How ironic is it that the thread I created to complain about the overzealous moderating, was itself moderated. In a forum, that is supposedly an "open free for all" and unmoderated. My post was moved, all because the moderator, a program staffer, decided on a whim to do it. Welcome to the new fornits.
Looks like the owner of this site finally weighed in on the topic of program staffers censoring posters here:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=32073&start=30#p388374What an utterly disappointing and disheartening response.
I remember many times on fornits survivors having their information posted, or pictures or them, of other humiliating personal information. They would beg the site owner to remove their information. The response was a long, usually impassioned rhetorical post about the ideals of freedom of speech. It sort of made me angry, why can't they just use their power to remove the info and help their fellow survivors?, I thought. But in the end, I accepted that the ideal of free speech meant some people would get hurt, and giving people free expression was the best way to stimulate and produce an interesting, real, and meaningful conversation.
What shocks me most about the recent changes to fornits, from a free place to a program like lock down forum, is the complete and utter abandonment of the ideals expressed so often by people like Psy and Antigen in the past. It's very disappointing to now watch these same people making arguments in complete disagreement with their selves, just months and years ago, arguments now in favor of censorship and control.
"Having an ex steffer moderate dialog betwween program survivors,is like having an ex nazi moderate dialog between holocaust survivors."
Shindler was a high ranking Nazi in good standing when he did his thing and Solzhenitsyn was a high ranking Soviet officer on the day of his arrest.
Instead of trying to convince us of the need for free speech, we now have this site owner trying to convince us program staff censors are comparable to Schlindler. Pardon my skepticism, but did "thegatekeeper", the staffer moderator, risk their life to free kids from a program? I doubt it. More than likely they took a paycheck and did what they were told.
As a program survivor, I suppose I have a bias against program staff. They were bullies who took money to keep kids prisoner, and some took pleasure in their new found positions of power. The fact that the one and only place that allowed free expression relating to programs, is now being structured just like it was a program, is so contrary to the original ideals I learned fornits stood for, it's almost beyond belief. The irony couldn't be any more apparent.
How can people not see how wrong it is to have a program staff censoring and controlling survivors mode of communication? This is precisely what takes place inside of programs. To not understand this means that either you don't understand the inner workings of programs, or whatever passion you might have had relating to your experience has long faded, because only a heartless person could institute such a policy, and not recognize the hypocrisy and irony.
Not only is fornits "not what it used to be", it is becoming the very thing it claims to fight against. So enjoy your program like forum, where your posts are combed over by a staffer, and only approved posts will remain. Remember when you wrote letters home telling your parents how bad the program was? Well the moderator here was the one censoring those letters too, so it looks like we've come full circle.
This is the last you'll hear from me, because at this point it's clear that the entire leadership here is in agreement that control, censorship, and restriction is the way to move forward with this forum. But by restricting the very people who compose the entire content of this website, it will only hurt fornits in the long run. Unfortunately I believe this new policy is going to be the final nail in the coffin of this once wonderful forum called fornits. It was fun while it lasted.
