A new form of censorship...OT

If this is true, it's a particularly insidious form of censorship because the person whose voice has been silenced is unaware of it. Click on the Investigate the Media link for the whole post. It's very long and currently has 65 comments.

Found via Batesline:


Investigate the Media

Friday, November 23, 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle deceives its readers through comment-deletion trickery

[UPDATE 1, Sat., 11-24-07, 12:30pm: Software Exec Brags About Crypto-Deletion Feature; see below.]

[UPDATE 2, Sat., 11-24-07, 2:20pm: Reader Documents "Graylist" of Banned SFGate Users Who Don't Know They're Banned; see below.]

[UPDATE 3, Sat., 11-24-07, 3:25pm: The Scandal Spreads: Other Sites Caught Red-Handed Doing the Same Trick; see below.]

The San Francisco Chronicle has recently activated a devious system by which it deceives commenters on its website, SFGate.com. Here's how it works:

If you make a comment on an article posted at SFGate, and if the site moderators then subsequently delete your comment for whatever reason, it will only appear as deleted to the other readers. HOWEVER, your comment will NOT appear to be deleted if viewed from your own computer! The Chronicle's goal is to trick deleted commenters into not knowing their comments were in fact deleted. I'll give evidence below showing how they do this.