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-   -   Which miles and points blogs censor comments? (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/external-miles-points-resources/1459294-miles-points-blogs-censor-comments.html)

gpapadop Mar 2, 2017 8:14 am

"He has for a long time censored but never publicly confirmed it."

I should probably threaten a libel lawsuit for that but I have better things to do with my time...

Amazing

84fiero Mar 2, 2017 10:24 am


Originally Posted by PFDigest (Post 27979560)
Can we be more clear about what is meant by "censorship"? Deleting comments from flamers and trolls is not the same as deleting comments just because you don't want to hear them.

And comments that mention better offers than the blog's affiliate links or point out incorrect or misleading information on a blog post. That's the type of "censoring" I thought was mainly of concern here.

I don't think anyone has an issue with deleting profanity, vulgarity, gratuitous personal attacks and stuff like that.


Originally Posted by Renes Points (Post 27979875)
I have had a consistent and published statement about censoring attacks on me or other readers. It has never changed.

You left out that your blog's censoring has also included deleting comments with information about links with better offers than your affiliate links and which called out incorrect or misleading information. Has that changed now?

GUWonder Nov 27, 2018 5:16 am


Originally Posted by PFDigest (Post 27979560)
Can we be more clear about what is meant by "censorship"? Deleting comments from flamers and trolls is not the same as deleting comments just because you don't want to hear them.

Is the following censorship: blogger removal of a blog article with already published, on-topic public comments from blog visitors? Then VFTW is to be included in that category of censoring, whatever the excuse may be for pulling a blog article.

Kagehitokiri Nov 27, 2018 4:05 pm

ideal is to edit, correct, retract ; but shadow editing and removal have become industry standard in US media (including NYT, WaPo, etc)

MKB Nov 4, 2019 10:15 am

Head for Points seems to have deleted some posts following their puff-piece today extolling the virtues of a trip to Tel Aviv with Virgin. A comment from a staff member reminds people that their forum is not the place for political commentary, yet no political comments appear. Some people might regard the publication of their original article as quite political of itself. I said as much in response to the staff member, and had my post deleted.

This seems to be at odds with the claim from HfP earlier in this thread that they don't censor.

riku2 Nov 11, 2019 10:45 am


Originally Posted by MKB (Post 31700086)
This seems to be at odds with the claim from HfP earlier in this thread that they don't censor.

I think there are some words which you cannot use in your comments on their site, if you do your comment just will not appear - mainly mention of things that might impact the revenue from referrals from the HfP site. I noticed somebody added a comment today about a BA offer that was not mentioned on the HfP site and even mentioned they expected their post to be deleted (and had to put hyphens in a word to stop it being blocked a-u-t-o-m-a-t-i-c-a-l-l-y). Looking a few hours later the comment is gone. The post did not criticize HfP or mention any other poster or person, but the post is gone now.

Raffles Nov 11, 2019 10:52 am


Originally Posted by MKB (Post 31700086)
Head for Points seems to have deleted some posts following their puff-piece today extolling the virtues of a trip to Tel Aviv with Virgin. A comment from a staff member reminds people that their forum is not the place for political commentary, yet no political comments appear. Some people might regard the publication of their original article as quite political of itself. I said as much in response to the staff member, and had my post deleted.

This seems to be at odds with the claim from HfP earlier in this thread that they don't censor.

If people want to have "you killed Jesus!" discussions then that's fine by me, but not in my house.

We have taken a more aggressive line since my historic quote on this topic - as has Ben @ OMAAT, the other historic hold-out against censorship - because the general quality of discourse has dropped, unfortunately.

84fiero Nov 12, 2019 11:29 am


Originally Posted by MKB (Post 31700086)
Head for Points seems to have deleted some posts following their puff-piece today extolling the virtues of a trip to Tel Aviv with Virgin. A comment from a staff member reminds people that their forum is not the place for political commentary, yet no political comments appear. Some people might regard the publication of their original article as quite political of itself. I said as much in response to the staff member, and had my post deleted.

This seems to be at odds with the claim from HfP earlier in this thread that they don't censor.

I didn't see anything remotely political about the article itself. It was just a trip report.


Originally Posted by riku2 (Post 31725261)
I think there are some words which you cannot use in your comments on their site, if you do your comment just will not appear - mainly mention of things that might impact the revenue from referrals from the HfP site. I noticed somebody added a comment today about a BA offer that was not mentioned on the HfP site and even mentioned they expected their post to be deleted (and had to put hyphens in a word to stop it being blocked a-u-t-o-m-a-t-i-c-a-l-l-y). Looking a few hours later the comment is gone. The post did not criticize HfP or mention any other poster or person, but the post is gone now.

Censoring comments that point out better offers than the site's affiliate link is more of a concern than blotting out politics, off topic, etc.

eponymous_coward Feb 16, 2020 9:21 pm

https://www.godsavethepoints.com/apo...-upgrade-pack/

“Last year, Upgrade Pack, a start up by a team I was proud to be familiar, with hit me up about highlighting their innovative new platform.

As I noted in the coverage, which I was compensated for...”

I pointed out that his coverage didn’t make it at all clear he was compensated.

https://www.godsavethepoints.com/mee...l-upgrade-app/

When I heard about Upgrade Pack, I approached it with a fair degree of skepticism. Surely it couldn’t be that easy. But after speaking to Founder & CEO Craig Unsworth, it appears that it actually is. Upgrade Pack allows you to add your reservation with a selection of airlines and hotels and receive an instant upgrade price quote. Not only that, there’s a discount involved too – in the region of 20-30% of the upgrade price.”

OH HAI POST BALEETED.

So yeah, dude deletes posts and takes advertorial payola without disclosure. Nothing personal, we all make a living somehow, but there you are.

GUWonder Feb 19, 2020 8:43 am

Some of the miles and points blogs seem to be heavily influenced by whomever they are courting or trying to maintain good relations to get/maintain feed of some sort or another for some travel service provider or another; and then they go on the attack or defense based on that kind of personal affiliation/affinity. And there is other circular backscratching and brown-nosing that is part of the scene.

Expecting the miles and points bloggers to be more impartial, objective and consistent than the average person is to expect too much. And given how people tend to be sensitive to criticism of various sorts and tend to react to criticism, can’t say I’m surprised that some of the bloggers disappear some comments (or more) even when the contributions aren’t spam.

eponymous_coward Feb 25, 2020 1:26 pm


Originally Posted by GUWonder (Post 32089736)
Some of the miles and points blogs seem to be heavily influenced by whomever they are courting or trying to maintain good relations to get/maintain feed of some sort or another for some travel service provider or another; and then they go on the attack or defense based on that kind of personal affiliation/affinity. And there is other circular backscratching and brown-nosing that is part of the scene.

Expecting the miles and points bloggers to be more impartial, objective and consistent than the average person is to expect too much. And given how people tend to be sensitive to criticism of various sorts and tend to react to criticism, can’t say I’m surprised that some of the bloggers disappear some comments (or more) even when the contributions aren’t spam.

Well, it seems to me that this is a bit different if you are actively being paid for content with no disclaimer surrounding the content, only revealing that once you found out the people who were paying you were running a scam.

The average person also isn't writing blog content for US audiences that can run afoul of FTC regulations. Direct payola for content is very much something you need to disclose at the time you're writing it.

Am I surprised the comment was deleted? Not really. It wasn't particularly adversarial, just pointing that out.


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