Left-leaning seniors boycott AARP board

[cactusrose]

There's currently a boycott of the AARP board because of the censorship and banning of non-far-right posters. The boycott was sparked by the unfair banning of 3 non-far-right posters on Friday. (One was later reinstated.) The far-right moderators also are deleting any posts and threads that object to what they did. The far-right moderation of the AARP board has been a problem for some time. It keeps getting worse and worse as AARP gets away with more and more.

Last summer a small group of non-far-right AARP posters formed their own board and set up their own website. After the board was launched on July 4th (date chosen on purpose), they began to invite other non-far-right posters from the AARP board to join the SCC/ maturecommunications board. Membership was by invitation only. The board grew as the kinks were worked out. It was a refuge from the AARP board.

The board and the site also were kept secret until this past Sunday when the people who set up the site gave their permission for a blog entry about the AARP boycott to be submitted to buzz-it. The story was buzzed to the front page and picked up by another blog.

http://maturecommunications.com/wordpress/?p=11

For nine months this site and board were kept secret. I'm wondering how many other people and groups are doing something similar, biding their time until the time is correct for them to go public?

[Charmin]

1. AARP---Left leaning seniors

I have been going to the AARP message boards for a few months now and find that some of the far right leaning posters are very offensive and can be vulgar and vile in some of their statements. It is almost like they are trying to egg the others on or encourage fighting and snipping at one another instead of really discussing the important issues we have facing this country today. Then when a left leaning poster has enough an says something in response, they are the ones that are thrown off the board. I don't know who monitors the board but they are extremely unfair and do no use an even hand...........it's sad because we really need a fair and balance discussion of all the issues.

[BubbaCitizen]

5. Surpressing Free Speech and Censorship

"Your "members" have been using our email messaging feature to contact others to recruit them for the boards"

http://community.aarp.org/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=33&nav=messages&webtag=rp-issues&tid=43673

It's apparent that the AARP board is now monitoring poster's email. How else could they make a statement like that? They are referring to another forum that consists of liberal posters who have gotten tired of the intense censorship of their posts on AARP.

It seems to be an apparent attempt to smear that organization because of a post on BuzzFlash that picked up on a blog that mentioned the AARP boards support of neo-cons.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. This alternative to the AARP board seems like an extension of solutions of

baby boomers who, in their formative years in high school in the 60s and 70s, set up underground newspapers to counter the high school/college paper which did not address their issues.

[Charmin]

3. Baby Boomer's NOT!

We are seniors who are old enough to respect and want FREE SPEECH. We just want to be able to talk about the important issues that face this country and the current administration. We can do without the rant and vile posts of the other side that is juvenile. All we are asking for is fair representation. If we have to have a moderator, they should be even-handed.

[cactusrose]

4. Update on effects of public criticism of AARP's far-right moderators

Before you read this I want to point out that some non-far-right posters have been complaining about these names for YEARS to the AARP moderators. That's correct, YEARS. Are we to believe that it's just coincidence that the AARP moderators finally got around to addressing this after the way they treat non-far-right posters went public on buzzflash?

*****************
Regarding the list of names above, those which are clearly objectionable such as JesseJackasson and Demwifebeater are no longer allowed to post with those names. We have asked those member to re-register using names which are not objectionable and suspended their existing accounts.

We continue to ask you to place these type of posters on ignore and to not reply to their posts. When you reply you are giving their threads life which is what they desire. This gives them the ability to fight with you online which seems to be their sole purpose for coming here.

We cannot arbitrarily remove these members. If they violate the terms of service we will remove/edit their post. Continuous violations will result in the suspension of these members.


AARP Community Host
***********************

However, AARP couldn't even do this without continuing to engage in lying and misrepresentation. Specifically "We cannot arbitrarily remove these members. If they violate the terms of service we will remove/edit their post. Continuous violations will result in the suspension of these members."

I don't see why not considering the number of non-far-right posters they've banned who did not violate TOS.

But in the interest of fairness, let's give them that and concentrate on the "If they violate the terms ...." part. A big part of what has so many people so angry at AARP is that far-righters are allowed to violate TOS at will and seldom if ever are disciplined for it. I've lost count of the number of emails I got from host/ community stating that such and such far-righter had been warned. When I started comparing notes with others who had gotten them in response to their complaints about certain far-righters, we discovered that the moderators had "warned" quite a few of these individuals over a long period of time but never did anything beyond supposedly warning them.

The AARP moderators over time have claimed a lot of things that aren't the truth or even remotely truthful. When people started comparing notes, it came out just how much many of the AARP moderators have lied and how routine it is for them to lie.

Given AARP's long track record, this is nothing more than AARP attempting to sanitize its public image without doing anything to actually clean up its act.




http://community.aarp.org/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=60&nav=messages&webtag=rp-issues&tid=43673

[cactusrose]

6. The "rules" on unfair public boards

I'm posting this with the permission of the person who wrote it, but not giving the person's name as the person requested.

It was written in response to the far-right moderation on the AARP board, but these are the rules that prevail on most far-right boards. I want to mention that yes, the people who own a board have the right to set whatever rules they want to set. However the AARP board strictly speaking doesn't fall within that parameter since AARP represents itself as representing seniors but yet does everything it can to silence the seniors that aren't far-right (which is overwhelmingly most seniors). Also, members' dues may be going to pay or help pay for that board.

There also wouldn't be a problem if AARP were truthful about what it's doing and posted its real rules instead of pretending to a fairness and equality that simply does not exist. BTW, AARP moderators have even referred to non-published parts of TOS - usually when they do something particularly outrageous - but so far no one has been able to get a copy of the entire TOS in spite of many repeated requests.

These are the tactics that far-right moderators use to demoralize and eventually silence other voices and points of view other than far-right. These are the real AARP rules:

Since AARP does not know their own rules, I have begun a compilation based on observation. Please add to the list so that I can submit a complete list of the TOS at AARP to the board of AARP for sharing with their members.

AARP TOS. This are the rules for allowable content in posts on our forum. Note - this list applies only to people over the age of 50 and not to our future recruits for paid services.


1. You cannot call another poster derogatory names but family members, friends and interest groups of the other poster are fair game. Have at it! Again – personal attacks on a person’s wife are OK and encouraged; personal attacks on the person who slander’s your wife are not allowed and will result in immediate expulsion.

2. You can issue death wishes against our members as long as you kill them all and don’t individualize it. Again – mass murder is OK; single kills are discouraged.

3. You can recruit members on our forum as long as you recruit them to other, more right-wing organizations. Again – advertising USANext is OK; advertising SCC is not OK. USANext does business with our vendors; SCC does not.

4. We discriminate against people who do not put spam on our forum. If you want equal treatment, you will need to provide equal misinformation. Again – truth is not allowed; it eats into our profits and our profits are everything.

5. We will not answer inquiries about our stand on senior issues on a public forum. We will provide links to our carefully worded gobble-goop. Again – if you want to know where we stand on senior issues; don’t ask. If you want to be confused about our stand on senior issues, read our WebPages and try to reconcile our public stand with our actions. (P.S. And send more money. Liars are more expensive to hire than honest people.)