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MoveOn vs. MySpace; Darcy Burner on Young Voters; Ask A Poll Question

I just won $40 in the Preakness, and a diary I wrote on Daily Kos appeared prominently in Yochai Benkler's presentation at yesterday's PDF conference (as part of a diary rescue). It's a good weekend.

  • MoveOn and MySpace got into a dust-up at PDF yesterday over MySpace's moderating/censorship practices. Get the dirt at ePolitics and Mashable!
  • At Washblog, netroots candidate Darcy Burner is talking about the importance of getting out the youth vote in local races, and she's got local demographic and turnout stats to back up her argument.
  • Peter Levine, director of CIRCLE needs help determining what questions to ask in a new poll about youth and online political engagement. Leave your suggestions in the comments on his blog.
  • I recently dug up this piece from The Nation's archive about the campus conservative movement's efforts to discredit and remove liberal professors. Read it and then go check out Free Exchange, a coalition to counter the right wing's attacks on free speech on campus.
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May 19th, 2007 3:36pm
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MoveOn Permits Comments Where?

Submitted by Josh Koenig on Sat, 2007-05-19 17:08.

I have to admit the moveon vs mypace thing seems funny to me. MoveOn allows you to voice your opinion through their organization where exactly? Oh right.

As an organization that has been demonstrably paranoid about allowing its members to speak freely, I think it’s ironic they’re taking MySpace to task for censorship. Not that MySpace doesn’t need watching, mind. It’s a good think to organize for users rights.

Exactly

Submitted by Michael Connery on Sun, 2007-05-20 06:52.

I think for a lot of people that was the crux of it - the underlying absurdity in MoveOn’s arguments. Plus people were a bit pissed that MoveOn actually protested/flyered the panel. So they were way more confrontational about it than they needed to be in a setting where frank and open discussion was already an option (indeed it was the norm).

I didn’t actually sit in on that panel, but some folks were talking about it afterward. Maybe some of them will comment here.

It was damn hot, and i left

Submitted by Dan (not verified) on Mon, 2007-05-21 15:52.

It was damn hot, and i left early.

Entering the panel, though, you were greeted by someone at the door handing out the fliers.

It was filled with leading questions to ask Jeff Berman, who was sitting on the panel. I thought that was a bit iffy.

Jeff held his own

Submitted by Fred Gooltz on Tue, 2007-05-22 13:40.

the tiff was pretty blah. Jeff parried most every one of Eli's charges, Jeff pointed out that if users decided to put an ultimatum to the hosts of the network, it would be in the financial interests of the network to make them happy... and that by and large, they have done so.

Jeff was smart in that he always answered Eli's attacks about myspace's corporate ownership in regards to how the community of myspace organizes itself, and about how the community loves the community... ergo, Eli came off sounding a bit like he was willing to discard the "community" in order to unleash his is fear and loathing of Rupert Murdoch.

Eli did totally nail the New York Times reporter who asked a leading, snarky question about how this great Democratizing UGC world of blogs, videosites, and socnets (that Eli was saying would infuse our civic dialogue with substance, debate, and candor rather than a blue dress) is still most known for the unelevated style "gotcha" politics of 'Maccaca', 'I feel pretty', etc.

Eli responded that every time a mainstream outlet, which in the case of NYT purports to be a sober and serious standard bearer of journalism, writes about one of those videos, it registers another 200,000 pageviews. And that for every fake Obama ad mashing up the '84 mac with Hillary there are five thousand essays and stories and discussions about substance and policy. But the hollow media is allergic to such discussion, which is why #1 the blogosphere exists and why #2 Maureen Dowd exists.