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sifupaul
05-13-2007, 09:42 PM
A good article for future reference! http://www.helium.com/tm/326972

Censorship and the 2008 election: Ron Paul and the marginalization of third party candidates in the US
By T. Sunshine Love

According to online polls, Dr. Ron Paul was the unconditional winner of the Republican Debate but was intentionally excluded from the published poll results at all major media outlets. The standard excuse given for ignoring his commanding win and dismissing this earnest candidate as a serious contender was his third party status as a former member of the Libertarian party. This in itself is not unusual, as fringe candidates rarely make the attention of the major media, regardless of sincerity or platform. What was unusual was the reaction to this media silence.

This time, the Internet exploded. Emails, blogs, and bulletins of the online poll results with their blatant publishing omission of Dr. Paul's results began saturating the web almost immediately. Under pressure, Yahoo was forced to include Ron Paul on their page of 2008 candidates. ABC conceded his strong Internet following in an article (1) documenting the previously unknown candidate's overwhelming popularity following the debates while also not so subtly questioning the legitimacy of the Internet poll numbers.

It continues to get stranger. Over on MySpace, bulletins started pouring out from supporters about the media suppression. I went out and looked at the polls myself. Sure enough, Ron Paul was the clear favorite in all categories, as well as overall. His message of liberty and his absolute incorruptibility impressed me as well, so I joined the fight to get Dr. Paul more media attention through MySpace. Suddenly, users who tried to spread the story were mysteriously silenced, blocked from posting bulletins by automatic spam blocking robots. One enterprising MySpacer videotaped the entire frustrating process and posted it on YouTube (2).

After watching it, I realized that I was one of these users. I was told that my account had been "phished", or taken over by hostile spammers, and to change my password. I did, but to my dismay, I found that I am blocked from posting any further bulletins, adding friends, or making account changes.

This made me furious, and curious. Luckily, I am both anal and methodical. I set out to figure out what exactly is setting off the censorship. One story reports that the polls "Generated so many bulletin posts on MySpace.com that the site owner News Corp. Blocked all additional posts about Dr. Paul" (3). This however, is not quite accurate. I set up a new MySpace profile and sent 12 test bulletins to test the censorship filter.

The first six test bulletins went through without a hitch:

Test bulletin # 1 included no mention of offending political candidate or code.

Test bulletin # 2 included 1 mention of offending political candidate Dr. Ron Paul, by name, in message body but included no code.

Test bulletin # 3 included 2 mentions of offending political candidate Dr. Ron Paul, by name, one in message body, and one in header but included no code.

Test bulletin # 4 included no mentions of offending political candidate and included HTML link to censorship video on YouTube but included no other code.

Test bulletin # 5 included no mention of offending political candidate and included embedded code to censorship video.

Test bulletin # 6 included 2 mentions of offending political candidate Ron Paul and
Included embedded code to censorship video.

After test bulletin #7, things started to go awry.

Test Bulletin #7 was full of code copied from an article at PatriotBeliever.com (4)and included lots of links to the MSNBC polls. This bulletin never posted but my MySpace account was fine.

Test Bulletin #8 was a forwarded bulletin from another MySpacer, which included an embedded video and various links, including links to the MSNBC polls. The bulletin didn't post. MySpace said my account had been phished and blocked. After I changed my password, I was able to continue the experiment.

Test Bulletins # 9 and # 10 were embedded movies only and caused no problem.

Test Bulletin # 11 included no mention of offending political candidate and included 3 unlabeled links to the MSNBC poll stories. The bulletin didn't post. MySpace said my account had been phished and blocked. After I changed my password, I was able to continue the experiment.

Test Bulletin # 12 included no mention of offending political candidate but included three unlabeled links to random, non-political MSNBC pages. The bulletin didn't post. MySpace said my account had been phished and blocked.

In summary, I was able to send bulletins that mentioned Ron Paul by name in both the subject and the body. I was also able to send links and embedded movies. It was not referring to Ron Paul, per se, that was shutting me down. It was linking to preexisting stories that was doing it, specifically from the MSNBC poll.

In the final analysis, what appears to be in fact happening is that instead of blocking direct mentions of candidate Dr. Ron Paul, MySpace is simply blocking anyone who posts bulletins with simple links to MSNBC. Regardless of whether the content includes conspiracy theories regarding the major media suppression of Ron Paul or just regular old sports and entertainment news, the MySpace phishing robot seems to activate after ANY bulletin post with an MSNBC link in it. So now I must ask: Is MySpace intentionally censoring its users based merely upon political affiliations or is it actually intentionally boycotting an entire news network in its zeal for suppression? Does MSNBC know about this?

(1) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=3147940

(2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehhj-0JsKmA

(3)http://ronpaul2008.typepad.com/ron_paul_2008/2 007/05/press_release_2.HTML

(4)http://patriotbeliever.com/home/modules.php?na me=News&file=article&sid=62

ultimaonliner
05-31-2008, 11:59 PM
error

Fields
06-01-2008, 12:00 AM
hahahah, this is olddddddddddddd