Thursday, February 15, 2007

Devil's Mind The Blog Is Censored On JordanBlogs.Net

Censorship on JordanBlogs.Net has reached intolerable extents. This blog -Devil's Mind- has been suspended from that aggregator. This censorship act follows a series of questionable blog removals from JordanBlogs.Net including -but not limited to- Jordanian Issues which has been censored recently for expressing political views that are not "nice" to the Jordanian regime. Khadder, the maintainer of the blog Jordanian Issues has written a post objecting on that act of censorship.

Other fellow bloggers have also addressed this recurring issue of censorship, you can read some of them here and here.

Regarding the censorship of Devil's Mind Blog, this is the reply I got from JordanBlogs.Net maintainer:
Dear Blogger,

Please refer to our policy, your blog has been suspended till further notice for publishing porn materials.

Publishing porn?! What the fuck?! I think, he is referring to my latest entry on Valentine's Day. First of all, the entry itself contains no pornographic content. Secondly, the entry warns the reader of the explicit sexual content that follows some of the provided links.

But most importantly, this blog has always supported pornography, and will hopefully keep on supporting pornography in all of its legitimate forms. Censorship needs to be abandoned, because once we put limits on the freedom of speech, we become the pathetic nation that we already are!!

Finally, I recommend my readers to visit this blog directly without intermediate services or aggregators because only here you are assured to receive the content I publish as is - without censorship or filtering. Nonetheless, if you want to use aggregators, my blog is currently enlisted on Qwaider Planet (Thank you Qwaider, again!). Please note that Qwaider Planet also does have some policies that support censorship, although I have not noticed them being enforced.

6 comments:

The Observer said...

Too bad! It isn't nice what is happening on JordanBlogs.Net! They are reuining the freedom of speech that makes the Internet unique!

I am glad we have Qwaider planet for now. Hope someone else would step up and come up with a decent aggregator. Something with Jordan in its title that would bring us all like Jordan Planet in the past..

Tala said...

They can't handle what you write openly or understand what you say, its alright, the internet is not limited to Jordanblogs or whatever aggregators. whoever wants the information can dig his way. they'll regret it when they notice that they unified bloggers of similarity and excluded what represents diversity. it will become boring.

Devil's Mind said...

Thank you Tala and The Observer for your positive insight. I happened to foresee similar problem of censorship happening with this blog and others. People are still not ready for open channels where people express themselves freely with no restrictions.

Yes, you are right Tala... Lack of diversity will surely make such aggregators boring... But lets face it, those people want to enforce our Jordanian culture on the blogosphere, and what do we know about our Jordanian culture?! Yes, thats right, it aims for people to be as dull and as boring as possible, and we have to admit that the aggregator is doing a good job in that regard!

Anyways, for most people who have known this blog, this blog is totally against censorship and will not tolerate being restricted in any ways.

I also hope, just like The Observer that there would be some aggregators that are based on defending the freedom of speech, and establishing policies that ensure the bloggers' right to have their messages delivered uncensored.

Anonymous said...

Devil's mind, regardless of the censorship issue I think you can and was able to do better than that notorious post. I like your writings and theyb reflect a deep understanding of human psychology and I hope you can be able to keep this high standard and stay away from explicit pornography. You really can do better than this.

Devil's Mind said...

Batir, I like to think of my blog as a whole package. I try to deliver diverse content in diverse style. Sometimes I like to use a serious tone and some analysis. And sometimes I like to made crude sarcastic comments.

I consider having fun as the most important aspect in life, so while I might discuss issues with intellectual dimensions, I find it equally important (if not sometimes even more important) to make jokes. I admit that I like bad jokes - really bad jokes.

Now if I skip out the bad jokes part I think the blog would miss a large part of my philosophy of life, because in my philosophy everything we do is for the purpose of having fun - even the most serious philosophical discussions.

In short, I consider bad jokes as an integral part of the style of this blog, and I will not drop it.

Q said...

The age-old problem of people with some sort of authority trying to force others into adopting their ideology....It is beyond me how these people justify attempting to put restrictions on something that's free by definition....