuitous]

8. I suppose you can figure it out

But if you own a message board, and someone starts posting on it all kinds of things that you find objectionable, I would say that you are perfectly within your rights to delete their posts and revoke their posting privileges. It's not censorship. The offending poster, in this case Mr. Johnson, is perfectly free to say and think and write anything he wants. Yahoo just isn't obliged to provide a forum for him.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[arcadian]

11. Yeah but that is an Official Whitehouse Photostream

The line between the governemnt and the corporation has been completely blurred.

[scheming daemons]

13. Please... buy a f-ing dictionary..... Only the STATE can censor

A corporate entity (Yahoo) has every right to control what is on their servers.


The constitution only prohibits the GOVERNMENT from infringing on one's free speech.

[stop the bleeding]

17. Well you told me. Funny thing is when you look up censor in the dictionary.

Whether as a noun or transitive verb neither definition references the state.

Thank you for your non-confrontational response though, good to know there are still people like you who are "ugly" to other peeps.

Have a GREAT day!

Edit: to add the word verb

[arcadian]

20. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Looks like you'll be needing that dictionary. A censor does not have to be working for a government. It can be anybody who stifles the flow of free speech/information. From somebody in an official capacity, government or corporate to somebody unofficial like your mom.
Indeed people can even self censor.

[nichomachus]

22. Are you saying

That if I come and stand on your front porch and start screaming things you find horribly offensive, you would be censoring me by asking or ordering me to leave your porch? Or, do you have control over what happens on your porch?

[arcadian]

25. The situation you made up is irrelevant.

It is a private property issue not a censorship issue.

[nichomachus]

28. No it's not irrelevant

Yahoo is private property also -- as is your local newspaper -- your local TV station, etc. They are not required to provide you a platform from which to speak.

[arcadian]

30. But they DO provide a platform from which to speak and express yourself.

And thye do this under the auspices that it is a forum where the free flow of ideas and information is encouraged.

[nichomachus]

33. They provide a platform from which THEY speak and express themselves

If you ran a newspaper, would you let any right wing wacko who wanted to write stuff for you? No. You only have so much space to fill and you have to decide what you want to run. You do not have to publish anything you don't want -- just as you don't have to let some idiot scream from your front porch.

If you want to publish something -- start your own newspaper, start your own tv station, start your own web site.

"The only person who has freedom of the press is the man who owns one." --AJ Liebling.

[arcadian]

38. You should read something before you coment on it.

There are comment sections on the Whitehouse site.

[Hugabear]

41. So does DU. Does that mean we should allow freepers to post their hate here?

If not, then why should any other site be held to a different standard?

[ElboRuum]

23. Your mom?

Your mom is such a censor that when... um... well, when she... uh, no... ok, your mom is such a censor that when she...

Nope, can't think of anything. Better stick to more traditional "your mom" joke subjects.

[arcadian]

26. I was told by my mom to "Shut the fuck up!" plenty of times.

Well, she didn't say "fuck", she was a Christian. But that's what I heard. :rofl:

[Hugabear]

40. So by your logic, we should allow Freepers to say whatever the fuck they want on DU

Bullshit.

[Toucano]

32. I think we are confusing two related issues.

1. Censorship
2. Free speech.


They aren't exactly the same thing.


Indeed, this is corporate censorship. Perfectly legal and acceptable. They own the site and they decide what is permitted. Just like DU.

If he owned the site, and someone punished him for expressing his views (his employer, his mother, the government, a band of thugs) that entity would be violating his right to free speech.

We get confused when we think of broadcasters censoring contrary opinions. But the radio spectrum is owned by the people. Broadcasters are given a license to use the space on the spectrum and with that license comes a responsibility to permit all views to be expressed. **Supposedly**. The internet is not the same.

Still I don't think we have the whole story. Deleting his whole account seems a bit extreme as opposed to just deleting the offending content.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. It's too bad Yahoo can't discuss this, because..

it would be nice to see their side of the story.

Maybe it wouldn't make any difference and Yahoo's really being a bunch of scumbags, but so many times we've seen stories like this that evaporated when the whole thing came to light.

(One thing I'm sure of, though, is that I have little sympathy for anyone who complains about losing pictures that wren't backed up.)

[bananas]

12. kick - this deserves some more recs. nt

[arcadian]

14. This is a great story.

I hope it get's more exposure. It brings to light the Obama's administration continued cover up of Bush administration crimes.

[Robb]

15. Wut?

:rofl:

[arcadian]

16. Torture photos

dingbat :rofl:

[Xenotime]

18. I became ill at the sight of the suffering on that page...

Please post a warning with the link. I did not need to see that.

[EFerrari]

19. Wow. I'd be beside myself if all that work disappeared.

He had a paid membership, too. That's horrible.

I remember when you could call Yahoo! and get someone on the phone. Now, it's nearly impossible which is why I don't buy anything from them any more. It's not worth the aggravation if something goes wrong.

[ElboRuum]

21. The censorship is unfortunate...

But as to this...

"Many of the pics, he said, were "completely irretrievable — I didn't back them up on any disks, I just spur-of-the-moment loaded it up and deleted the flash" memory originals."

Well, this is just a dumb thing to do. I'd never trust important or valuable things to be stored on teh internetz with any expectation of them being retrievable later.

[struggle4progress]

24. Flickr deletes man's account -- let's see if we can blame Obama!

[arcadian]

27. If you read in the article.

flickr deleted the account. It's the Official Whitehouse Photostream. It seems they also deleted some comments in the comments section.

[struggle4progress]

35. You're not making sense. You just told me Flickr deleted the official White House photostream.

I don't think that's what the article says, but if that's what happened I think the White House can cope with it

How the White House should handle the problem of moderating its various comment venues may be a different question: there's probably no doubt they should moderate such venues, since otherwise it's likely that crackpot comments like Obama is the anti-Christ will proliferate. If the guy wants to contact the White House or Congress directly to urge a certain approach towards legislation -- or if he wants to organize a hundred friends to do so -- he's still free to do it

[arcadian]

39. Free speech is free speech

It doesn't require your approval.

[struggle4progress]

42. ??? I never indicated anyone's speech required my approval. But nor do I think one closed Flickr

account -- whose owner is irritated because he lost photos that he didn't backup -- is really national news

[Toucano]

29. They own the space.

It isn't a first amendment issue, but it is censorship.

If you invited a person into your house, and they started saying things you disagree with or things you dislike, you can ask them to leave or kick them out.

Same principle. The internet is not a public street corner.

If he hosted his own server, it would be different.

edit: considered the difference between censorship and free speech and changed my wording. Sorry. :(

[arcadian]

31. Again it gets a little dicey when you bring the Whitehouse into this

And they promote their forum on flickr as "The Official Whitehouse" and have links from whitehouse.gov to the flickr forum.

[Toucano]

34. Not that much.

A link is like a road sign. The content is housed in a privately owned building on that road. The owner of that building didn't like the content or felt it violated the terms of use established.

The dicey part is about public versus private spaces.

If the White House directed or requested that the content be removed it would certainly look bad, but it would not be illegal because they didn't make the decision to actually remove it. They don't have the ability to remove it unless they administer the servers.

Our first amendment guarantees us the right to express ourselves freely in public spaces or private spaces that we own (like OUR printing press, for example). Flickr is not a public space.

Flickr has no legal obligation to permit content they dislike anymore than The Wall Street Journal does. If we don't like it, we can publish our own newspaper (or website in this modern instance).

[arcadian]

37. In this case, it's an advertisement that flickr has on the whitehouse.gov site.

That's a little more than "just a link" it's pretty much an endorsement from the Whitehouse. Also it looks like the Whitehouse actually deleted the orginal comments made on the Whitehouse photostream. flicr also advertises itself as a place for the free exchange of ideas, that would then be false advertising.

[Thomas Hawk]

36. Flickr and White House Censorship is Not Right

If you feel that the White House and Flickr should not censor users on their site and permanently delete (without warning) flickr users posting comments critical of the Govt. then please consider digging this here: http://digg.com/politics/Flickr_use_deleted_for_comments_on_Whitehouse_Flickr_account