More absurd anti-Atheist discrimination ala MySpace

Way back in April of 2005 a friend of mine from Uni invited me to join MySpace. Despite the emo feel to the thing (Facebook seems a tad less juvenile - the Vampires and Werewolves being the exception that proves the existence of the rule) I joined up. It had a blog publishing feature and so I started blogging there and then (I was curious about it for a while before hand.)

Nope, my old, old pre-Rave and Rant blog isn’t there anymore.

After a few months, it turned out that News Corp was taking the damn thing over. Rumors persisted that people who criticised Faux News were being censored (mainly through the banning of groups that covered their gaffes and distortions). That being the case I hoped on over to Blogspot because I wasn’t going to be in a place where I could talk about the contents of Greenwald’s polemic Outfoxed without risk of having my stuff deleted.

These were still rumors however (let’s face it, you don’t need much incentive to ditch MySpace anyway).

As it happens though, censorship is happening on MySpace. Or at least, that’s Bryan Pesta’s account. In 2007 the “Atheist and Agnostic Group” which he moderates was hacked and vandalised (being renamed “Jesus is Love” of all things), however the group was eventually restored by MySpace. Prior to this hacking incident, MySpace deleted the “Atheist and Agnostic Group” after lobbying from Christian groups on MySpace. It eventually back-flipped and restored the group (demonstrating that it can be restored.)

Again, after all of this, the group has been deleted again, this time again by MySpace (not hackers) who just prior to the deletion sent Pesta a message telling him that the group was scheduled for deletion. Even Bryan Pesta’s profile had been deleted.

Up until now, MySpace hasn’t given any comment or response to either the media or to Pesta. As of writing now, the group has only just been restored however in Pesta’s own words;

“Est. Group Restored! (though regulars appear to still be banned). No one at myspace has contacted me, but someone obviously got the group back. Thanks to all, and myspace. I hope the group can live up to expectations given the strong community support we got re all this…

…I have no smoking gun. I cannot produce any internal Myspace memo saying “crush the heathens”.

However, I assert that our group’s history up to its recent deletion (1/1/ establishes a prima facie case that we were deleted for religious reasons:

Note first that I ran the group for almost 3 years, and was very careful to not violate any TOS.

We were deleted two years ago due to complaints from a group called the “Christian Crusaders.” They would search Myspace for profiles they found offensive, and then mass complain to customer service.

Their strategy was to send so many emails to customer service that someone, somewhere at Myspace would delete the profile or group.

It worked. They were able to get us deleted for a few weeks til myspace restored us (pre-news corp; Tom Anderson, himself posted to our group offering to protect us). The “Christian Crusaders” also got many other groups and profiles deleted, including a large pro choice group. “

(Bryan Pesta, 200

Actually, I can remember the banning of the pro-choice group. I was a member of it! I didn’t realise the role “Christian Crusaders” had though.

One can speculate about how much of the discrimination is knowingly facilitated by (or even instigated by) MySpace, but the role of a motivated, anti-democratic Christian lobby group with a chip on its shoulder can not be denied. Perhaps they recognise someone’s right to be an Atheist, but as long as they do it in the privacy of their own home? Provided they don’t communicate with like minded individuals where someone else might observe a part of their sordid discussion?

Notably religious groups on MySpace have not had the same problems. This is real, popular, organised Atheist-hate. At least the MySpace Atheists got their lines of communication back (albeit somewhat disturbed).

Time for a refresher for the deniers I think…

My sympathies to all the Atheists living in Amerika where most of this crap hails from.

~ Bruce

PS. Hat tip to AV and OZAtheist on this one.