The reasons for hiding a post from the newswire are explained on the editorial guidelines page.
Please note: No posts are hidden simply because they do not conform to the opinions of the editors. They are hidden because they contain discriminatory remarks of an extreme kind, or advertising or are just plain inaccurate. For more details, see below. Indymedia upholds free speech, but not the right to hurl racist abuse or any other such filth.

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1) The IMC UK Collective acts as editor on this site. Any hidden postings are visible to everyone in our Editorial Admin page ( http://uk.indymedia.org:8081/display.php3?group=webcast&led=y&sort=&rate=none&filter=none&first=0&edit_comments=y). Just click to read them.

2) Reasons for removal from the newswire:

Discrimination: posts intending to oppress - using language, imagery, or other forms of communication which promote racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, or any other form of discrimination.
Advertising: posts which are personally or product promotional in nature.
Infactual: posts which are obviously infactual or misleading.
Repeated posting: if contribution is reposted or text that was originally a comment was posted as a report

IM's coordinators have a tightrope to walk between heavyhanded censorship, and a total mess that would be useless as a resource to progs & anti-globs.

There are just too many racists, conspiracy loons, big business fans and assorted nutters out there to just give an open mic. Any News would be swamped by static.

Or to put it another way - if you hold an open campaign meeting and a pissed-up ranter turns up and shouts every one down, would you give up on the meeting and damage the campaign?

Can you please provide the example of the article of yours which you claim was removed. How can we back up your claim without looking at it to see if it was justified or not. You can still see the article if it was hidden in the editorial guidelines/admin. Than paste it!!!

From my point of view, I work and have worked on this project using my own personal free time. This is to provide a forum that provides an alternative voice to the mainstream directly from the people unedited. I take it very seriously if this has been incorrectly done - so again provide the URL so that we may view it. Rather than some paranoid rant about the IMC editors who you slag off without any backing up of your argument.

Paste it. Don't you think it would have been better to use the e-mail contacts for this 'complaint' to find out why it was deleted, if it was? Then we could of taken it from there. If you had an argument then by all means tell the world what fascists we are, although this could have been a mistake, but that is the point we don't know do we because you didn't paste the article address. Meanwhile we who use the site and maintain the site are left with a bitter taste in our mouths after someone shouts from the rooftop without any proof. I hope not all your articles contain such inaccuracies.

i dunno about this one, there have been some posts by BNP monkeys recently which i noticed had been removed, i disagree with that, cos it makes it seem as though the editors here are scared to let people read the BNP nazi c*ap.
Rather than stopping people make their arguments on here, why don't people answer back & point out all the hate & contradictions in the farright arguments, seems to me that that is a lot more democratic and ultimately the only way to convince the population at large is to be able to argue with them, not censor them...

your comments sound very reasonable and the principles involved are certainly clear enough, except that nobody is being 'slagged off' here. Constructive criticism should not be construed as offensive, where offense is so obviously not intended.

We all greatly appreciate your dedication to and work on IMC, and would only like to see the spirit of free-speech and uncensored political debate survive and thrive on this forum. Please keep in mind that there are enough loons in Government willing to kill/subvert the whole thing without the plague of political self-censorship.

Speaking from my own experience, I would say that IMC-uk is in general fair, although the removal/hiding of some posts of mine have lately made me wonder if I wasn't perhaps a tad overly optimistic in that evaluation.

I did send the following very respectful email in the hope of clearing the matter up in private - but have recieved no reply. Perhaps that was not the right address, but in any case, could you, Andy, maybe look into it and help me further. Thanks, and keep up the good work!


From:
[ Save address | Block sender ]

To:  imc-uk-contact@lists.indymedia.org
Cc:
Subject: Removal of Articles from Newswire?
Date: Thu, 04 Jul 2002 18:26:56 +0800


Dear IMC-UK,

in the past few days I have posted news regarding the ridiculous practices of political censorship at IMC-Austria.

These were:

AntiFA-Censorshit at IMC-Austria
 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=35202&group=webcast

and

Unlimited Senseless CensorRage at IMC-Austria !!
 http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=35284&group=webcast


Now I notice that both these articles have been hidden from general view, although reader's comments were added and more were to be expected, without any offer of explaination!

I deeply regret you having taken this action and request you to please re-read both pages and then explain to me why you feel this had to be the case.

Please do not be overwhelmed by false feelings of solidarity for the Mods at IMC-Austria - they, or at least the one guy, 'ein indy', is more akin to a litte Judge Dredd than any impartial moderator.

I can assure you that the users of IMC-Austria suffer very much under his/their rampant use of the shears to remove any opinion not his/their own. Your site could be a valuable resource of last resort for those repressed ones to air their grievances, or even just continue an uncensored exchange of comments.

If you insist on actively aiding 'ein indy', then know at least that you are helping seal the creeping fate of free-speech in Austria, and possibly much further afield.

Please seriously consider disengaging from such a policy, and make a decided stand with those struggling to protect and expand the freedom and habit of free thought and speech.


Yours sincerely, BlackPope

Freedom of speech, means just that!

If you find someone's views offensive or inaccurate, you have the option to refute it, or correct it. I have not, to my knowledge posted anything fascist or racist, but find my political posts removed, or replaced by NO STORY TO TELL YET.

I may not agree with what you say, but I'll die defending your right to say it.

Some posts are downed just because somebody in the collective doesn't like your name and your previous posts. Why I recently had one hid at the very point it was going online - I take it that the byline was sufficient cause.Yes , cyberkisses,there's hardly a case that Indy's going to be overrun by loons and fascists - let people refute what they don't want

@MJP, please post the said Email with full header in order to ascertain if it indeed came from IMC-uk - then we can discuss what the implications are and can be done about it.

@Cyberkisses + DH, I agree 100% that censorship of political posts of whatever shade should not occur on IMC. Debate, refutation, exchange of ideas should be encouraged. The very frustrating 'NO STORY TO TELL YET'-phenomenon *could*, however, be a genuine technical glitch. My own suspicion is that this *tends* to happen when you have multiple windows open on this site, post in one then switch to a different window and hit 'reload' before the post is properly upped - patience or 5 minutes on a different site will bring rewards here - try it!?!

Could you also both provide links to or some idea of the content of the censored posts, to give some indication of a possible trend in political tastes among those doing the censoring?


In general - IMC-nl has recently implemented what is described as an 'Intelligent Software Filter' to automatically pre-screen contributions to the newswire - probably based on keywords connected to vitriolic verbal abuse, racism, advertising etc.; this seems like a possible advance that could be investigated, with a view to reducing workloads while effectively avoiding being swamped with trash.

Thereafter, it would also be of great advantage if the comments of the Mods were positively identified as such (see divx.com/forums for example) in order to avoid confusion and/or impostering, and a comment given in all cases of censorship (this does not mean the routine removal of double posting!).

And let us all keep in mind that, although not all Mods are perhaps all the time as politically mature as they could or should ideally have been, that this is also a learning process for them, as it is for us. We are basically all on the same side here and are only supporting IMC-uk and the principles involved when we point out the fact that neither 'political expediency' nor 'grudge match' are part of the official policy statement - something which we all need to guard against.

Sincerely, BP

 mclarkc@essex.ac.uk aka crypt claiming to be a former member of indymedia's editorial team made the following comment:

i been asked to tell you not to bother posting to indymedia
>no more
apparently the editors don't like u :)
i don't think it's got to the situation that they have to
>mail you at the moment, I've just been asked to warn you that any posts you
>send will probably get deleted

Some people working on Indymedia UK in London meet regularly to discuss the editorial process, and in between meetings discussions take place on public email lists. Anybody interested in how the editorial process works should please begin by reading the public archives and contacting Indymedia directly ( http://uk.indymedia.org/contact.php3) before posting misinformed comments on the newswire.
We welcome comments and feedback from people genuinely interested in improving the content on IMC UK.

If there were no moderation of Indymedia then the it would be an open forum for reactionary politics. I don't think that was the intention for Indymedia. The fact is if people want to find out what fascists, rascists and misogymists have to say there are plenty of other websites they can go look at - or go read the fucking tabloids. Likewise, if these sad people want to say something, there's nothing stopping them from saying it somewhere else. Personally I think the argument that we need to debate with these cretins is just tedious. Don't people already know what they have to say? Can't they guess? Personally I have heard and read all their nonsense from every angle time and again and what is refreshing about Indymedia is that reactionary politics are excluded as a matter of policy. Denying it space is not denying free speech - it's cutting out the babble.

In the recent past I posted replies to articles where people wanted "No platform for Nazis/facists/racists/homophobes/etc." To some extent, I must agree that we cannot allow the Indymedia to be swamped by such bullshit. However, if the IMC says it will remove discrimatory postings, how come I still come across individuals such as "Jack", "Nick", "Dave", and "Steve", who post such stuff as "Send asylum seekers back to where they came", and so on? Another thing, how do you define "discrimatiory"? Some would argure that we discrimate against capitalists, right wingers, and big business!

Overall, I am against censorship on the Indymedia, and I'll give the same reason I gave back then:

A world without Nazism/fascism would by a much nicer place to live, but at the same time, if Indymedia was to censor such people it would undermine the very reason why the Indymedia exists, to provide people a platform to raise their issues without the restraints of editing or censorship. Removing Nazis from Indymedia may also be the thin end of the wedge, and further down the line you may then get calls for the removal of, for example, articles that criticise the SWP.

Since 99.9% of the people who read Indymedia are anti-racist/anti-fascist, the few Nazis ("Jack", "Dave", et al) who post on here aren't really having this much of an impact in my opinion, since the majority of articles posted on Indymedia are sending the exact opposite message. In addition, the Nazi articles are soon severly criticied by the readers in the comments, which in turn undermines the Nazi message.

All that I am saying is to prevent the Nazis from getting a foothold, we need to keep informing the reader why their views are in the wrong, but to me censorship is a very dangerous road to take, and one that if ever taken, would destroy the sprit of Indymedia.

hopefully, Frank and Andy, you will get around to answering some of the substiantiated points raised above.

Perhaps MJP was a bit rash to think this so-called 'email' was an official statement or position of IMC-uk (obviously, it cannot be any such thing!); but an ill-minded imposter may have been able to cloud his judgement temporarily in this respect.

This in no way makes the rest of the, nor even his own, remarks 'misinformed comments on the newswire' and the whole (nasty?) subject deserves a much more thorough treatment than it has been given here to date - the dangers self-censorship for political expediency pose, as the tragic histories of IMC-Swiss, Austria and Germany should make plain, are notorious and looming close in the background.

I would not exclude the possibility that a concerted subversive attack against the principles of IMC could be launched using this very subtle technique by one or several very well-organised and capable agencies. If you think this sounds far-fetched and paranoid, well, just let me remind you that it's healthier to trust your government about as far as you could throw a bull by the horns!

You will, I hope, be able to admit that the light paranoia which caused his lapsus did not derive from a vacuum, but more likely from rather concrete cases of unexplained removal of posts and comments from the Newswire - and as such, it should be eminently forgivable. For details in my case, see above.

Speaking for myself, and hopefully many others, I will say that I am genuinely concerned to improving the content on IMC UK - also expanding the freedom and habit of free thought and speech. That is, after all, the only reason why anyone is bothering to post on this page!

I would greatly appreciate it if you could give the specific e-mail address via which correspondance on this subject would be welcomed and treated to a serious response.

In solidarity and support, BlackPope

Maybe you misquoted someone, eh?