FriendFeed no longer so friendly?
I found this meme about FriendFeed being like “Syphilis” to be kind of odd. In short, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington likens FriendFeed to a place where “mob justice enthusiasts” are able to thrive. It’s understandable of course that there should be concern about people “becoming comfortable writing seriously threatening stuff under their real name,” particularly for a relatively high profile guy like Arrington who does get real world-threatened on occasion.
I guess I find this take on FriendFeed to be odd because some have been worried about the power of web communities since the earliest days of forums and blogging. MC Siegler picks up the thread (where I first caught onto it) and is encouraged that FriendFeed has reacted by putting the ability for thread owners to be able to shut down threads they deem to be out of control.
Is this the right take though? I’m not sure. If individuals are threatening, legitimately dangerous, or repeatedly violating website policies, they should be banned (not the easiest thing to enforce, but that’s another story).
Commenting trolls are never fun and never easy to get rid of, but I wonder if taking it to Syphilis/penicillin levels is going a bit far.
All of this said, I haven’t spent all that much time on FriendFeed of late. Might have something to do with my social media blackout sympathies, and might have to do in part with the redesign that I can’t quite get with.
