The Antichristian Phenomenon

Ever since Last.fm sold out to corporate interests I was expecting the day would come when the many anti-religion groups that existed there were taken down to avoid offending the sensibilities of the increasing pop audience. Well it seems that happened while I was not looking as the first thing I heard about it is this post from Anath in the forum. Apparently the last.fm admins purged many of the existing anti-religion groups with the reasoning that they were promoting “hatred” but fortunately spared the ACP which was seen of keeping things more civil. This message was sent to Anath:

Hi,

As you might have heard, some anti-religion groups have been deleted recently. I have been looking at your group as well, and a few things are beyond what I would normally authorise, but most of the contents are discussion orientated and not just plain bashing and hatred. This is the reason why I am not deleting this group. But I strongly encourage you to keep a strong moderation going, so it does not become mindless hatred.

As an example, “Metal against Islamism group was deleted… BASTARDS!” and “Oh good grief. Stupid bastards, creating a mass of groups for exactly the same thing. That’s just confusing.” are the kind of things I would rather not want to see appearing.

In this thread various opinions were heard, some coming from the Metal against Islamism admins who tried to explain that they had no warning and no chance to fix things before being deleted. The admins of Last.fm also chimed in to explain that they would simply prefer to avoid rampart hatred but have no problem with reasoned arguments. Apparently one of the main reasons why MAI was deleted was their shoutbox was flooded with seething anti-Islam posts, far too many to delete individually. So the whole thing had to be taken down. It reminds of how the Protoss used to clean the Zerg infestations in the popular Starcraft^[I] PC game.

The ironic thing is that the reason the ACP group was spared was the strong moderation we were seen of having which prevented a lot of the most questionable stuff. This moderation, which takes the form of requiring people to join the group before posting in the forum or shoutbox, was implemented in fact to prevent Christian trolling as we would often get fly-by posts and shouts from people who only wanted to disrupt. They would spam the forum with dozens of pro-christian nonsense for example and then leave before being banned, making it impossible to stop them.

The interesting thing is that all this purging has given a very strong boost in activity to the ACP as it has now become a haven for all those people left groupless in the anti-religion department. Hopefully this will make for a healthier and more active anti-christian community that does not devolve into a circle-jerk of mindless christian bashing.

It also points out the benefits of having an external website complementing your last.fm forum such as the one you’re currently reading. In case the ACP had been taken down, we would still be able to use this area for a staging area until we found a new home, either under a new name or a new forum.

As for Last.fm, unfrtunately it seems to be taking more and more of the corporate route. One can only hope that they won’t go to the extent that Microsoft has for example when they started banning all mention of homosexuality in their allowed usernames. One can only hope that if “hateful” anti-religion groups have been deleted, the same has been done to the hateful religious, fascist and racist groups but I have no knowledge of this either way.

Footnotes

1. I was thinking of linkin to a wikipedia article of this but then I thought: Seriously, if you don’t know what Starcraft is, you’re probably too old for this site anyway [↩]

After July’s stream of brave confessions, the time has come to publish those that have been posted on the forums. These confessions have been made by truly antichristian people with great courage. Whether this bravery is sincere is up to you to decide.

(more…)