Well on Friday, after the mayor's press conference (the one where he says he doesn't use crack cocaine but fails to deny he ever had), Gawker put up a post calling him out for his parsing of words. Having already decided along with a lot of other people that if Ford hadn't bought the tape yet he was surely at least close to doing so (that smirk really gave it away for me), I put up a comment on the Gawker story addressing John Cook, the author as well as the editor who broke the story to begin with. I implored him to reach into Gawker Media's incredibly deep pockets and at least front the money for the tape if they could find the guys who have it. If they insisted on using other people's money, they could still get it back a few days later when the Crackstarter campaign was finished, but in the meantime the Fords might get their grubby, KFC grease-lathered fingers on it.
Here is what the comment said:
SonOfFox - John Cook
John I mentioned this to you in an E-mail [I'd emailed him about this as well] but I'll reiterate it again here. He's probably already bought the tape himself, but if not, why don't you guys front the $200,000 and buy it now? You've certainly got the resources, you'll have the money back within a couple of days anyway when the crackstarter campaign is concluded, and maybe a hard offer right now, today, will bring the owners of the video out of hiding. Beyond that, if Ford's presser today did nothing else, it certainly seemed to indicate that they seem to think this tape will never surface. That could mean, as I said, that they already have it. Or it could mean they have plans to buy it ASAP. Beat them to it, please. Buy it now.
About 30 seconds after I posted the comment, I noticed it had disappeared. Curious, I went back through some other posts I'd commented on, and found that ALL my comments had disappeared. As a test, I tried commenting on a different story, and as soon as I refreshed the page, THAT comment had disappeared.
In the past, I'd had trouble commenting, and that had turned out to be a glitch in their system, so I emailed the helpful support desk to find out if they were having the same issue. This is the response I got:
Ernie Deeb, May 28 12:22 (EDT):
Hi Andrew,
I checked with the Gawker edit team. This time it looks like your SonOfFox account was blocked purposely on their end. Not much I can do for you here, you'll have to try to reach the staff (tips@gawker.com) for more information.
Cheers,
--
Ernie Deeb
Community Support Manager
Gawker Media
Repeated attempts to get a response from the Gawker editorial staff on why they'd block me following that particular comment have gone unanswered. As I said above, I don't troll on there, and I don't say anything racist or homophobic or attack other users or any of the things that would violate their terms of service. I simply questioned why they weren't buying the tape themselves (and not even that, I questioned why they weren't fronting the money themselves).
More on this if there ever is any more. Meantime, I have another account to comment on there with. If I don't get a response from them about this I plan to use it.
UPDATE: It occurs to me that some might think the timing is coincidental and I was banned for other things I might have said. If you click on the link in the story labeled SonOfFox it will take you to a list of every comment I've ever made with that account on Gawker Media web sites. A lot of them are pretty dumb (I was just reading through them myself) and more than a couple are kind of weird. But if you can find one that would justify a ban please feel free to quote it in the comments below. Keep in mind that these are relative to other Gawker comments, which I invite you to take a quick scan of to see if anything I've said is egregious in that context.
UPDATE: Gawker has now banned my other account for publicly needling them about banning the first.
JUST USE IT....don't bother waiting for something that won't happen.
ReplyDelete~mark a
If I don't hear from them by tomorrow I will. I just want to give them a little more time to respond. Otherwise I'll use the other one to ask for an answer publicly until they (I assume) ban that one too.
DeleteYou're probably not banned. Your account is probably set to auto-dismissal, one of the more passive-aggressive features of Kinja that was supposedly retired. It's interesting that they are using it again.
ReplyDeleteBack when the first iteration of Kinja went live, Denton crowed about how banning was a thing of the past since users would now elevate/moderate the discussion themselves. There was no need to ban they said, but this left him and his editors without a hammer, so the notion of Auto-dismiss was born.
At one point, some of the users got into a spat with him about how bad Kinja was versus the old star system. One even dismissed a reply from Denton to prove the point. In retaliation, they found that their accounts were now set to automatically dismiss any further posts. So while those users were not technically banned, their posts just got auto-sorted to the bottom where they sat orphaned, without context in the tread.
In Kinja these days dismissing a comment removes it from the thread completely, but any dismissed posts still show up in a user's personal blog. So if you can still post but they disappear, it's probably due to auto-dismissal, if they can be found in your personal blog.
The auto-dismiss policy was reversed when some interviewees from another site's piece about Kinja let Gawker know that story was going to touch on Gawker's use of auto-dismissal in place of banning.
Both the Gawker help team and Lauren Bertolini informed me I've been specifically blocked by the Gawker editorial staff.
DeleteAlthough what you're describing sounds more like what happened - they do show up in my personal blog. So while I suppose I'm not technically "banned" I am defacto banned as nothing I say will show up on the article on which I'm commenting. So in effect, I have been banned, although maybe "blocked" is a more apt description. Either way, I'm not able to comment on Gawker articles.
Delete"John I mentioned this to you in an E-mail [I'd emailed him about this as well] but I'll reiterate it again here. "
ReplyDeleteI figure you were banned for your familiar tone. Gawker staff aren't royalty, but they also aren't your personal whipping boy.
Seriously? You think he banned me for using his first name?
DeleteAside from the literally hundreds of commenters who refer to writers on Gawker by their first name (you know how many Ham Nos and Neetzans I see every day in the comments), it's quite possible that being banned for my "familiar tone" on a site that regularly features stories about people having sex with pitbulls and one by Cook himself today entitled "Do You Use 'Butt Wipes' And If So What the Fuck Is Wrong With You?" would be even more ridiculous than the reason I seem to have already been banned.
You and I had a very brief conversation about this last on the article you posted on, and you were correct, I was indeed banned also. Quite the dirty place they're running there these days.
ReplyDeleteAw dude sorry to hear. Hope I haven't become radioactive. That really blows. And indeed, they're more thin-skinned by the day. I'm pretty sure I've been referred to as a "blubbering pussbag" who "sucks dick for crack" in the comments on this site. Their itchy trigger finger is annoying.
DeleteI've never commented on anything for Gawker. I just get my popcorn and enjoy the show in the comments section. To me, that seems like a very reasonable comment to make and I'm sure you weren't the only one thinking it. I hope they at least give you an explanation for their shadyness.
ReplyDeleteAs of this writing, no, still waiting for one (that I would bet my life savings will never come)
Deletehttp://gawker.com/this-is-why-you-are-blocked-512867748
Delete"One of the prerogatives we have is to supervise the comments to try to push them in a direction we want them to go."
I guess admitting to completey destroying any chance of seeing the crack video is not a direction they want to go....
I wish I'd seen this yesterday. There is no way I wasn't the reason he posted that.
DeleteKinja has made the discussions worse, Cook is an egomaniac (look at that profile pic - a smug "look here, kids" if I've ever seen one), and they are extremely thin-skinned on all the Gawker media sites now.
ReplyDeleteI was set to "auto-dismiss" on Deadpsin because I kept calling out Tom Ley for his lame jokes, hypocrisy, incongruous arguments, and complete lack of self-awareness. Yet, every post where he "joins the discussion" is a reply to someone who says the equivalent of "great post, Tom!" Collectively, they've almost become as bad as the writers/media personalities they attempt to skewer.
At least some of the Gizmodo writers are willing to address a different opinion and the Lifehacker writers genuinely seem to enjoy joining in the discussion for assistance or debating alternative options.
Additionally, I appreciate what you were saying because I thought the whole Crackstarter campaign was in poor taste and unbecoming of a large media organization; if you want to buy it, buy it. Don't keep posting 5 times per day about Rob Ford for clicks, promoting your campaign to raise money, and then reveal blatantly the house where he allegedly smoked crack. The site was in better hands when AJ was around.
Glad to know I'm not the only one!
ReplyDeleteI commented on the crackstarter story giving my two cents. I did call John Cook stupid for attempting it, but I explained exactly why (basically, his total lack of street smarts and that he would never get the video this way... and guess what happened?). I also pointed out giving $200,000 to the crack dealers so they could "avoid the resulting backlash" likely violated US federal law, and pointed them to the exact law.
Soooo guess what happened? I was banned.
Their blog post about why they ban people is full of it. They ban people who leave comments who make them look bad. That's it. John Cook is arrogant as hell and cannot stand anyone calling him out for making stupid moves.
If they want to patrol the comments section, they should delete individual posts, not just ban users forever. I am on the staff of a reasonably frequented webpage, and the ability for users to comment on stories is a HUGE--if not the biggest--thing that drives viewers and gets people coming back. John Cook is just so arrogant he thinks blocking users will improve view ship, or at least won't hurt it. Well, I'd like to see what their comments section looks like in a year or two with how freely their block users. All the comments will be by a handful of nerds who comment on everything and love Gawker to death. Other users will have less incentive to come back because they can't participate in the stories. It's like John Cook doesn't even understand what brings viewers to a website. He's so blinded by his ego that he can't imagine anyone would EVER stop reading Gawker.
I was a daily regular reader (and commenter!) at Gawker but this is just plain stupid. I guess the only way to give my feedback to Gawker now is to unfollow them on Twitter and stop visiting their website. It was such a waste of time anyway/
Good job, Gawker.
Yeah like I just said in a new post I put up on this blog, it's a pretty weak response from him. Basically "whatever, I do what I want!"
DeleteStill, considering the thousands of hits this post has gotten in the last couple of weeks and the numerous reposts and links, I'm totally taking credit for him bothering to write that in the first place (even if it's not true)
I googled "banned from Gawker" and found your blog. I went thru a similar experience this week when my usual screen name disappeared, then reappeared. My old posts were still there, but all my subsequent posts were invisible. I emailed kinda help desk. They said I was blocked from the site.
ReplyDeleteI emailed Tips@ and got no response. I don't know what I said to whom. I bet it was something I said about Sam Biddle.
Oh well, no loss on my part.
I googled "banned from Gakwer" and found you. I got banned today. I think it's because I said something naughty about Anderson Cooper. I can't help it -- a friend of mine worked directly under him and he was an egomaniacal prick to her. I thought the rule of Gawker was to "elevate the discussion" by bringing firsthand knowledge to it. But every time I have mentioned Anderson Cooper, I find myself banned. It has happened before.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens to all the comments I have been making on Gawker since 2007? Do they all just get erased?
I was recently banned as well (username mandoliniment). I am really and truly baffled at what I could have said that would have caused this, and the "This is why you are banned" post is deeply and deliberately unhelpful.
ReplyDeleteAnyone want to look through my comments and hazard a guess as to who I offended and how? I don't think I've ever stooped lower than "mild snark".
For what it's worth, I got banned from io9 in October too for unknown reasons (although I did strongly criticize their approach to an interview with Alfonso Cuaron). I'm MandolinFugwart - so maybe they just have something against mandolins.
Delete