MySpace and Freedom on the Internet

[topherchris]

A manifesto...

I spend as little time as possible on MySpace, but it was hard to miss the news that originally came through about how they deleted the popular "Atheists and Agnostics Group" for no good reason. (No good reason that I could find them stating publicly, anyway.)

Last week, more news came out that gave a little more info:

A MySpace spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that the site was accidentally deleted in January, but restored this month following its November 2007 defacement by a hacker.

So MySpace said they didn't purposely delete the group just because they didn't agree with it -- as seemed to be the case. It was an accident, fine, whatever -- I'm not satisfied with that. The fact that they seemed to wait so long before restoring the group and not really offering an explanation for the delay, and how such a large group could just be accidently deleted should make us question MySpace's ethics.

As if people needed another reason to ditch MySpace and News Corp... (Seriously, you don't watch their news channel, so why are you on their social network?)

Anyway, that whole mess is what inspired me to make this. I do sincerely wish the MySpace group continued success and growth, but eventually I think that corporate interests and unpopular opinions will clash (be it on religion, politics, or whatever).

There are larger issues here that have to do with freedom on the internet and net neutrality over how much of the web is going to be run by corporations. That's why I'm proud to have created this community on the Ning.com platform. (No, I didn't program all of this myself over the weekend, sorry.)

One of Ning's co-founders is Marc Andreessen, co-author of the first web browser and then a little thing called Netscape. A few months ago, there was a flurry of commentary over the mistaken theory that the most popular Ning communities were based around porn and that Ning only succeeds because of said porn. Here's an excerpt of his response and defense of their philosophy of what they will host and why:

In a nutshell, we aren't pro-porn, but we are pro-freedom. To prevent porn, you have to take an activist stand against freedom of expression -- you have to get in there and judge content, judge people, judge intent, and take action based on your judgments. I would never criticize a company for doing so, but I don't want to do that, and we as a company don't want to do that.
We think a better approach is to let people fundamentally do what they want, as long as it isn't illegal and doesn't otherwise violate our terms of service.

Call it being agnostic.

And we extend this agnostic attitude to our entire service -- porn, yes, but also other potentially controversial activities, ranging from political activism and protest organizing, to circumvention of censorship regimes, through to extreme cases like smuggled videos of human rights abuses in totalitarian societies.

Wow, seriously. That's music to my ears. It's why I'm proud to have set this community up here, and it's something that you should consider when you use online services.

[topherchris]

Just some housekeeping... I wanted to clarify: Ning.com is a service that lets anyone create their own community. I've paid for some premium services because that's how I roll, but the Google ads in the sidebar are placed by Ning, who receives all revenue from them. Unless I pay more fees, they will stay there. That's how it goes in the internet, but it's more than worth it when you consider what you get in return.

So, to be clear: At the moment this is a non-profit venture for me (it's actually a negative-profit venture with the fees for extras I have voluntarily ordered). If the status of these finances change, I will post an announcement. I feel it's only fair for you to know exactly who is profiting off of your pageviews.