Yahoo is censoring as much of the Internet as they can. They are
deliberately messing with transgender groups, intersex people, peace/anti-war
activists, have deleted queer sites and have blatantly admitted that they
intentionally change users' email text.
For those of us who don't use Yahoo, a Yahoogroup is a cross between a
homepage and an email list. And Yahoo is running them like something out of
Orwell's Big Brother. First off, using or making a group listed under
"lesbian gay and bisexual" is not age-restricted at all, but "transgender" is
automatically designated as "adult" and restricted to "age 18+."
Yahoogroups are also censored. I have met Sophie Siedlberg (please
forgive me if I misspelled it in any way), co-founder of the Salmacis
Advocacy, an England-based group dedicated to advocating for intersex people
and "anyone who's been harmed by normalising surgery." According to Sophie,
porno spammers have been targeting her Yahoogroup list, trying to sell sex
toys to survivors of IGM (Intersex Genital Mutilation), and their addresses
show they are from inside Yahoo. Yahoo has refused to do anything about
this, though they have censored the Salmacis Yahoogroup, as I quote her
letter,
" I am also very angry with them over the issue of how they "Edit" those
introductory pages. When I was writing up some of the front pages for the
lists. I came across the situation where the statement I had written, which
was purely medical, omitted words that could be "Construed as offensive" one
example was "Variable sex differentiation and metabolic/endocrine
disturbances" This had to be changed because it was considered "Pornographic"
Odd when you then get all these porno spams with "(Insert abusive
term)@Yahoo.com". With Subject lines like "Get your chix with dicks here"
And please post this on if you like because when trying to run a serious
medical list, about people who have been victims of IGM, and Yahoo adopt
this cavalier attitude, you kind of wonder who is running these ISPs to be
honest."
I don't think any other words are necessary to cover that issue, as
hers sum it up perfectly.
When I passed this along to Imani Henry of the International Action
Center I learned that Yahoo has been doing likewise to
anti-war/peace/liberal/leftist activists.
And recently Yahoo has admitted that they change the text of peoples'
emails without their consent or even their knowledge, as an article I will
forward as well clearly shows; the beauty part is that I and my allies
learned of this development through a Yahoogroup, the ActionGreens group.
And as the Online Policy Group site documents, Yahoo has been using
their Geocities web service to delete queer sites hosted on their network,
like the Queer Guerilla Bar site based in California.
I have tried emailing Yahoo in the past and recently, and nobody ever
reads their "feedback forms." And I called Yahoo's NYC number, and they
hostilely denied all my questions, refused to talk to me, and claimed that I
needed to call the California division when I wouldn't just hang up.
Needless to say, they don't seem to care at all, with an attitude like that,
about making the company more queer-friendly, or more friendly, or even
humanoid. I urge you to pass this along to as many people as you can, and
let's see what we can accomplish ion this.
Thank you,
Cynthya BrianKate