As I’ve expanded my informal study into the culture that VerticalScope has created either through a policy of inaction or by its policies of pushing popular members into positions of power in their forums—one thing is very clear a dynamic of hyper masculinity, racism, and violence has been cultivated. This type of environment is toxic and ultimately self-destructive to the stated goal of the company as a “community builder”. I hope that some of these memes disturb you as much as they disturbed me. This is only from a small number of websites I was able to search online roughly 185 sites. Roughly 4% of these sites from estimate show significant problems with content that violates these rules that I found one each property.
So, you can understand my surprise that I just keep finding material on forums (not all forums but enough to start to show a trend in behavior) that violates rule 3 completely. How could this be? How can things like this exist on their properties:
These memes were culled from websites as diverse as I could find: From Gun Forums , Survivalist Forums and Ford Powerstroke Diesel Engine forums. The message is clear from these sites that violence, racism, and anti-LGQTB attitudes are not only present in an alarming minority of communities but elevated. I found that roughly 4% of all the all the websites I visited had at least one image of problematic content usually many more. Problematic content tended to increase at sites where the general attitude towards this content were accepting or indifferent by the VS Moderation Staff usually volunteer in nature. It is very hard to get a good read on the moderation staff when it is actually VerticalScope employees. In many cases the volunteer staff also posted similar views.
From my experience with the paid VerticalScope admin they are really only willing to remove problematic content that is both racists, sexists, and degrading about people. As these screen shots I captured of my interactions with the VerticalScope Admin the content is dealt with but not the content creators.
These content creators are still creating content on the forum[PlowSite.com]. It is interesting that VS seems very intent on removing the creators of spam and content that is considered disruptive without disregard. But, this type of content that I posted in my emails was completely acceptable until I complained. What happens when no in the community complains? What happens when the content is endorsed by the volunteer staff that VS claims that it moderators must follow the guideline: “You will take appropriate action whenever you are notified of content that violates VerticalScope policy or promptly escalate matters to VerticalScope for review. To the extent you are uncertain about what is the appropriate action in particular circumstances, you will contact VerticalScope.” Obviously, the question is do you have to take the appropriate action only when notified? Should’t the actions of moderators be to look out and seek out content that is problematic to the mission of building an inclusive community? Perhaps, I’m asking too much?
At any rate Vertical Scope’s moderation clause in the TOS starts off with this legal double speak: “Acting as a moderator of a forum on Plowsite.com[insert any forum they own they all read the same] is an unofficial, volunteer role. Moderators are not employees, contractors or agents of Plowsite.com or VerticalScope. VerticalScope and Plowsite.com are not responsible for actions or inactions of moderators”. What does that exactly mean I want to know? How can a moderator be both bound to a code of conduct to maintain community standards i.e. taking appropriate actions of dealing with content that violates the rules and yet some how not be agents of Vertical Scope? I really need this explained to me. Because if that is case how then does Vertical Scope justify any action of these volunteers to maintain appropriate community standards for the communities?
In an article by Robert Hiltz for Candaland about VerticalScope’s ownership of gun forums — VP of Content Collum Wood is quoted as saying the follow “VerticalScope owns and operates more than 1,400 enthusiast websites that provide a platform for enthusiasts to share their passions, experiences and hobbies with others, including outdoor websites related to fishing, hunting, boating, camping and shooting. VerticalScope does not participate in any discussions on its platforms but welcomes and values the exchange of ideas, conversations and opinions by its group of passionate enthusiasts.” Like so many things VerticalScope likes to keep the appearance of being dispassionate owners that just basically keep the lights on and the mechanisms of the forum greased so the content can be created by the enthusiasts that populate their virtual communities. This is not exactly truly— considering that Vertical Scope not only picks out the moderators they also create the community rules. They also post content on Survivalist Boards. In 2020 four years after Second Media was purchased by VerticalScope, Inc. the VS Admin posted a collection of military manuals on their survivalist message ranging from Guerrilla Warfare to Small Arms Training. Intriguing choice of material for the company that claims to not interact with its audience to post don’t you think?
Furthermore, I found plenty of content that clearly would be defined as promoting hate and violence violating rule 3 of their code of conduct. Yet, some how VerticalScope would want the average person to believe that these volunteer moderators are not agents of VerticalScope. Even though the ToS makes this statement “You [moderators] will comply with these Terms and Conditions of Service, along with the moderating guidelines and content policies of VerticalScope made available to you from time to time. “ Now the plot thickens! How then is this type of content still so present on the Forums operated by Vertical Scope?
How does such overt racism and support for violence against the poor, the politically different, and other minorities find its way on to sites about Cars , Diesel Engines, or Survivalists? After all aren’t moderators at these sites supposed to follow the policy guidelines set forth by VerticalScope? Yes, yes, they are? But, what happens when they don’t? From my experience it would appear that nothing at all happens. The more you push that VerticalScope has a problem the response from the VP of Community Organization is to block you on twitter. As can be seen here two of the Admins from Powerstroke.org supported the memes of Kylie Rittenhouse killing “commies”. One admin named Heavy_GD writes about sterilizing the medicated and those with mental health issues. That is classic eugenics in a nutshell- criminals can be breed out of our societies like breeding pure-breed horses or dogs. It doesn't work but the idea lingers and if no one complains then it will continue to grow in these websites. As I’ve stated before the poor and immigrants are always easy targets on forums that have been taken over ideologically by the extreme right.
Another group that is safe to mock are the transgendered members of societies. On many of the websites I found numerous memes from far-right meme factories like Snuggleduck.com all over these sites about the LGQTB communities. Especially the transgendered community.
It’s funny how much anger these people who always look down on socialist justice warriors as they call them can muster themselves. The type of anger that NBC reported back in 2019 had real life consequences. An article released by Judd Legum called Facebook “Allows a Prominent Right Wing Website Break The Rules” outlines how The Daily Wire a website created by Ben Shapiro [to promote his very special brand of Right Wing Bigotry] has been allowed by Facebook to continually create a stream of false hoods about everything from LGTQB rights and activism to that of ethnocentric falsehoods about people of color. Many of the ideas that Americans on the right are being attacked and censored are developed by organizations like the Daily Wire, The Federalist, The Blaze and other of groups including The Proud Boys. The manufacture of misinformation through catchy memes is not an accident these memes are designed to increase engagement between like minded people. NPR reported in 2022 that the critical way in which memes work is the following: “So this is where the internet becomes really important because the way in which we are connected, the actual design, brings us into contact with each other but also into contact with content. And it does so by inviting us to use specific keywords or key phrases.”(NPR interview). As you can see in my aforementioned memes about LGTQB members of society the message is clear they transmit the following messages: trans people pretending to be women because of weakness, gay women are tying to be men, and it all ends with a violence being the righteous path to redemption for those on the right wing of society.
Here is another selection of anti-gay anti-trans memes:
I think it is very clear that from this selection that the negative attitudes that are being cultivated against LGTQB members of society is due to the core of the forums being toxic. Boston University ‘s Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering department released a short article “How do memes and misinformation “go viral” online?” points out that “…We studied this phenomenon, and found that communities that do migrate tend to shrink in size, but the users who do make the move become more active and toxic…” This is a critical aspect to the issues facing VerticalScope— their communities are from my anecdotal evidence seeing a distinct reduction in the core members that populated them. Instead of a good cross section of the potential community with a more diverse view of the world these websites are reducing in size and forming a nucleus of members that are more toxic—but very active. Furthermore, the fact that Vertical Scope wishes to distance themselves from these issues of community decline and toxicity are amplified by their policy of using members of the very toxic groups themselves to self-police. This is like putting a KKK member in the Sheriff’s office and not expecting to see issues. I don’t think it takes an expert in behavioral sciences to see that people that support these types of memes certainly aren’t going to support an inclusive online community.
And that is certainly a huge problem. However, the bigger problem is often more basic that VerticalScope in their quest to gain as much market share of the online forum game has just purchased some problematic sites. Sites like Survivalist Boards.com where I found some of the most racist memes against Blacks on any site:
However, the survivalists did more than just meme— they decided that it would be great to actually delve deeply into reparations.
The impetus for this was the news of a fake riot in Minneapolis that sent the forum into a tizzy with talks about shipping minorities out of the nation or worse yet shooting them on sight. And of course once the Right Wing starts to hear that riots are happening out comes the Anti-Jewish themed memes:
While this might be Nazis Propaganda there is no-doubt that the Soros mythology that can be found spread by the Heritage Foundation and think tanks of this type have helped to prime these communities to further these types of thoughts. VerticalScope is at least morally culpable for their part in empowering this type of behavior—even if it isn’t legally culpable at times.
The ever popular “New World Order Theory” is a cornucopia of ideas but in most cases it includes the idea that a major Jewish Banking Conspiracy by the Rothschilds’ is occurring. Or now the Rothschild’s have been replaced with George Soros as a new dog whistle for a corrupt finical system by Jews. This has been very popular with Fox News, CATO Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. For everyone one article you find in Heritage Foundation’s archive telling its readers that Anti-Semitism is Bad— you find at least two articles promoting the exact opposite message about George Soros. The concept is what is called a type-token relationship. A type-token relationship is best described as a relationship between a class of objects and individual members of the class. So, by using Soros in the same relationship to things that have traditionally been seen as jewish conspiracies; Soros becomes the token of the class of things known as jewish conspiracies. This also true for the other type-token relationship on many of the message boards about Floyd George being a token of black men who were felons not victims of police brutality.
These memes found on forums own by Vertical or its many subsidiaries shows the fact that type of type-token relationship between the victim of police violence Floyd George and the myth of white police violence against black people or even more general the myth of black victimhood in a systemically racist system. Instead the images depict Floyd George as either a drug addict or violent criminal who obviously got the justice he deserve-DEATH! And that it is ultimately not a problem for society since Floyd George was in fact not going to be a doctor or a NASA Astronaut he was just another black person with a drug habit that ultimately died from it. Thus the message is the complete exoneration of the white cop that killed him.
Now, companies like VerticalScope have enjoyed a massively successful interpretation of corporate liability under Section 230c of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230c has allowed the companies like VerticalScope and others to insist that they are conduits of materials and not publishers of materials and therefore they have no liability for the quality, accuracy , or nature of the content they publish unless it violates very specific laws. Those laws namely having to do with sex trafficking and child pornography. The case of Zeran v. American Online 1996, the US courts upheld the fact that American Online was in fact shield from the laws that govern the normal publishing world and this pattern of legal safeguards have continued until recently.
My position has always been very different. The liability I have been pushing is that a forum sets up a code of conduct it obligated to enforce such codes of conduct uniformly and justly. After all a ToS is in fact a contract and if one party is willing to break the contract it is null and void. However, the contract that most ToS represent are in fact unfair after all— the ToS that VerticalScope issues states the following that I’ve posted above. However, this attempt to leave themselves without any liability has failed in recent years. Especially in Canada the home of VerticalScope.com. In the case of Pritchard v. Van Nes, the British Columbia Supreme Court made the following ruling:
This ruling in conjunction with the new Californian Law AB 587 which was signed into law in 2022 forces social media companies like VerticalScope to do the following: “publicly post their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies”(GovCA.Gov). This puts a new wrinkle on the idea of not enforcing their ideas as the above part of the ToS reports. So, the legal framework that large social media companies have always relied on to keep themselves safe from the extreme users is beginning to crumble.
However, I myself am curious if these websites are more vulnerable to basic fraud claims to their users. In this case I put forth the idea that while large social media corporations are attempting to secure their lack of liability by telling their members that they have no obligation to monitor their properties. They are simultaneously creating a code of rules that clearly creates the reading that members of this community will be safe from racial discrimination and degrading comments:
Then it becomes hard to justify how the company can simultaneously enforce rules that prohibit abusive, libelous, hateful, offensive (whether in relation to sex, race, religion or otherwise), defamatory , obscene , vulgar, harassing, pornographic… “ without actually moderating these forums? And if they have no obligation to monitor these forums then why do they have a need monitors? And community managers like VP Joe Pishgar that describes the rule of monitoring as the following on his own blog:
There is no such thing as a “public” forum online, and discussion happens under the auspices of your will, in a privately owned setting. Consider your forum to be your living room. You can make someone [to] leave; it’s your home! There might be consequences to those actions, but remembering the quote from He-Man: “I haaaaave the power!” can take the momentary sting out of being called a doodyhead in a thousand creative ways. Eliciting an emotional response is often the intent from the trolls – don’t give in. (Pishgar 7 tips)
So, this means that while the Verticalscope corporation tells its users on one hand we have no responsibility when you’re harassed, defamed, or your privacy is violated to remove those posters or even that content necessarily. The VP of community management is singing a different tune on his own blog. The VP tells the truth this is private organizations can control the discourse on their websites. And in fact their ToS and Community standards are the documents they have created also define the type of interactions to be allowed on their websites. So the question becomes can you have a contract that is both binding in this manner to your users? For example the contract clearly states that VerticalScope expects its its members to abide by specific standards of conduct on their forums as I posted above. And yet, at the same time VerticalScope, claims they are not “obligated to monitor any blogs, message boards…” and then they claim that they have a specific set of guidelines to do just this by their moderating staffing:
According to the terms of service: “You [Moderators] will comply with these Terms and Conditions of Service, along with the moderating guidelines and content policies of Second Media [ a company own since 2016 by VerticalScope according to Crunchbase.com] made available to you from time to time”— It is hard to not accept not only does VerticalScope have a moderation team i.e. people that monitor the community and this team is directly responsible to the corporation VerticalScope itself in this moderating process.
So, I find it hard to accept the idea that while VerticalScope is claimin that at one point: they have no obligation to monitor these forums and thus no liability to the general user, while they are also declaring that a specific group of volunteers acting as administrators and moderators are also enforcing the codes of conduct that Vertical Scope itself has setup to operate these forums? Let that sink for a second. So, we have a contradiction in this contract that seems to imply that VerticalScope does want to set up community standards like the one in this ToS; but, on the other hand they want absolutely no liability when it comes to failures of enforcement of these community standards. Thus, the fantastic claims of not being liable anymore or having any obligation to monitor the forums they own. However, the ruling by British Columbia’s Supreme Court in Pritchard v. Van Nes and the new CA AB 587 looks like this contradiction is becoming less legally viable at this point in time.
The Ruling of Pritchard v. Van Nes clearly should put forum owners like VerticalScope on edge since people like myself have informed them of overt racism perpetrated by their own staff makes them culpable in the deformation of many groups. I think we can all see that VerticalScope’s model of moderation is failing miserably since it like Facebook is more than willing to look the other way when it comes to racism on its forums. Thus on the service it would fail the liability test presented in Pritchard v. Van Nes. Thus VerticalScope is highly vulnerable to liability lawsuits in its homeland of Canada. And in California it would appear that AB 587 is going to force VerticalScope into the sticky position of having to finally do something about its racism problem by either declaring that its policies are not being followed or trying to claim that it is a free speech absolute space like Reddit has claimed for so many years. It would appear that VerticalScope and its similar forum operators might actually have to get serious about the dilemma that faces them: allow vocal groups with problematic content control their websites or shed off market share and instead try to develop more inclusive forum groups?
Part IV will include interviews with Southern Poverty Law Center as I delve into the options open for people fight back against Racists being covered by corporations for profit.
Either you have a lot of issues to work through... or you are blatantly scamming gullible, frightened people.
Wait, the *company* posted guerilla warfare manuals on their Survivalist Website? 😲