The ban hammer hit me after I linked a government stats page in a conspiracy forum

I used to think getting banned was always about being rude or breaking obvious rules. But last month I got perma-banned from a popular fringe forum for posting a link to the CDC's own data page on vaccine side effects. Turns out the mods there considered any official source 'propaganda' and they had a hidden rule against linking anything with a .gov domain. I only found out because a buddy who still posts there screenshot me the private mod chat where they called me a 'sheep' for trusting government numbers. That fact honestly flipped my view on what 'censorship' looks like online. It is not just big platforms deleting things, it is small groups too. Has anyone else gotten booted for sharing a source that hurt the group's narrative?

2 comments

2 Comments

henry_moore5521d ago

A lot of forums are built around a shared worldview and letting in contradictory info just muddies the water. Those mods probably saw your CDC link as trolling because it undermined the core reason the place exists. Private forums are like clubs, not public squares, and clubs get to decide what gets discussed at the table. Maybe the real problem is expecting a space dedicated to questioning authority to suddenly welcome an official source without any skepticism. Getting banned for that doesn't sound like censorship, it sounds like you missed the memo on what the group was actually about.

smith.jordan21d ago

@henry_moore55 So you're saying it's okay for a forum about questioning authority to just SHUT DOWN any source that doesn't fit their view? That sounds like they built their club on a VERY specific version of questioning authority, where certain facts are just off limits. What kind of "questioning authority" means you can't even bring a government study to the table without getting kicked out? Are they questioning authority or just picking and choosing which authority to question based on what's comfortable?