Monday, March 13, 2017




UK cellphone service provider GiffGaff is banning people from its forum if they criticize Islam



Enlarged version here



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once again, Political Correctness is carried to the extreme.

Bird of Paradise said...

Islam the religion of satan the religion of evil

Anonymous said...

Once again, some context of this needs to be examined.

The person banned was one Paul Joseph Watson. Watson is a conspiracy theorist and writes for InfoWars. In other words, he is most likely interested not in debate or discussion, but rather riling people up.

Also note that the people at GiffGaff had warned him that previous posts were crossing the line they had established. As a private company, they have the right to monitor and ban people from their site like anyone else who owns a site does. The company also has the right to place restrictions and rules on their sites and forums.

(Such rules might include something like "Comments in Chinese or Russian will be deleted as I do not understand them. Spammers: Don't bother. Irrelevant comments will not be published."

We don't know what Watson said that got him banned. It might have been a threat. It might have been a false accusation that would open up the company for lawsuits. It appears that the people at GiffGaff tried to work with him and explain their position but like many people today, Watson thought that he was special. He thought that he owned the forum. He thought that the rules didn't apply to him.

He thought that even though he wasn't paying the bills for the business in which he was posting, that he was lord and god almighty there.

If you think Watson was wronged, let him come into you home or place of business and disrupt what you are trying to do there. If you think his message is on point, then certainly you should have no issues with a Muslim coming in and exercising their faith in front of you and disrupting what you are trying to accomplish.

We all know that won't happen though.

People seem to only be interested when there is an "attack" on speech they agree with. If there is speech they disagree with, well then those people need to shut up.

Bottom line is that Watson is a nutcase and wanted to be treated like a special snowflake on someone else's dime.

He got kicked to the curb by a company who was well within their rights to do so.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the sense of perspective Anon 5:40
I have no problem with GiffGaff setting its own rules for what it allows in its forum.
What I find slightly disturbing is that their forum admins appear to use the title 'Educators'.
That seems a little Orwellian to me.

Anonymous said...

Anon 7:44,

I don't like the term "Educator" either. I think it denotes that certain people within a forum are there to teach, rather than to moderate and "keep the peace" as it were.

However, GiffGaff sees the role of an "Educator" somewhat differently than a plan "moderator," Instead of just watching the proceedings, they want the Educator to initiate topics, etc.

I understand the concept and what they are trying to do,but like you, the term "Educator" seems out of place.

See here for more:

https://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Blog/giffgaff-announces-the-use-of-Educators-not-Moderators/ba-p/649285

Anonymous said...

Thanks Anon 7:44
Nice to see some coherent and sensible discussion on free speech here instead of the usual name-calling.