Back in April, Lost Coast Outpost published an article claiming that Karen Paz-Dominguez - whom they referred to as 'Paz Dominguez' in the headline, 'Paz Dominguez is Deleting Comments and Banning People From Her Campaign's Social Media Pages. Is That Legal?' - was deleting comments and banning people.
It was never clear to us exactly how Ryan Burns, the author, managed to ascertain that it was Karen Paz-Dominguez, herself, who was managing Karen Paz-Dominguez' political campaign. After all, Ms Paz-Dominguez seems to be pretty busy. Couldn't it be a member of her family, or a volunteer?
Nor was it clear to us how Mr Burns knew that this Facebook page was part of the campaign.
We will return to the topic of the Lost Coast Outpost, again, below.
But while we are on the topic of censorship ... two weeks ago, as it so happens, after we first brought this website online, we attempted to post an article on the Humboldt Craigslist server, in the 'Politics' section, announcing the existence of the paz-dominguez.org website.
It seemed, to us, that this action was completely consistent with the expected use of a website with a 'Politics' section. Right?
We posted our material, but it was almost immediately deleted.
This morning we posted the same material, again.
This time we did so in a systematic fashion so that we could document how long the posting remained up.
We did this by taking timestamped screenshots.
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This morning, 30 May 2022, at 1021, we created a new posting and edited the contents. (You can verify the date and timestamp yourself by looking at the system time, in the upper-right-hand corner of each image.) |
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At 1022, we published the article. |
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At 1030, we checked to see if the article was visible, in the Humboldt Craigslist server's Politics section. |
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At 1036 we remembered that we had not added another of the Paz-Dominguez campaign's websites, kpd4ac.org, and so we edited the posting and added that detail. |
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At 1037, we published the changes we had made to the posting. |
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At 1038, we checked, again, to see if the article was visible, in the Humboldt Craigslist server's Politics section. |
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At 1041, we made another small change in the content. |
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But, seconds later, when we attempted to publish our small change, the posting had been deleted - less than thirty minutes after it had been created. |
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There's no indication that the posting ever became visible to the public - so there is no way the public could have participated in this posting's deletion through any purported voting mechanism. |
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This actually isn't the first time we've been censored by Craigslist. Here we see an article about David Elliot - who, based upon information and belief, has been peddling (what was formerly) felony-level narcotics in Fortuna, unmolested by law enforcement, for nearly a decade, that we personally know of - deleted, only minutes after publication, before it was ever visible to the public. Why? According to our records (which go back to at least 2017) we have had our own postings flagged (by whom, it is unclear) and removed well over a thousand times - the exact ratio is 1317 known flaggings out of 6547 recorded postings, or about one post out of every six, censored - not counting possible shadow-banning. |
And so we conclude that political censorship is widespread ... and that the persons responsible for moderating the content of the Humboldt County Craigslist server, actively, every single day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, engage in far more damaging censorship to Humboldt County's political processes than some volunteer somewhere accidentally deleting a few Facebook posts will ever cause.
Craigslist has been doing this for quite a while, too. Craigslist's management was interfering with our posts regarding JV160250 and JV160275 all the way back in 2016 and 2017.
What is most interesting about the Lost Coast Outpost's accusatory article, is that Lost Coast Outpost, itself, blocks people, and censors comments, too. You cannot read their website unless you disable your ad-blocking software. Is that political censorship? No, but neither is it consistent with being participants in a free market - free markets require free information, this is Economics 101. Does this mean that the Lost Coast Outpost employees are pinkos? Probably not, but it's something to keep in mind.
The Lost Coast Outpost also blocks people from participating in their comment system unless one identifies oneself via some sort of third-party mechanism that attempts to insure that you are who you say you are. Unless we are terribly mistaken, LCO also deletes comments they don't like. This would constitute censorship, and it would be another indicator that the Lost Coast Outpost does not support free information, and, by extension, free markets.
If you're an employee at the Times-Standard, or the North Coast Journal, you're probably feeling a little left out.
If it makes the folks at the Times-Standard feel better, they, too, censor people, by not allowing anonymous comments - and, as Tom Paine demonstrated over two hundred years ago, anonymous commentaries definitely have a role in nurturing liberty. We don't follow the Times-Standard as closely as we'd like because their website doesn't support RSS.
We haven't dealt with the comment system at the North Coast Journal recently and so we don't know if they censor feedback or not. What we do know is that the North Coast Journal, does support RSS.
We think maybe we should file a complaint against Craigslist with the California Fair Political Practices Commission. A big tip of the hat to LCO for the idea.