Patterico's Pontifications

10/11/2010

Brad Friedman Moderates Comments That Mention His Terrorist Pal

Filed under: Brad Friedman,Brett Kimberlin,General,Velvet Revolution — Patterico @ 7:31 pm



A picture is worth a thousand words:

Note how the comments mentioning “Brett Kimberlin” or “Velvet Revolution” are moderated, while the other one is not.

Friedman will tell you that he has mentioned Kimberlin before and is not afraid of having the association mentioned.

So why censor any mention of his bomber friend or the site they founded together?

Socrates got the same results.

Thanks to Dustin and Socrates for carrying out this experiment.

UPDATE: A commenter objects that we didn’t isolate the name “Brett Kimberlin” alone. Actually, we did:

8 Responses to “Brad Friedman Moderates Comments That Mention His Terrorist Pal”

  1. I understand Brad Friedman is partners with convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin of Velvet Revolution.

    Hey look! My comment appeared!

    Patterico (c218bd)

  2. Respected blog-host

    Your experiment seems to lack a little Boolean rigour …

    While the three samples shown do seem to establish that “Velvet” or “Revolution” or *both* seem to get a comment put into moderation, the hypothesis does not seem to have been tested for “Brett” or “Kimberlin” or *both* …

    In the example with the explicit “Brett Kimberlin”, since it also contained the text “Velvet Revolution”, that could suffice to explain the comment being put into moderation …

    With that said, and now having read the Socrates link, that does seem to have covered the remaining possibility …

    (grin)

    (Hey – I’m a mainframe computer geek – and I have to fix things like this way too often !)

    Alasdair (205079)

  3. Alasdair:

    We did that too.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  4. Alasdair: See the update.

    Patterico (c218bd)

  5. Sunlight is not kind to these people.

    JD (1507cd)

  6. Playing Devil’s Advocate… not being a reader of Friedman’s site, is it possible that he got a lot of abusive posts that warranted sending posts with those terms into moderation?

    malclave (1db6c5)

  7. Alasdair, that was my mistake, and Patterico pointed that out and I quickly ensured a more strict test that only changed that element.

    I don’t think you have any reason to apologize for this geeky point. It’s a very good point and I wish I had thought of that initially.

    Dustin (b54cdc)

  8. And isn’t this just the creepiest thing?

    If you google “top-flight con man”, the fifth link goes to a book about Kimberlin (Citizen K). Brad and Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution took in at least half a million dollars, if Time Magazine’s description of their prize promise (to others) is factual.

    Brad works with congressmen, is puffed on CNN, and a favorite of some Soros bloggers and is desperate to hold back any mention of his own partner.

    You might be a creep if: You and a partner have a high dollar 501c3, and you set up a filter to prevent that partner’s name from appearing on your blog.

    BTW, the comments no longer are in moderation, and did not appear, which I take as evidence an actual person decided to moderate these questions.

    I wonder if anyone is asking Network for Good if they have any evidence that these donations have been accounted for. I think I’ll go ahead and email them about it.

    Dustin (b54cdc)


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