So I, and presumably about another 100k other HuffPo contributors, recently got an email saying that they were shutting down unpaid, independent contributors.
The email was pure sophistry.
Rationalizing the shut-down, it asserted that “Today, with the proliferation of social media and self-publishing platforms across the web, people have many more opportunities to share their thoughts and opinions online.”
Ummm, didn’t we just lose DNAinfo and Chicagoist, not to mention that little thing called Net Neutrality? Years before that, the indy media network? Aren’t the overwhelming majority of local print publications going under because they can’t successfully institute pay-walls like a handful of the majors such as the New York Times and Washington Post?
And then there’s the wholly unaccountable, behemoth Facebook, partnering with the Israeli government to repeatedly shut down pro-Palestinian posts, and god knows what else its algorithms and anonymous editors decide its monopoly can accept. And Twitter, which profitably promotes @therealracist in the White House, but pretends it has community standards it upholds ($).
The reality is that if you are to the left of The Nation and other Democratic Party enablers – Lucy: “I really promise that THIS time I won’t take your freedom football, Charlie Brown” – then you have an ever-narrowing number of outlets. This despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population supports positions that are anathema to both parties, such as ending U.S. wars abroad and instituting healthcare for all.
The closing line of the HuffPost email was the brightest piece of bullshit I’ve read in a long time:
“Thanks for being an integral part of the HuffPost community. Your bold, thoughtful contributions to HuffPost’s contributor platform have helped to make us what we are today, and we are so grateful and proud to have had you with us in this endeavor. Sincerely, The HuffPost Team”
Yeah, we really loved your “bold, thoughtful contributions” (did you read them?) and are really “grateful,” but now Fuck Off!
Yours sincerely, love and kisses…..
The moderators of only appropriately pro-Democratic Party postings (because we don’t have enough Daily Kos’s, Move-on’s, etc. already)
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Ugh. We already have our hands full dealing with liberal discussion boards that block out anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep. But yes, we are phasing out those exhilarating days of freedom of speech. It proved to be too distressing to today’s Americans to face the possibility that not everyone agrees with them on everything. All that really matters is that we keep sending those urgent donations to…