Consumerist = Fail
Posted by darkraven14 on August 22, 2008
[UPDATED] Consumerist.com begins censorship.
Ok, a little background on this. I stumbled onto consumerist.com back in April when I still worked for Sprint. They had a memo talking about a story that Consumerist put up regarding their shitty website security. Since then I have been a rather avid reader. However it seems that there’s some trouble in paradise.
Consumerist has gone on a bit of a power trip when it comes to commenting. First off, it’s only on a whim that you’re even allowed to comment. In order to get approved you basically have to comment and pray that a moderator likes your post enough to give you posting abilities. Okay, I can live with that. It seems fair.
However they have some rules that you have to follow when you post comments. Most of these I can agree with. However there are two I find annoying.
1) Don’t blame the victim. This one I semi agree with. However, in a lot of these posts, blaming the victim is warranted. Sometimes the OP (The person the story is about) has done something stupid or is at fault and the commenting public will tell them so. This can sometimes lead into…
2) “Why is this story here” posts. This comes up a lot more often nowadays. Consumerist is rather known for stories with sensationalistic titles. Such as this story. Now, if you look at that title, you’ll think one thing, but see that it’s totally something else. If you read the comments you see that a lot of people are correcting the site, which seems to be a no no, since we’re then accused of “Blaming the victim.”
Now, I agree that a post that just says “Why is this here?” is dumb. But if it they have a reason for posting that and add that in their comments, it should be perfectly fine.
It seems to boil down to “We’ll say what we want and you can too, as long as you don’t make us look bad.”
The terrible part about this whole thing? Chris gets banned from the site, and then they post his story about GM on the front page with no way of him being able to comment on it! So either they ban him and then take the story from his blog, or they ban him and decide to run a story he submitted before he was banned. Either way it’s pretty shitty.
So in the end, the site isn’t completely bad…as long as you don’t plan on posting because then 1) you’ll have to wait forever and a day before you’re deemed worthy and 2) you better not point out any flaws they may make, because they are almighty and will smite you easily.
Nice going Consumerist.
Banned from consumerist, too said
Chris should change the site they link to to hardcore fetish porn.
Vance Decker said
Oh? You too? Another victim of Roz? I saw Chris’s story posted as well, AFTER, chris had his commenting ability disabled.
It’s fairly ridiculous how hypocritical Ben Popken has become, I can only surmise that this is to fit in better with his new corporate friends and advertisers.
…and it’s fairly obvious that their ‘worst company in america contest’ is a coomplete fraud. Most people in this country have little to no idea who Diebold is, yet somehow it made it to the final brackets?
I posted a little something about this sad display by Roz and Ben Consumerist Recently myself:
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Consumerist_Censorship_New_Moderator_Roz_A_Total_Bitch
Vance Decker » Blog Archive » the Consumerist Censor Nazi Strikes Again! said
[...] Consumerist = Fail [...]
darkraven14 said
Actually, I haven’t been banned yet. I imagine I will be eventually over some silly little thing (like pointing out when they make themselves look like idiots.)
I just hate the way they do things now. Their rules boil down to “Come on in, comment on how great you are but don’t you DARE make us look bad.”
And I know he’s the head honcho of the site, but I know I’m not the only one annoyed when Ben pimps himself on talkshow appearences and the like.