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HATE SITE?
By David Vance | May 15, 2012 - 8:44 am | May 15, 2012 Uncategorized
Here's one where I would appreciate your help. Did you know that Biased BBC, a site specifically and uniquely set up to challenge the BBC's lack of impartiality, has been classified as a "hate site"? I am advised that "it was blocked on O2 and T-Mobile on 5th March. It is classified as a 'hate site' by O2's URL checker" This is an outrage. Can I ask you to contact these companies and advise them we are a respectable and professional website that focus on the journalistic output of the BBC? Is it a crime to hold the BBC to account? I wonder if someone has reported Biased BBC to these mobile providers as it seems most unlikely they would ban us on this basis?
PS Yesterday Biased BBC recorder it's biggest ever days visitor number with 11,300 people choosing to pay a call.
77 Responses to HATE SITE?
Yes; casual political censorship is here in Britain.
http://biasedbbc.org
– one of the first victims.
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2012/mobile-internet-censorship
So, apparently, we need to boycott the boycotting
mobile phone companies, O2 and T-Mobile?
Pah says:
Don't forget the Co-op too.
Andy S. says:
Vodafone blocked my access to B-BBC. Had to demand they remove the block.
It seems that someone with clout has persuaded internet providers to censor this site. Perhaps we should contact our providers and demand to know who set this up.
Alfie Pacino says:
I don't access this site on my mobile (my eyes aren't what they were :)), but just tried it through Vodafone and it came through fine.
Llew says:
I wonder if the BBC were in communication with ISP / Mobile operators to block illegal downloads of copyrighted material and lists of sites/IP addresses to block had to be provided. The BBC then took the chance to "accidentally" include BiasBBC in the list? Or am I being just too cynical?
I refuse to speculate on why the bully is trying to beat me up.
Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad theory to me. I came here to check on sites, to see if they were blocked in Sweden, and right now, the only one on the list not working is TPB, but that can also be a fluke of the server.
deegee says:
Don't assume conspiracy when stupidity is an adequate explanation.
The only way to combat this is to confront 02 and T-mobile (or the 3rd Party who provides there antivirus/filtering). If the companies give a generic 'We are checking' brush-off response and the admins feel the process is taking too long, challenge these companies publicly on their Facebook pages. It worked for me when my blog Five Minutes for Israel was similarly and falsely labelled.
It doesn't have to be the BBC. Any opponent of Biased-BBC could have falsely reported you.
Good idea. O2 are approachable but in the past I have found T-mobile and 3 useless at responding to simple enquiries unless they can smell a sale and even then they drop the ball.
I'd suggest going straight to the directors. They won't even see your corresponance but a message passed down from the Boss' office gets the attention a direct letter may not receive.
wally greeninker says:
Pushing to have a site classed as a 'hate site', having an individual banned or getting a video removed on the grounds of 'hate speech' seems to be an energetically and routinely pursued form of political activity by some groups. Muslims, in particular, portray any criticism or ridicule of themselves as an expression of hatred and judging by how thin skinned and pugnacious (and seemingly ubiquitous) homosexuals are in blog comments threads I suspect they are quite active in this respect, as well.
One of the reasons I'm not fond of the honest reporting
site is that I get the impression they encourage this sort of thing and it goes against my principles in support of free speech.
noggin says:
wally … sad but true,
i m almost sure you are spot on.
All possible culprits, due to their
"previous" in this style of behaviour
oh good ole "hairtrigger sensitivity" eh.
"hate" site … tsk tsk tsk,
devoid of any debate, misguided, and obtuse
always ask who decides, 😀 …. who plays god so to speak … (there would be no shortage of hands going up for that job) …
whatever next any straightforward enquiry is "racism"
frankly absurd.
Articles about this are all linking to the old site, where I notice the link to the new site has fallen down the page. Could someone with administrative authority bump the link to the very top (and keep it there in future)?
David Preiser (USA) says:
Chris Williams has updated the link in his Telegraph article.
The old URL would have been used because that was the site in place on the date concerned.
Just a thought: the fact that it only seems to have been listed for a short amount of time suggests it was a mistake. Or, given that on the date concerned David Vance kicked off one of his "Oh, gay people are talking about equal rights, how disgraceful that couples who want to marry are daring to suggest they're not the scum I'd like to think they are" posts that brought the usual abusive homophobic nonsense from some of Biased BBC's less enlightened commenters. Maybe some of the choice phrases uttered by the likes of (for example) ltwf1964 triggered a content analysis-based blocking?
It's hard to tell for definite, because the comments system on the old site doesn't seem particularly willing to display content from a few months back…
We all know why the old link was there, Scott. Most people are not regular readers and wouldn't have known. Not a big deal.
As for why this site was blocked, who knows? If you're suggesting that a few unkind words caused it, then how do you explain the church groups getting blocked? And why no left-wing blogs where the vitriol and language is worse than here?
I'm not sure you can dismiss this so casually.
I had a feeling it would have been because of homosexual bigots like you.
Cramner has been experiencing similar problems with the patently bent ASA:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144949/Watchdog-asks-Christian-blogger-justify-offensive-homophobic-advert-petition-gay-marriage.html
hippie, Yes, indeed. Someone posted about the Cranmer saga on the old Open thread, along with an extract from his amusing response to the ASA.
Betty Swollocks says:
This is not a hate site…it's a GREAT site…simples
Roland Deschain says:
Just to clarify. Has the new site been blocked as well as the old one?
GotItAboutRight says:
Perhaps the most effective champion would be someone who doesn't agree with most of the content of the site but who believes in free speech and recognises that censorship of it is unfair and absurd. Step forward Scott, Dez, Jim Dandy and David Gregory.
Mice Height says:
The far-left will do all they can to ban anything that diverts even slightly from their way of thinking/doing. It's the only solution their feeble minds can come up with.
The Highland Rebel says:
It's well known that the b-bbc is cancer ridden with Common Purpose graduates but David Arcurus, non exectutive director of O2 is also one of them.
http://lifeinthemix.org.uk/media_standards_trus.html
And Ken Hydon of Vodafone.
Not knowing how these things work, I assumed (probably incorrectly) that the blocking came about because of some automatic filter that searches for 'offensive' words on both posts and comments fields which are then checked by human beings at the mobile company who decide whether that means that the site in question should be blocked or not as being inappropriate to under 18-year olds – meaning that people at O-2, T-Mobile and (?) Vodophone checked our site, decided it's a 'hate site' and blocked it.
Of course, as Deegee suggests (from experience), it could very well have been provoked by an opponent of B-BBC, who might have referred us to the mobile companies.
Taking into account what Wally wrote above, I doubt it's a coincidence that the threads on that day included MOCK JESUS, NOT MOHAMMAD and SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH (about gay marriage).
http://biased-bbc.blogspot.co.uk/2012_03_05_archive.html
pounce_uk says:
The link given takes you to the old blog on blogger. As i know only too well all it takes is somebody to click the report abuse button on the top and google have you down as a racist bigot. (Now if only the bBC website did like wise) Likewise a number of ISPs block blogger
Linking in to the blocking of ISPs due to illegal downloading of pirated information is actually a step too far in trying to shout foul play.
The question we should be asking is the current website being blocked. If not then there is nothing to worry about.
Isn't this an actionable libel?
Mailman says:
I posted a message about this months ago as I had to get the adult content filter removed on both O2 and Vodafone phones before I could access the old site.
At the time I mentioned that you guys should approach O2 and Vodafone to ask why they considered the old site as holding adult content but didn't get anything back from you guys.
So id think this is a carry over from that?
johnyork says:
Is it the I word wot did it ?
Louis Robinson says:
Telephone companies make a lot of money from BBC and other company TV programs – the ones where you need to call-in with the answers to obvious questions. And you know what they say: "he who pays the piper."
Well David Vance you do have a history of running hate sites after all. You were ejected off one platform — Squarespace– because of the content on your other venture.
As it happens I don't agree that this is a hate site, It is full of laughably ill-informed tripe written by as big a collection of pub-bores as you are ever going to find, but it isn't a hate site.
May Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful be with you.
ltwf 1964 says:
"as big a collection of pub-bores as you are ever going to find"
and you Geoff,are ALL of them 😉
a troll has the nerve to talk about pub bores 😀
David Vance says:
Hi Geoff
Thanks for that wonderfully uninformed comment.
Well then, You might have some idea about how we feel about the BBC. But at least you're not forced to pay for this site are you?
Geoff Watts, I can't take your comment seriously as you're unable to engage in informed debate. Keep up the whip-smart ad homs, though, and you might feel better about yourself.
"It is full of laughably ill-informed tripe written by as big a collection of pub-bores as you are ever going to find…"
I'm a pub bore! I love it. Thanks, Geoff. Best laugh I've had all day.
Where are those emoticons when you need them?
a sort of internet version of Richard Bacon's show then?
The reference to 'pub bores' is really just an allusion to the views and opinions of regular people – the majority – in the same way that people of the superior left spit out a knee-jerk reference to The Daily Mail whenever they step out of the bubble and are unfortunate enough to over-hear an opinion exressed by some 'ghastly, populist middle-Englander'. I'm surprised he didn't use the word 'bourgeois" – only up themselves, self-regarding lefty luvvies use it, ain't that right Mr. Fry (who else does?????).
Same old lefty po-faced snobbery from those that imagine they are the voice of the people. Dickwad.
I bet he sits in the corner of his local night after night puffing on a pipe, counting the change in his pocket, while complaining about the state of the country and boring on about his glory days: Aye lad…when I were a Beeboid on the radio, rabbiting on
(pumping out a load of ill-informed tripe, heh) about this and that…ferried around in taxis as if I were somebody…aye, them were the days. Aye, well, time's up again…time for me to be putting me cat out and getting me cocoa. Night, lads. See you all again tomorrow night…and the next and the next…
Geoff, you are a c**t. Is that ill-formed enough for you?
*ill-informed.
'ill-formed' was right first time. You've just gone some way to proving one of the points he was making.
Hey Geoff,
You might have noticed your comment is still up. How long do you think a comment so critical of the BBC would stay up on a 'Have your say' page, if it appeared at all?
I'd give it 10 minutes.
Guest Who says:
'You might have noticed your comment is still up.'
For me, the riposte of the thread, especially as tales of BBC obliteration of any hint of counter 'group-think' are revealed daily.
As to another poster's "Do you consider the BBC to be a 'hate organisation'?" question, if the presence of those that use and abuse that term on the medium is now some form of guide, I simply hark back to a recent Yasmin AB quote where she cheerfully deploys the term like confetti, and she seems to be a BBC gob-du-jour daily.
So, by definition, yes, it must be too.
The BBC glee-clubbers really are serving their mistress poorly on this thread especially. To shoot yourselves in each other's feet takes some doing, but has been managed.
'Geoff bin' in'?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Bernard
At least Jeffrey Bernard was funny.
Oh I don't know (assuming we have 1 Geoff not two), Geoff's comments seem pretty schizophrenic, but they can be amusing and edifying at the same time.
O2 delisted in March 2006 and the only UK citizens on the Telifonica Board are David Arculus and Peter Erskine. Matthew Key who was also CFO at O2 is a divional Chairman of Telifonica Digital.
This was in yesterday's Telegraph.
Mobile networks block church and 'BBC bias' websites
Mobile phone network censorship systems have cut off community and political opinion websites, the Government has been warned, as it considers imposing similar technology on home broadband networks in an effort to protect children from pornography.
Non-sexual websites such as one created by the residents of St Margarets, Middlesex, to act as an online hub for local news and events, and a blog that challenges the impartiality of the BBC, have been blacklisted by mobile networks, a report by the London School of Economics found.
There's a link to this blog in the original. This is not quite the pointless collection of bores Geoff Watts thinks it is.
you might be surprised as to who may read this blog and for obvious reasons may not be able to respond to posts
Tell that to the defenders of the indefensible who say this is a tiny echo chamber nobody reads.
chrisH says:
I used to shop at the Co-op . I don`t now!
My phones are both O2…so let me know if we all need to get them ostracised for being the BBCs Ost Gauleiter.
Incredible….hope the likes of Scott and Dez aren`t trying to get us into trouble!
Unfortunately this is what we truth-seeking dissenters must endure in a liberal fascist dictatorship where mass censorship is imposed on the innocent populace. Anyone now who remotely criticizes aspects of Islam is guilty of a 'hate crime' according to the thought control police – and this isn't some made-up Orwellian fantasy; it's reality, happening here and NOW. However, extremist Muslims can openly do as they wish (Homophobic remarks and attacks, racist protests, threats of terrorism etc.) with impunity. The minority is given priority over the majority. Classic cultural Marxism straight out of the Frankfurt School. I am beyond caring now what the Islamo-Marxist thought police label us with because I am comfortable in my beliefs and I strongly feel that history will side with us.
Reed - in favour of hate speech! says:
I agree – time we started to embrace their labels – do what gay people did with the word 'queer'.
I AM a hater… because I oppose all of the violent, destructive, intolerant and freedom-diminishing ideologies that the left are either actively enabling or appeasing. I stand for the freedom and self-determination of the individual – I hate you if you don't or won't. F.O.A.D. lefties!
👿 8)
From the BBC: ORG: Mobile filters censor innocent content
St Bruno says:
As this is an undoubted hate site, I would like to share my two pennyworth.
Not so much an 'Arab spring' more an Arab shuffle!
All in the best possible taste of course.
NeilM says:
"Truth is the new hate speech."
Teddy Bear says:
Well done DV – I would say the advertisment exposure this site got by being banned will have done exactly opposite of what the enemy was trying to do.
Strike while the irony is hot 😉
Leftie-Loather says:
Yep!, crackpot lefties can never never get enough of shooting themselves in the foot….lol….Just utter fuckin comedians!
NeilofWatford says:
A couple of points:
1. I am an O2 user and have no problem accessing your site. I normally link from your Twitter feed and it works well, so the headline was news to me
2. I think you will find that most ordinary folk were not aware of biasedBBC's existence. The headlines you got yesterday in both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail will have given you some wonderful publicity
More power to BiasedBBC !
Interesting how no one has commented on Geoff's point that Mr Vance has "previous" when it comes to hosting a hate site. To be accused once may be regarded as a misfortune…
"Is it a crime to hold the BBC to account?"
No, of course not; but this blog ceased being just about the BBC a long time ago:-
A selection of comments from the ten most recent posts:
Hang Her: "ISLAMIC terrorism"
Marching Orders: "ISLAMIC terrorist groups ", "cringing around ISLAM"
More Questions Than Answers: "ISLAMIC wrongdoing", "appeasing ISLAM", "crimes in the ISLAMIC community", "want to get ISLAM off the hook", "victims of ISLAM"
Hate Site?: "ISLAM is guilty", "the ISLAMO-Marxist thought police"
BBC Promotes Obama Campaign Ignores Details: "MUSLIM from Cumbria found guilty"
Open Thread: "danger posed by radical ISLAM", "Despotic ISLAMIC regimes", "ISLAMIC terrorists", "ISLAMIC jihadists", "ISLAMIC paedophiles",
When The Question is Wrong: "According to ISLAMIC sources, moh was a rapist", "ISLAM and misogyny", "ISLAMIC subservience"
The BBC and the Jews: "ISLAMISATION of colleges"
Boris on the Beeb: "mass immigration, ISLAMISATION, Labour, EU, Obama"
Well, well! Dez comes along with a hit and run posting.
It seems Dez is now a fascist who wants to silence anyone with opinions not conducive to his ideology. Dez really wants to criminalise those who take issue with totalitarian ideologies and single issue nazis.
Dez, sunshine, you've really proven yourself to be a true Beeboid drone.
"It seems Dez is now a fascist…"
Don't worry Andy, I have no desire to silence you at all; on the contrary, I think you are an asset to this site and hope you can post your wise comments here more often.
"Now" Andy S?
Dez is an example of that curious alliance between homosexual bigots and Islamist terrorists. Bigotry and hatred can cross a lot of divides. Makes you feel kinda warm inside …
I guess in the world of homosexual fetish Jihadists are the new Nazis.
oh dezzie is a fascist allright
I think DV will recall well last year all the links he posted here to neo nazi forums and websites
Reed - BBC = hate org says:
…and your point is? Do you consider the mere mentioning of a subject to automatically denote hate?
If that were the case, the BBC's obsession with Mr. Murdoch and Mr.s Brooks, and it's multitude of references to them over months and months, would amount to a lot of hate. Do you consider the BBC to be a 'hate organisation'?
All this is, of course, beside the point. In a country that truely valued and protected freedom of speech, expressions of 'hate' by individuals would be permissable (if not encouraged) provided that the public are not forced to subsidise that which they find offensive, and those who express these sentiments would not be liable to prosecution or censorship.
Unfortunately, we seem to be in the process of giving up our long fought right to offend whom ever we damn well wish. This is something that should concern everyone who values freedom of speech. Laws against ANY so-called hate speech create an entirely subjective form of crime and are fundamentally illiberal.
"In a country that truely valued and protected freedom of speech…"
Okay, let's say I found out your name/address/photo and put up posters in your neighbourhood claiming you were a pedophile. Is that ok? Because it's just my freedom of speech?
Cath Morland says:
Well, now you're just being silly.
Reed - sigh says:
No – because that could well constitute incitement, which is rightfully illegal and falls outside the bounds of free speech. It would also be slanderous, which again…
Good heavens…is that all you have?
I have the right to hate you (not that I do, you're just annoying me a little right now), I ought also to be able to express that hatred of you. I don't have the right to make false accusations against you or encourage others to commit crimes against you. This stuff isn't difficult, you know.
If the point you were trying to make (clumsily) is that free speech needs to have limits, then yes, you're right (see above). However, outlawing the expression of a basic human emotion (hate) is both foolhardy and dangerous. It's also ironic that those who most vigorously support the punishment of so-called hate-speech usually do so in the name of tolerance. They fail to understand that tolerance is the difference between can't and shouldn't.
Be careful what you wish for…you might be next to cause offence, and whether you meant to or not is irrelevant – once you get into definitions of 'hate', it's all subjective and the victim is the judge.
Proof, if ever proof were needed, of the impossibility of rational engagement with Scez.
"Interesting how no one has commented on Geoff's point that Mr Vance has "previous" when it comes to hosting a hate site. …"
Now, now, Dez "Interesting" Dez, not paying attention again! Back of the class for you. Maybe it was past your bedtime. I think you ought to review the thread and that statement. Wouldn't want to mislead anyone, would you?
Every one of the adjectives related to Islam you posted is accurate in context. It is not 'incitement to hate' it is recognise a potential threat and identify it for what it is.
If the BBC was doing there job properly it wouldn't be an issue, but since they prefer to bury their head in the ground for what they claim is 'fear of offending Islam' when it is in reality fear of Islam, then don't think for a mohment (pun intended) we are not going to identify the risk it places the values of our society in.
We won't succumb to the intent of Islamists using terrorism and threats the same way the BBC has.
Too backwards to go forwards.
"US, EU Spearhead Islamic Bid To Criminalize Free Speech"(Jan 2012)
Is INBBC interested? Or is it involved making this happen?
http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=831#more-831
If that's hate speech, half the newspapers and blogs in the country would be shut down tomorrow, and millions of people arrested.
Span Ows says:
Could this explain why Dez, Scott and Jim are not about as much? They got their wish…in fact they are probably the ones that complained.