Recently some internet sites have been pumping out news and opinions reporting the reaction to Goodreads cracking down on those few who victimized authors with the goal of destroying reputations and careers in publishing. Some of the comments in this debate are angry; some are celebrating, and some are waiting to see if these changes are real.
I’m not going to go into detail about this issue. Instead, I want to look closely at freedom of speech and its limitations.
Do sites such as Goodreads and Amazon have a right to define limits to freedom of expression on their private sector internet sites? The answer is yes as you will discover.
The Limitations of Free Speech
If you read the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution carefully [it is short and to the point], you will discover that it was clearly meant to protect the opinions of American citizens from government harassment and persecution and in no way does freedom of speech mean you can say or write anything you want anywhere at any time without fear of censorship.
For example, Censorship in America.com says, “For much of the nation’s history, the First Amendment was not held to apply to states and municipalities. Entities without any prohibition in their own charters [in the private sector these charters are known as terms of use] were free to censor newspaper, magazines books, plays, movies, comedy shows and so on. Many did, as exemplified by the phrase banned in Boston.”
It wasn’t until the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren [he served as Chief Justice 1953 – 1969] that the 1st Amendment was extended to local government—with no mention that freedom of expression in the private sector was protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Shaw Valenza.com says, “Federal free speech protections apply only to the government. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, for example, does not regulate private employers.”
North Iowa Today.com says, “A private-sector employer has a lot of latitude as to what’s permitted or not with respect to political speech, or pushing any view for that matter.”
The Consensus of the Public
In conclusion, “The [U.S. Supreme] Court has also decided that the First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television, and public employees’ speech. … Furthermore, even speech that enjoys the most extensive First Amendment protection may be restricted on the basis of its content if the restriction passes strict scrutiny.”
Even international law says, “Freedomofexpression is not absolute and every system of law provides for some limitations on it: For respect of the rights or reputations of others; for the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals. This means that it is permissible to think the most evil and depraved thoughts, although giving expression to them may legitimately warrant a sanction.” Source: Centre for Law and Democracy
For sites such as Goodreads and Amazon, those restrictions are spelled out in their Terms of Use Agreements and these private sector businesses reserve the right to change the Terms of Use at any time.
Goodreads concludes its Terms of Use with “IMPORTANT: These Terms & Conditions of Service for Goodreads Services (“Agreement”) is a legal agreement between you and Goodreads Inc. By using or accepting the Services, you agree to be bound by the terms of this Agreement. If you do not agree to the Terms of this Agreement, do not use these Services. You agree that your use of the services acknowledges that you have read this Agreement, understand it, and agree to be bound by its Terms and Conditions.” For more details about the Goodreads Terms of Use, I suggest you click on the link and read them.
And if you go to Amazon’s Terms of Use, and you will discover, “Visitors may post reviews, comments and other content; and submit suggestions, ideas, comments, questions, or other information, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of ‘spam.’ You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of a card or other content. AWS reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit such content, but does not regularly review posted content.”
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine, Vietnam Veteran and English-journalism teacher.
His latest novel is the award winning Running with the Enemy that started life as a memoir and then became a fictional suspense thriller. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
I think I have been a victim of censorship. Am I wrong?
As much as we may claim to value the freedom to express our opinions, censorship in Western democracies does exist in one form or another. For example, it exists in the private/corporate sector; it exists in the public schools, and it exists among citizens who host Websites and Blogs, etc.
The United States, billed by many of its citizens as the land-of-the-free and a country that prides its freedom of expression while criticizing other countries such as China, is ranked 47th, and the U.S. has more people in prison than any country on the planet. In some parts of the United States, you can actually go to prison for life if you only steal a piece of candy or swipe a slice of pizza.
Reporters Without Borders says, “The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.”
In fact, there is a long history of censorship in the United States. For one example of several, Civil Liberties says that in 1798, President John Adams made it illegal to criticize a government official without backing up one’s criticisms in court. Twenty-five people were arrested under that law.
Civil Liberties says, “The right to free speech is a longstanding U.S. tradition, but actually respecting the right to free speech is not.”
“A recent report from Google indicates that even western democracies have been trying to censor politically conflicting websites. Countries like Spain, Poland and even Canada have all submitted requests for the removal of content from the search engine.” Source: Business Insider
Back to the comment where I alleged that I was censored on another Blog that has a link to a nonprofit political organization with an alleged hidden political agenda.
I can only guess that I may have been allegedly censored because my position on the issue being discussed was stronger than the host’s opinion. Julie Lenarz, the host, specializes in Foreign and Security Policy and holds a BA in European Politics and an MA in Conflict Studies from the London School of Economics.
Of course, the claim that Julie’s Think Tank is a popular Blog is questionable, because its Alexa rank was almost 5.5 million with only 38 sites linked in (on February 22, 2013). There was no data for traffic rank in the UK or US.
But what is popular to one individual may not be popular to another and everyone has a right to an opinion even if he or she may be wrong.
This we do know—there is big benefit to censor the opposition, because then you control the conversation and may advance your own political agenda.
In the post in question on Julie’s Think Tank, Lenarz’s position on the Iraq War was clear: She supported the war in the beginning and still feels it was moral and just to oust Saddam and his brutal regime. I left several comments for this post, and then wrote about this issue in a three-part series on one of my Blogs in a post titled The Noble Nightmare.
Before I share my reasons why I think Lenarz allegedly censored one of my comments, I want to focus on what it means to be a fellow in a political, nonprofit organization.
A fellow can be a participant in a professional development program run by a nonprofit. This type of fellowship is usually a short-term work opportunity (1–2 years) for professionals who already possess some level of academic or professional expertise that will serve the nonprofit’s mission. Fellows are often given a stipend as well as professional experience and leadership training.
A key phrase to remember from that description is: “that will serve the nonprofit’s mission”, and after some research, I now question what the real mission is for the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, but more on that later.
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy, a suspense thriller. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Follow”.
Update:5:30 PM on May 1st. After a rewarding conversation on Amazon with Mahala Burlingame, it seems we have resolved this issue peacefully without snarky, insulting comments, and this may offer evidence that the alleged bully comments found on Stop the GR (goodreads) Bullies.comare not accurate. In fact, I offer a standing invitation to the four that were accused by STGRB of being bullies to write a guest post presenting their side of that issue. To avoid revealing IP addresses, guest posts may be delivered via attachment to an e-mail. The peace making conversation is there for all to see on Amazon.
Update: I deleted the original comments I left on the Amazon thread where this all started and replaced them with a new comment that may be found here: May 1, 2013 at 3:23:49 AM PST
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If you are a published author, or planning to publish a book, and/or write honest, well-written reviews and/or opinions on Amazon and/or Goodreads of the books you read, you may want to you read this to discover two sides on how to unmask and combat the hidden bullies and trolls infecting sites such as Amazon and Goodreads. You may also learn what not to do from what I did.
You may want to ignore these bullies, or you may want to call-them-out and risk starting a battle that you cannot win. That is your decision. I’m not going to tell you what to do, and I intend to offer you both sides to this issue with most of a copied and pasted Amazon thread where the alleged bullies came out to play and I, sap that I am, stayed.
And we all have opinions, and yes, some are more valid than others.
Civil Liberties says, “The right to free speech is a longstanding U.S. tradition, but actually respecting the right to free speech is not.”
And Internet Bullies and Trolls are a perfect example of individuals that do not respect the right of free speech.
Proof of that is the abuse of free speech rampant on the Internet that is easy to find on Goodreads and Amazon where some bullies think that authors have no right to reply to mean spirited, negative reviews or opinions. There is a big difference between a proper book review and a mean spirited opinion.
But first, to understand what may drive an Internet bully to act as he or she does, it helps to know what “disinhibition” means.
“An individual experiencing disinhibition may not be able to disguise some of their emotional responses, sometimes at the expense of politeness, sensitivity, or social appropriateness. Individuals under the influence of alcohol, for example, exhibit disinhibition in view of the depressant effect of alcohol on the brain’s higher functioning.
“The online disinhibition effect helps to explain the vicious attacks people frequently engage in online. Mean-spirited blog comments, threatening e-mails, and other negative comments are often encouraged by this effect. Some people troll others on the internet even if they would never bully someone in real life.” Source: Six Causes of Online Disinhibition
For example, there was a two-star review of “Tough Cookie” by M. Ruth Myers—that said, “(Tough Cookie is) Too soft and expected situations with the most probable endings, could be written by the reader himself if they had read three novels.” – nancy d. mendez
Mendez could have stopped with “Too soft and expected situations with the most probable endings” and been okay with that opinion, but she had to add that last insulting phrase “could be written by the reader himself if they had read three novels”.
I wonder if nancy d. mendez was a he. Oh well.
If you aren’t sure what a real book review is, I suggest you visit Scholastic.com and learn from a pro how to write a proper book review. I even said as much in another comment after the first of the alleged bullies appeared, who clearly does not think I have a right to my opinion.
I also later said, “Some opinions are worth more than others. It’s up to each of us to decide the opinion we agree with.” As you will see, one of the alleged bullies only quoted the first sentence and ignored the second one changing the context. At the end of this post, I have copied some of the conversation between me and the four alleged bullies.
It all started on Jan 20, 2013 at 2:09:42 PM PST, when I left a comment for mendez that said, “This isn’t a review. Learn how to write a proper review and then maybe someone that is literate will pay attention to you. I give this sorry excuse for a review one-star or an F-.”
Why did I post this?
Maybe because Myers’s novel had 54 five-star reviews, 39 four-star reviews and only one two-star and one one-star review/opinion. In addition, I’ve seen similar mean-spirited reviews for novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, and for many others books, but such mean spirited opinions always represent a very small minority.
I even spent time researching and crunching numbers to rate how many other readers might agree with mendez and discovered that about two-percent might agree — that means if 100,000 readers read “Tough Cookie”, the odds say that about 2,000 would feel as mendez does.
Now that I know what “disinhibition” means, I admit that I may be guilty—to some degree—of its use in my comment, but if it is any consolation, I was just fighting fire with fire, and there is an old saying that says if you can’t take the heat, don’t start fires.
Mendez never replied to my opinion of his/her opinion, but I did hear back from an alleged pack of Internet bullies and Trolls. In fact, I discovered that everyone in this flock of alleged Trolls is listed and blocked on Stop the GR (goodreads) Bullies.com (STGRB).
Note: if you read John Scalzi’s post you will discover that the four anonymous people behind STGRB allegedly use similar tactics against the people they identify as Trolls — like fighting fire with fire. There is an old saying that fits this situation: “two wrongs do not make a right,” that means “It is never right to wrong someone, even if they have wronged you first.”
If that is true, then I guess I’m guilty, but I have a defense. I’m a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran that lives with PTSD, and the Marines have another method of dealing with someone that does wrong to them or their country. So being a former Marine, I will not condemn the four anonymous people that host STGRB.
I’m sure that many have heard the phrase “birds of a feather flock together” and sure enough the flock of crows that came after me are all listed on STGRB.
KarLynP
Zahara Cerise on goodreads but Anna Karenina on Amazon
Old Rocker
Mahala Burlingame (her real name according to Amazon), who won the Amazon troll award from STGRB for the most psychotic comments.
In addition, I found an Amazon forum thread where these same alleged Trolls that came after me may gather to brag about their alleged infamous exploits.
In fact, someone called Amazing Grace said to Cerise aka Anna Karenina “Oh shut up and abandon your obsession with Marion. Get a hobby or something because Marion is a cool lady who writes intelligent posts. You are just…ridiculous and I am SO sick of you and those like you – bitter, obsessed trolls.” Source: An Amazon forum-thread called Is There Or isn’t There An Amazon Review Mafia?
What follows is the comment thread for the nancy d. mendez opinion of “Tough Cookie”. In hindsight, I probably should have never left a comment for that two-star review, but since I did, why not learn something from it.
###
10 of 16 people found the following review helpful
bla”””!!!, January 20, 2013
By nancy d. mendez Amazon Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
This review is from: Tough Cookie (Maggie Sullivan mysteries) (Kindle Edition)
Too soft and expected situations with the most probable endings, could be written by the reader himself is they had read three novels.
Your initial post: Jan 20, 2013 2:05:00 PM PST
Last edited by you on Jan 20, 2013 2:09:42 PM PST Lloyd Lofthouse says:
This isn’t a review. Learn how to write a proper review and then maybe someone that is literate will pay attention to you. I give this sorry excuse for a review one-star or an F-.
In fact, why not rate reviews?
In reply toyour post on Feb 16, 2013 10:37:02 PM PST KarLynP says:
Fail dude, fail. You’re opinion matter more then others? I can read too, don’t worry about what I think. F- back at ya. Your comment makes me believe the neg review. Pass.
Your post, in reply toan earlier post on Feb 17, 2013 7:32:38 AM PST
Last edited by you on Feb 17, 2013 8:02:08 AM PST Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Some opinions are worth more than others. It’s up to each of us to decide the opinion we agree with.
And just like you, I said what I thought about your opinion that wasn’t a book review.
A real book review is much more. In fact, most of the reviews from one star to five stars are not really reviews. Most just express an opinion.
The best way to earn a passing grade is to learn what a real book review is and to do that I suggest you visit Scholastic and learn from a pro how to write a proper book review.
I decided to do a comparison between the four-and-five star reviews and the one-and-two star reviews.
We already know that there are more four-and-five star reviews. That is easy to see. No, what I wanted to know is how many reviews have these people written.
The 26 people that wrote the five-star reviews had written more than 400 between them And one of them wrote almost 200–an avid reader maybe?
The four-star reviews added up to more than 300 and one of them had 123 reviews—another avid reader I think.
The one-and-two-star reviews added up to five reviews for two people. That is not a lot of reading.
This tells me that the opinions of the one-and-two star reviews do not fit the average avid reader. Everyone that reads has different tastes. What one person will enjoy, another will not. That is for sure.
By comparing the reviews of 54 people and then checking how many reviews each group wrote, we come up with a better idea of what the average reader may enjoy and the results say the average avid reader would enjoy “Tough Cookie”.
And the results tell us the one-and-two star opinions, valid as they are for those two individuals, do not fit the norm. In fact, the results might tell us that these two individuals might want to consider therapy to find out why. Maybe what we have here are two people that may hate the world with a mind that lives in a dark place.
In fact, the results might tell us that these two individuals might want to consider therapy to find out why.
Perhaps you could consider therapy to find out why you think someone should consider therapy because they don’t fit a “norm.”
Your post, in reply toan earlier post on Feb 23, 2013 6:55:40 AM PST
Last edited by you on Feb 23, 2013 7:01:26 AM PST Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Can’t you do better than that? It’s okay not to fit the norm as long as it does not physically or financially hurt others. But it helps the normal person to understand that there are extremes and he or she doesn’t need to take the extremist that seriously. Basically, shrug, and think, it takes all kinds, and then move on.
Of course, read the extremist, and then decide if he or she has anything intelligent to say that adds to the conversation. I don’t believe in censorship. Everyone has a voice. It’s just that most people tend to ignore and stay away from mean spirited extremists avoiding him or her like the plague.
You must be ten years old. Blaming someone else for your flaws is a common reaction among the young self esteem raised where nothing is ever the child’s fault.
Oh, Lloyd, you are so unable to debate rationally that you must stoop to insults. How very sad that is for you.
Your post, in reply toan earlier post on Feb 23, 2013 5:47:11 PM PST
Last edited by you on Feb 23, 2013 5:57:09 PM PST Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Oh Anna Karenina, before one can debate, there must be a topic worthy to debate. Your comments have only bashed me for criticizing a mean-spirited review that offered nothing constructive.
I have an idea. Let’s debate why so many people that write reviews or leave comments on Amazon use phony names to hide his or her identity—names like Anna Karenina. It’s so easy to be mean spirited when no one knows who you are. Are these people cowards?
Anna Karenina, your comments are perfect examples of “Disinhibition”. One shrink writes that there are six causes of Disinhibition.
Here’s the first one: 1. Anonymity—Online people feel they can’t be identified in the same way they can when they’re in public. It’s similar to going out in a costume at night with a mask on to cover the face (see research on deindividuation). That sense of disconnection from our normal personality allows new ways of behaving. People may even consider their online behaviours to arise from an online alter ego.
An individual experiencing disinhibition may not be able to disguise some of their emotional responses, sometimes at the expense of politeness, sensitivity, or social appropriateness. Individuals under the influence of alcohol, for example, exhibit disinhibition in view of the depressant effect of alcohol on the brain’s higher functioning.
The online disinhibition effect helps to explain the vicious attacks people frequently engage in online. Mean-spirited blog comments, threatening e-mails, and other negative comments are often encouraged by this effect. Some people “troll” others on the internet even if they would never bully someone in real life. The disinhibition effect of online culture also helps to encourage cyber-bullying and groupthink. This effect can cross over into real life. For example, a group of students might bully a classmate online and then feel emboldened to bully him or her in person. There have been several well-documented cases of online bullying leading to organized efforts to ostracize classmates, severe depression in victims, and even suicide.
Your post, in reply toan earlier post on Feb 24, 2013 4:45:56 PM PST
Last edited by you 22 hours ago Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Continuing our intellectual conversation about “disinhibition” and now adding the topic of Internet Trolls:
The Atlantic Monthly ran an interesting piece on Internet Trolls. I suspect an individual with acute “disinhibition” may be tagged as an Internet Troll, a person who must control the conversation as this piece says and ignore any attempt by the person being trolled to actually have a real debate/conversation.
In the ’90s, “to troll” was to disrupt a conversation or entire community by posting incendiary statements or stupid questions onto a discussion board. Regardless of why the poster was being disruptive — for his or her own amusement, or because he or she was a genuinely quarrelsome, abrasive personality — the poster would be branded a troller (later shortened to “troll”) and denounced accordingly. In these cases, “trolling” was used as a general, condemnatory, post-hoc descriptor of an online encounter. It was — and in many circles remains — something you accused someone else of being.
Trolling as described by self-identifying trolls is a game, one only the trolls can initiate and only the troll can win.
The goal is to eliciting strong emotional reactions from the chosen target(s).
Some trolls are very intelligent, and have extremely interesting things to say about trolling, while others have no real opinion about anything they do, other than the fact that it makes them laugh.
it is simply not possible to know what exists the anonymous troll’s heart and mind, for the very simple reason that there is no way of knowing whose heart and mind it is. There are of course some basic demographic indicators …
… the majority of trolls on the English-speaking web are, white, male and somewhat privileged … They have enough free time to sink hours and hours into their online exploits, and have access to the necessary technologies to do so.
As the author of the Atlantic piece argues, trolls are cultural scavengers, and engage in a process described as cultural digestion: They take in, regurgitate, and subsequently weaponize existing tropes and cultural sensitivities. By examining the recurring targets of trolling, it is therefore possible to reverse-engineer the dominant landscape.
Lloyd Lofthouse said: “Continuing Anna’s intellectual conversation and my too-long-to read nincompoopery about “disinhibition” and now adding the topic of Internet Trolls:”
You said “Some opinions are worth more than others.”
Wow, just wow.
(Note: what I meant was taken out of context. Here’s what I said, “Some opinions are worth more than others. It’s up to each of us to decide the opinion we agree with.”)
Not too interested but did Lloyd just describe himself as a troll?
(Note: Because I don’t Troll the Internet — as these four alleged trolls seem to do — looking for people to single out and insult, then by definition, no, I did not call myself a troll but that did not stop an alleged troll from putting words in my mouth.)
I don’t know. If he can’t be bothered to use his own brain to think of something to say, I can’t be bothered to read what he copies.
Your post, in reply toan earlier post on Feb 24, 2013 5:34:58 PM PST
Last edited by you 20 hours ago Lloyd Lofthouse says:
Amazing. My last comment was an experiment to see if what I learned from my research on “disinhibition” — that led to Internet Trolls—was true. The experts said if you mention the word “Troll” when a suspected troll is already part of a virtual conversation, that a gang of them will show up. Well, let’s see who joined Anna K.
There was Old Rocker and Rmahala Burlingame. I wonder how many more may show up. What do we call that, a trolling party?
That’s it for me. I’m going to stop feeding the trolls. You all are welcome to stay around and keep eating the cake you baked.
Note: This thread continued and may still be growing. There are plenty of links for you to click to visit if you want to join what I think is a trolling party.
What can be learned from this? Well, that no one can win an argument with a Troll suffering from disinhibition.
In conclusion, everything I write and post on-line is posted under my real name with a link to my on-line platform.
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”
Lloyd Lofthouse 
