Today, I decided to use my other account to needle them about it publicly. So on their current piece about Rob Ford's press conference today, I posted the following comment (linking to my original story about being banned the first time):
ARFox - Max Read
Of course if you guys had actually fronted the money for the crack tape instead of banning people for asking why you didn't, maybe Rob Ford would be long gone by now... 19 minutes ago
Well, within five minutes that comment was gone. Further investigation revealed all other comments from that account were gone. Even further investigation revealed that I can no longer post new comments that don't disappear as soon as I refresh the page. In other words, I have now been banned by Gawker TWICE for publicly questioning their crackstarter campaign strategy.
The funny thing is I wasn't even against the idea of them crowdsourcing the money. Yeah, Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but if they could get other people to foot the bill, why not? And hell, they haven't deleted anyone for putting up angry comments about them going through Indiegogo instead of using their own resources. And believe me, lots of people have been ALL CAPSing all over the place about that in their comment sections.
The only thing I can surmise is that by asking why they didn't FRONT the money, I raised an embarrassing question - was the Crackstarter campaign for page hits AND to raise money for the video, or was it simply for page hits? By not fronting the money, they got to put up daily updates about where the campaign stood, daily updates about not being able to contact the guys who had it, updates, updates, updates. I'm sure they hoped they'd be able to purchase the video for the clicks that would receive. But they were much happier dragging the process out over a week instead of just buying the damn thing and then waiting for the campaign to pay them back.
Which, fine, whatever. Driving page hits is the whole business. Hell, I'm trying to do it here myself. But banning me twice now for asking a question or making a comment that implies that might be what they're doing? THAT'S hypocrisy. Everybody making money off of an advertising-revenue-based Web site wallows around in the same muck. I would love this site to be popular enough to actually make money from it and to pay other people to write for it. And if and when I get there, I'll be as down in the dirt as everyone else trying to drive pageviews. Pretending they're not doing the same, and silencing those whose comments might open the curtain on their real intentions a little bit, is super weak.
So yeah, Gawker, who only two weeks ago I was writing love letters to for breaking the Rob Ford story to begin with, I now think totally blows. In a really cowardly way, too, considering not one of their editorial staff has answered the simple question of why.
I await their reply, once again.
More on this when there is some.
Get over it. 1 million people in Africa have never even heard of the internet, let alone "commenting" you blubbering puss bag.
ReplyDeleteReally? The Children Are Starving/First World Problem argument? Should I counter with a Slippery Slope analogy or can we be, you know, not asinine and cliched?
DeleteI'm guessing, since you offered this comment in what I assume was seriousness and not the parody of a self-righteous moron you come across as (like, for real, you could be a David Cross character from old episodes of Mr. Show), that you can't be.