Filed in the Tech Category:
Censorship at FON, business as normal
Posted by Mike on September 16th, 2006Two days ago, I posted a comment in reply to Martin Varsavsky’s post, Fabricar vs Crear, as the first comment asked Martin to look at a particular thread in FON’s forums. The comment was critical of the way things are going at FON, here is a translation of it:
Martin, I see that you are travelling a lot and promoting FON. But you should also listen a bit to the people who are the base of FON. In essence, the foneros.I was reading one of the forums and they [sic] changed my perception of the reality of FON.
The FON idea is brilliant but if seen from the outside, it appears to be a polished and shiny apple, but if we take a look inside, maybe it is rotten. Do you understand me?
I post a link from the forum.http://foros.fon.com/viewtopic.php?t=2244
Read it and let me know your thoughts.
Greetings
Matias
If you click on said link, you are greeted by a “no such thread exists message”. Only moderators can delete entire threads, so is this a case of blatant censorship by FON? I somehow doubt Matias would have posted a link to a thread that didn’t exist, so I wrote a comment about this, also telling Martin that if he indeed picked up the fon [sic] to call someone to have the offending thread deleted, he should also check the rest of the forums and get rid of a lot more of them.
Surprise surprise, the comment was not approved, and a couple of comments have appeared during these couple of days, so mine has been censored. It did not contain foul language, offensive wording or anything that would cause rightful moderation on any respectful blog. I have to admit it was hard and to the point, critic with the censorship.
I will ask Martin again, this time on my own blog, which he cannot censor: if every one of your users, the very people building FON’s infrastructure for you (and paying for it!), one day get fed up with FON blatantly ignoring them, and decide to turn off all their routers, what will you do? The result of this collective action would be FON instantly dissapearing, zero coverage, zero revenue.
So, what will it be, coming down from the cloud and facing reality, or keeping on the “we are in beta, we are a small team, and we have problems but this is allowed because it is so-oh-web-two-dot-zero”, travelling around the world and making bold claims that later turn out to be hot air?
this is absolute indiscutable…
I have opened a post on spanish forums to ask for explanations.
http://foros.fon.com/viewtopic.php?t=2977
I am trying to recover topic 2244, they had said that it must be on historic board.
Topic recovered.
Thanks for your effort Nkieto, I would have posted on the forum myself, but since I left FON, I am only following them – I wouldn’t consider it ethical to be critic on the forums without being active part of FON.
I now see why 2244 was removed, it was very critic with the maps (yes, they somewhat better now), and various aspects of the FON business model. What I don’t believe was coincidence was this particular thread appearing on Martin’s blog, and it suddenly vanishing.
Keep it up!
Mike
It seems that forum politic is to move old topics, or solved topics. As topic 2244 began talking about maps, they have said that have no sense now, because maps have changed.
I think like you, very strange!.
Nkieto
Yes. its right, im the mod, and if the principal topic of the post (2244) was the maps, and the problem was solved, the topic was moved.
I do it. Sorry if you need other replys in the same post. I moved again the post.
I try to explain it. if you need something please tell me.
Hi moderfon,
Thanks for stopping by and explaining the issue – however, there is a very distinct difference in phpBB between moving and deleting (as pointed out rightly by Nkieto). I have been a moderator at the NetStumbler forums for a number of years, and we move tons of comments almost daily. But, to actually delete a thread, it must be earth-shattering. Spam is flagged as such and the poster banned. Inappropriate or flame-turning threads are moved to the moderator’s ‘moved topics’ section. But again, deletion is rather drastic, so it is very rarely used (I for one have never deleted a thread).
As you can see, now that the thread is restored in the section to which it was moved, it is still referenced exactly the same way it was before.
Each board has its own policies, and FON of course has its own, but there are certain lines that must not be crossed, specially when the objective is to create a community that actually supports the project.
Regards,
Mike
Hola Mike: Realmente me sorprendà al leer este post, yo soy el MatÃas que escribió eso, me parecio tambien un poco chocante y manipulador lo que se hizo, pero martÃn supo responderme, tambien el decide sobre su empresa y ese comentario en el foro borrado lo recuerdo perfectamente (tengo la pagina guardada en Mis Documentos) y era de gente que decia que viajaba y no encontraba puntos de acceso, y Moder fon les contestaba que faltan foneros y que falta pulir los mapas.
No estoy en contra de FON ni de whisher.
Solo quiero que la conectividad wifi sea una realidad en cada rincon urbano del planeta.
En mi blog publique un articulo sobre tu enfrentamiento a MartÃn asà la gente conocia como es la cosa.
Saludos y gracias por traducirme al Ingles tan perfecto.
Hola MatÃas,
Gracias por tu comentario, respecto a lo de la censura, es algo que no ha sucedido una ni dos veces. Es harto evidente que todo lo que sea critico con FON no va a ser visto con buenos ojos (normal, por otra parte), y de vez en cuando, censurado.
Respecto al post en tu blog, te contesto ahà mejor.
Saludos,
Miguel