Jeff - your thoughts on the Hilaria Baldwin thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, I noticed you said in the thread that there’s been no legal threats against DCUM. Just curious if you have a guess why? The most details about her background are on your site. Yet the Twitter user and Instagramer that went viral both claim to have been threatened by Alec’s legal team.

For the record, I don’t believe you delete posts inappropriately. You’ve demonstrated time and time again that you’re not afraid of most of the blowhards that post here.

Section 230 solidly protects Jeff from legal threats due to content that others post on these boards. So trying to sue Jeff for board posts is a little different than suing a Twitter or Instagram user.

It's possible Jeff might have gotten a subpoena to reveal the IP address of a poster who someone wanted to sue (and if I remember his other posts correctly, he's occasionally gotten those). But if he did get a subpoena, he might or might not be able to talk about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm out in Tucson and a social media friend in the entertainment biz posted about Hilaria yesterday. The only reason I knew what she was talking about was from seeing this thread here over the past few months. She had replies mentioning they've fallen into a Hillaria rabbit hole and linked to the DCUM thread. I was like oh, wow, someone out here is outing my mommy board!

Hello to the Old Pueblo!

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, I noticed you said in the thread that there’s been no legal threats against DCUM. Just curious if you have a guess why? The most details about her background are on your site. Yet the Twitter user and Instagramer that went viral both claim to have been threatened by Alec’s legal team.

For the record, I don’t believe you delete posts inappropriately. You’ve demonstrated time and time again that you’re not afraid of most of the blowhards that post here.

My experience has always been that those with the most influence are the least threatened by DCUM's content. On the other hand, very small entities (think home preschools) are frequent sources of headaches. This makes sense if you consider that online criticism might be an existential threat to a small business but is mostly meaningless to a world-renown movie star.

If I receive a subpoena for IP addresses (which happens occasionally), I would try to make the targets aware of it. Though that is difficult since I don't know who any of you are.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jeff, I noticed you said in the thread that there’s been no legal threats against DCUM. Just curious if you have a guess why? The most details about her background are on your site. Yet the Twitter user and Instagramer that went viral both claim to have been threatened by Alec’s legal team.

For the record, I don’t believe you delete posts inappropriately. You’ve demonstrated time and time again that you’re not afraid of most of the blowhards that post here.

My experience has always been that those with the most influence are the least threatened by DCUM's content. On the other hand, very small entities (think home preschools) are frequent sources of headaches. This makes sense if you consider that online criticism might be an existential threat to a small business but is mostly meaningless to a world-renown movie star.

If I receive a subpoena for IP addresses (which happens occasionally), I would try to make the targets aware of it. Though that is difficult since I don't know who any of you are.

Makes sense. Thanks for humoring me.

[Anonymous]

At what point will you retire the thread? I admit to enjoying it at first but I cannot believe the stamina of these posters. There’s nothing new happening and they are just clearly trying to keep it at the top.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so curious if the Hilaria thread (and the Kane thread!) are basically the same two posters fighting back and forth with each other?

The Hilaria thread was sort of like that originally. But both the Hilaria thread and the Kanes threads brought in posters from all over who otherwise had no interest in DCUM.

For a while it seemed that the Hilaria thread was dominated by a single rabid poster. She may have single-handedly created this entire controversy. I think she may be more of a wacko than Hilaria.

My guess was this person was either a nanny who was fired by Hilaria or someone from her previous life who was jealous of her new-found celebrity. To go after a minor celebrity-adjacent figure for something so minor and inconsequential had to be personal hatred.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so curious if the Hilaria thread (and the Kane thread!) are basically the same two posters fighting back and forth with each other?

The Hilaria thread was sort of like that originally. But both the Hilaria thread and the Kanes threads brought in posters from all over who otherwise had no interest in DCUM.

For a while it seemed that the Hilaria thread was dominated by a single rabid poster. She may have single-handedly created this entire controversy. I think she may be more of a wacko than Hilaria.

NYT implied today that an "unnamed source" in Hillaria's social set in NYC is who blew this up, so I sorta think that thread is giving itself undue credit.

Yes, but DCUM is attracting people of all stripes from around the country. Mainly because we are in pandemic mode and stuck at home. I think the "unnamed source" is the one who started posting here. Jeff can confirm if the single rabid poster is posting from NYC. Also, a lot of Trumpers have started posting here from all over since even before 2016.

I think a lot of hatred for Hilaria came from Alec's portrayal of Trump in SNL too.

[Anonymous]

How many posts are you deleting? I have reported some truly nasty ones that are not in keeping with DCUM (thanks for deleting) but I wonder how often that is happening.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:Well, I wouldn't even know who she is if it wasn't for that thread (more specifically, I wouldn't know if posts from that thread were not getting reported constantly because I wouldn't read it otherwise). Frankly, I don't care if she is Spanish, fake Spanish, sort of Spanish, or not Spanish at all.

As far as DCUM goes, she is a minor celebrity at best. Topics about Kane have driven several times as much traffic here and he is the unrivaled star of DCUM. Let's just hope that he doesn't suddenly develop a foreign accent.

I’m out of it, who is Kane?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm so curious if the Hilaria thread (and the Kane thread!) are basically the same two posters fighting back and forth with each other?

The Hilaria thread was sort of like that originally. But both the Hilaria thread and the Kanes threads brought in posters from all over who otherwise had no interest in DCUM.

For a while it seemed that the Hilaria thread was dominated by a single rabid poster. She may have single-handedly created this entire controversy. I think she may be more of a wacko than Hilaria.

NYT implied today that an "unnamed source" in Hillaria's social set in NYC is who blew this up, so I sorta think that thread is giving itself undue credit.

Yes, but DCUM is attracting people of all stripes from around the country. Mainly because we are in pandemic mode and stuck at home. I think the "unnamed source" is the one who started posting here. Jeff can confirm if the single rabid poster is posting from NYC. Also, a lot of Trumpers have started posting here from all over since even before 2016.

I think a lot of hatred for Hilaria came from Alec's portrayal of Trump in SNL too.

You may not be living in a causal universe.

[Anonymous]

Jeff sorry to hijack but what are your thoughts on the Megan Markle thread?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:At what point will you retire the thread? I admit to enjoying it at first but I cannot believe the stamina of these posters. There’s nothing new happening and they are just clearly trying to keep it at the top.

I haven't considered locking the thread. I'll just see how things go.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:How many posts are you deleting? I have reported some truly nasty ones that are not in keeping with DCUM (thanks for deleting) but I wonder how often that is happening.

Thank you for reporting. I have probably been deleting 20 posts a day from that thread lately, though that it a rough estimate that could be off by a bit. Multiple posters have been reporting (those doing the reporting frequently have a particular focus on the type of posts they report so there is not necessarily overlap). I've removed some that I noticed while deleting those that were reported.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:Well, I wouldn't even know who she is if it wasn't for that thread (more specifically, I wouldn't know if posts from that thread were not getting reported constantly because I wouldn't read it otherwise). Frankly, I don't care if she is Spanish, fake Spanish, sort of Spanish, or not Spanish at all.

As far as DCUM goes, she is a minor celebrity at best. Topics about Kane have driven several times as much traffic here and he is the unrivaled star of DCUM. Let's just hope that he doesn't suddenly develop a foreign accent.

I’m out of it, who is Kane?

LOL. I didn't know who he was either until a thread here about him blew up. I've told this story before so I apologize to those who've heard it before. Kane was a morning drive time radio show host. He broadcast from a Maryland suburb near here, but his show was syndicated nationwide. I rarely have in-person meetings with anyone about DCUM, but one day I had gone to meet a perspective advertiser. I brought my iPad that has mobile data connectivity in order to demonstrate how DCUM works. During my meeting, the website was very slow which was extremely unusual. I blamed it on the data connection.

When I got home, I had many alerts from my monitoring system warning of slow performance. I started troubleshooting and really could not find anything wrong. While trying to find the problem, I kept seeing a thread from the Entertainment forum about a radio show keep getting bumped to the top of Recent Topics. I had no interest in that thread and it seemed pretty obscure so I ignored it. After many hours, I noticed that thread had thousands of views. It turns out that morning Kane had had some sort of breakdown on air and was crying about his wife leaving him. Someone had started a thread on DCUM and it must have been the first hit for "Kane" on Google. Posters showed up from all over and that thread almost immediately became one of the most viewed in the history of DCUM. Suddenly, DCUM became home base for any discussions about the Kane show, which proved to be a never-ending soap opera. I locked that thread at some point and another was created. I think I locked that one and another was created. One way or another, about a dozen Kane threads were eventually started. Then some spin-offs about other personalities from the show and about his wife's blog. In the top 30 most viewed threads on DCUM, Kane threads make up about 10 of them. I have no proof, but I suspect that those threads are responsible for the popularity of other entertainment threads here including the Hilaria Baldwin thread because I think the Kane threads attracted users with such interests.

Kane eventually lost his show -- a topic of another thread here.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Jeff sorry to hijack but what are your thoughts on the Megan Markle thread?

I don't really like any of the celebrity threads. I am uncomfortable generally with anonymous posters discussing identifiable individuals. Obviously, I give some leeway where public figures are concerned, but I still don't really like it. My personal bias is that it is really stupid to waste even a minute discussing Markle or Baldwin or any of the others. It's just a version of opium for the people and keeps everyone distracted from the important things that are going on. I see some value in giving folks an escape from otherwise stressful lives, but I think these threads go well beyond that.

The Markle thread is challenging to moderate because there are overlapping issues. She has clearly faced significant racial bias. However, racial bias is obviously not the source of all criticism of her. It is impossible to know the motivations of posters (and, frankly, with the existence of so much unconscious racism posters themselves may not be aware), so it is never easy to decide that a post is provoked by racism or some other basis. Also, I am pretty consistent in not allow criticism of children, yet her child and child-bearing issues (for a lack of a better way of describing it) are a major part of her celebrity. This creates huge gray areas into which I am constantly asked to intervene.