Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

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Institutional Puritanism And Censorship At WordPress.com

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

While ‘free speech’ is something that goes down big in theory in capitalist heartlands like the United States, in practice the protestant heritage of the WASP elite in North America means that today’s online web 2.0 environment is in reality heavily censored. High-handed bans on platforms like Facebook, Photobucket and YouTube are well known and generate much commentary. To give just one notorious example, earlier this year Facebook removed the painting Ema by Gerhard Richter that had been posted on the platform by the Pompidou Centre to promote a Richter retrospective. Against such dumb-ass attitudes Matt Mullenweg of WordPress.com likes to pose as a libertarian defender of freedom of expression on Web 2.0. He’s even been quoted as saying: “WordPress.com supports free speech and doesn’t shut people down for ‘uncomfortable thoughts and ideas’, in fact we’re blocked in several countries because of that.”

You’d have thought then that unlike Facebook, Photobucket and YouTube, WordPress.com wouldn’t disallow ‘pornography’ in their terms of service. But check those terms and you’ll find that they do! Of course, like all those corporate sites that ban users from posting ‘pornography’, this is just a catchall term allowing WordPress to censor anything they like. One person’s pornography is another’s social critique and/or art. In the case of WordPress.com it seems they’ve banned what they brand ‘pornography’ on their free site in an attempt to driver users onto their paid for hosting services. Like WordPress.com’s use of ads on their ‘free’ site, this is just another capitalist scam (they’ll remove ads from you blog if you pay an annual fee)

And check out the messages sent to those running blogs WordPress.com disables: ” “If your blog is designed to promote affiliate links, get rich quick programs, banner ads, consists solely or mostly of duplicate or automatically generated material, or is part of a search engine marketing campaign, WordPress.com is not the place for you.” You’d think WordPress were living in the 19th century since it seems they’ve never encountered appropriation art and conceptual writing in all their unoriginality – nor understood the nature of their break with the old order of representation… Like the ban on ‘pornography’, the phrase ‘consists solely or mostly of duplicate or automatically generated material’ is designed as a subjective catchall to allow WordPres.com to disable blogs and thereby drive users off their ‘free’ service in the hope they’ll then cough up the dosh for hosting. After all, if WordPress.com genuinely didn’t want duplicate material on their site then they wouldn’t include a reblogging button on it would they! Ultimately WordPress.com censors nearly as much as Facebook and is just as stupid – both suffer from institutional puritanism despite their on the surface rather different agendas….. And this illustrates very well that there are no alternatives under capitalism!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

 

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Posted in advertising, scam, Web 2.0 | 42 Comments »

10 Quickest Ways To ‘Write’ A Blog

Friday, October 19th, 2012

1. Re-blog someone else’s effort.

2. Copy and paste (sneakier and better than re-blogging since you can take the credit without doing the work).

3. Use pictures or videos.

4. Write the first thing that comes into your head.

5. Share your sexual fantasies with the world (but don’t be surprised if the world isn’t interested).

6. An advice blog on how to blog (or even on how to blog quickly).

7. String something together from your favourite song lyrics.

8. What would Bruce Lee (or whoever you happened to dig) say about some current news story. And, of course, Bruce would say with regard to Alexis Wright – the alleged Zumba Madam with her own porn channel-  that every good athlete deserves to be famous.

9. A column on self-referentality considered as a post-modern groove sensation!

10. Do a list blog (10 greatest eusosleaze movies of all time, 10 sleaziest chancers in the London art world etc.).

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in humour, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »

10 More Blogs I Didn’t Get Around To Writing

Thursday, October 4th, 2012

1. Charles Radcliffe’s mvoing tribute to his friend Chris Gray at Housmans Bookshop in London on 4 October 2012. This would have made a great blog – since I agree completely with Charlie that to appreciate Chris you have to look beyond the situationists and King Mob and read his book on LSD too……

2. Opening night of the Turner Prize… and why Elizabeth Price was the only artist up for the award who I both clocked at the event and spoke with on the night. That said, I did have a conversation with Luke Fowler about a week before the opening at a Tate dinner – but I haven’t exchanged a word with Paul Noble for years and I don’t think I’ve ever said more than hello to Spartacus Chetwynd….

3. Jack Kerouac’s On The Road Scroll at the British Library (until 27 December). First London showing for this extraordinary object, the 120 foot long scroll made from rolls of taped together tracing paper on which Kerouac’s most famous work On The Road was written. Kerouac fabricated the roll in order to avoid replacing paper at the end of the page as he was typing – which he felt interrupted his creative flow.

4. Why the Artist Placement Group (APG) is boring. I’m afraid this potential blog post was just too tedious to contemplate – although I would have gone to the APG opening at Raven Row regardless had that private view not clashed with a talk I was giving about Terry Taylor.

5. More unusual London museums such as the Hunterian (surgical museum based on John Hunt’s collection) and the Museum of Zoology (with a lot of animal skeletons).

6.  Why I’m sick of hearing from people who don’t like something I’ve written that part of the content can’t be true because they’ve never heard of some fact or person. Ignorance and proof are quite distinct and anyone over the age of three who needs this explained to them clearly isn’t worth engaging with.

7 Jeff Keen at the Tate Tanks. Like Charlie Radcliffe on Chris Gray this would have made a great post…. I just didn’t get it together.

8. Yet more reasons to stop blogging. I think I’d rather just stop blogging than come up with an argument to convince myself that I need to do so.

9. Jimmy Saville considered as a kiddie fiddler, and why – when I first heard the rumours that he was sexually abusing young girls when I was schoolboy in the nineteen-seventies – it took until 2012 before the subject was aired in the media. Basically everyone else got in on this one before me.

10. Ten exhibitions openings I didn’t bother to attend. Since I couldn’t be bothered to go and see the work I didn’t see why I should trouble myself with writing about it….

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in humour, occulture, Web 2.0 | 21 Comments »

Porno Girl Amina Noir Disappears From The Web

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

One of the interesting effects of the protests against The Innocence of the Muslims film is the way they have led to the removal of data from the web. To take just one example – searches for the adult actress and model Amina Noir who appears in Innocence of the Muslims currently turn up a number of very recently dead links.

If you try to see individual images of Noir on the Model Mayhem site you get a message saying: “This user is not here atm. bye.” And if you try to access her profile at Model Mayhem you get a message saying: “Unable to show profile #1201168  This member is either awaiting approval or has removed their profile from the site.” There clearly was an Amina Noir profile at Model Mayhem because pictures from it currently still come up in image searches; and to me it seems strange that it would have been removed by Noir as she has yet to take down her public figure profile from Facebook. The latter is less interesting than her Model Mayhem profile appears to have been since there is only one photo on her Facebook promo page and little else: when I checked earlier today it only had 42 likes despite having been up for nearly 3 years! I think we can safely conclude Noir was struggling to make it in the adult entertainment industry.

Those who attempt to view a series of photos of Noir’s bondage activities in a Californian art gallery on Violet Blue’s Flickr stream are repeatedly told: “This photo is currently unavailable.” That said The Sweet Spot LA haven’t (yet) removed their photo of Noir with Mommy Fiercest and Afrodisiac Lehana Love that was taken on 22 January 2011; when I looked today this had clocked up 173 views. Likewise one of the images that appears to have been removed from Violet Blue’s Flickr stream is still up alongside an article she wrote about an Art Of Restraint ‘art’/bondage show at Femina Potens Gallery for the San Francisco Chronicle of 21 May 2009.

And again, the page for Noir’s 2010 profile on ‘modelling agency’ Chameleon Kittenz on the Blogspot site now gives the following message: “Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist.”

I don’t know whether the removed images and pages were taken down at the request of Amina Noir or because those in control of the ‘disappeared’ material had received (or possibly only feared) threats from those protesting against Innocence of the Muslims. Material is lost from the web all the time and the disappearance of a sizeable proportion of the available data about (and images of) Amina Noir is a timely reminder of this; whether you believe this to be a good or bad thing (or are largely indifferent to it) probably depends on a complex series of factors.

The producer and backers of The Innocence of the Muslims are clearly a bunch of racist far-Right nutjobs. That said, I’m still not at all taken with the slogan “Behead Those Who Insult The Prophet” (popular among some of those protesting against Innocence Of The Muslims – but let’s not forget that the idiots using this slogan are actually only a tiny minority of those who adhere to an Islamic worldview). Stupid formulations such as the one I’ve just cited should, of course, be transmogrified into messages that are much more positive and reasonable, such as: “Praise Those Who Insult The Capitalist God Of Profit!”

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in exhibitionism, politics, porn, Web 2.0 | 20 Comments »

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