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Contributr

Yes, it's a Big Deal

Violet Blue 30th Apr 2011

@dave.whittle@ I'm glad you commented, thank you. Let me parse your comment so I can respond to everything.

> Sheesh, Violet - your alarmist headline had me worried there for a minute. I'm not understanding your beef -

My issue is that they have changed the Terms and the way the service works and did not tell the users. The change is huge if you know who uses (used) Delicious. The change was so non-transparent that people are reacting with surprise when they compare the changes I've shown by copy/pasting and putting them side-by-side. Additionally, users now face punitive actions for violating the changes. It's a big deal if you use the service. Perhaps you do not.

> do you think the very experienced founders of YouTube will go all evil on us and start censoring stuff just to piss people like you off? Not likely.

You presuppose that because you think the new owners are "good" (as in, not "all evil") that we should trust them not to exercise Terms they have added. Just because someone is perceived as "good" we should not abandon criticism and caution. If we do, we lose our objectivity and become like TechCrunch and only say good things about people we like (because it serves us to do so, while it does a disservice to everyone else).

And I did not write (or state anywhere else) AVOS would act on their Terms "just to piss people ...off." You are making this part up.

> Delicious is a private company, so free speech rights just don't apply. Whether you're using Facebook, Twitter, or any private site, you need to respect the wishes of the host.

Frees speech is not in my article (again, you have added this). Additionally, I hate it when people cry "Free speech" when a company acts on its own rules in it own sandbox.

> What's more, you can't even issue a stream of profanity on the public airwaves. Just ask Howard Stern about that.

The internet is not, and will *hopefully* never be "the airwaves." This isn't the FCC's domain.

> Besides, how much porn and offensive content gets widely linked on Delicious anyway?

LOTS. Some of Delicious' biggest and most active communities were sex link collectors and people that cataloged the strange and bizarre, the political and the offensive. That's why the old Terms were a perfect fit for the users. Don't like it? Change the channel.

The users have not changed - the service has, and they didn't tell the users. I'm just trying to tell the users.

> You're really making a mountain out of molehill. After reading this post, I'm even happier to have opted in to the new Delicious terms of service. The new owners seem to actually care about the future of the service - unmanaged sites where anything goes are generally worthless. Whittle's law: "In the age of user-generated content, the bad drives away the good."

That's your opinion and I'm glad you left it here. Good that you'd be happy to trust a company with your hard work and data, and community - absolutely blindly because you *think* they might be good people who "seem to care."

I'll end with my favorite quote, which happens to come from a friend, John Gilmore. "The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

In this case, it looks like a number of people have routed themselves over to Pinboard.