Is yahoo! answers really a forum of free speech?

Question

Why is it that people can pose the most thoughtless and stupid questions imaginable, and then when someone response in kind they get a violation notice?

Shouldn't people expect, especially under the politics and government section, that people are going to get intense and emotional with their answers and that if you can't take the heat then stay out of the kitchen? I'm not saying it's okay to personally insult someone posing a question you disagree with, although I've been insulted before and don't report them because I believe in free speech. But when I get reported for saying that its wrong that they execute people in Iran for being g*y or a woman who has had s*x out of wedlock.........come one!

Answer 1

Freedom of speech is like any other privilege.  If you abuse it, you lose it.  While the decision to report someone is arbitrary, and made by an individual, the decisions that Yahoo makes are the ones which rule in this forum.

This is the nature of private property rights.  If you don't like their decisions, you are quite welcome to find another forum where the rules or decisions suit you better.

Answer 2

My friend got a question pulled off and his remaining asks for the day taken away for posting a question with thread and video thread about his question concerning a certain female presidential candidate and her supposed criminal behavior.

Answer 3

No, in fact this is a forum for Politically Correct Free Speech, which is not the same as actual free speech.  PC means that every answer has to be a rainbow all inclusive answer or else the answerer risks losing their account.  If it was actual free speech then we could actually offend each other without risk of being snitched on to Big Nanny Yahoo.  It is ridiculous that people  can not offend each other without being censored and deprived of the ability to offend each other.  And Yahoo certainly censors.  They "warned" me for pointing out that deportation was a viable option for dealing with illegal immigrants.  Actually wrote me to tell me that it was "offensive" to point out that illegal means illegal.  It is silly!

Answer 4

Of course not. Yahoo is run by a bunch of libs. They employ their trolls to go through these message boards and weed out Conservatives. I personally have given appropriate answers to questions on here but get reported all the time for violations. I admit on occasion I may post a little sarcasm but if it is a stupid question it deserves a stupid answer....

Answer 5

I actually used to work for a company that sold Yahoo software it used to read and analyse email messages to support in order to route them to the right people and suggest a proper answer.

They have been using it since at least 2000 and I know from my violation notice on a nonsense answer somone didn't like that they are still using it :)

You can tell too if the subject line has an ID number that starts "KMM.....".

I stopped working there long before YA came around, but it is entirely feasible they are using that software to categorize messages, or maybe similar sw from a competitor. I base that on a careful reading of a recent YA Blog post about community moderation beta and my professional judgment about how such software works.

I think they are working out ways to identify different categories of messages, and since I have been here it seems to me there is a good drop in troll answers.

I am sure they are working on refining the system every day behind the scenes.

But I credit them for leaving up so much controversial stuff.

The issue of doing this in an automated fashion is VERY difficult, especially given all the languages that YA is available in!

Arguably as difficult or even more so then identifying all spam while letting all good mail go by.  It just isn't a perfect world.

Answer 6

It is certainly a forum of freedom of thought.

Answer 7

Absolutely Not

Answer 8

Free speech is the last thing the libs who run Y! are interested in.

Answer 9

Well, I don't think Yahoo is run by media n**i's but they do cower before a complaint way too easy.  If I pose a question or answer one that offends only "ONE" person, my voice can be stifled, so if you look at it sideways - my right to free speech was stifled by anothers right to free speech.  And I certainly do have that right.  I have fought in 2 conflicts, paid taxes for 20 years and voted for 4 presidential candidates.  So the caveat here is that you do have a right to free speech, but there is no constitutional guarantee that someone has to listen to you.

Answer 10

It is for free speech, but you have to watch what you say.

Answer 11

Yahoo answers belongs to a private company.

Yahoo answers is designed to make money for that company.

Free speech has nothing to do with it.