Yahoo Reverses Allah Ban

damnal writes "Yahoo's ban on "Allah" in users names, has been reversed. The ban was instituted due to a number of people registering for IDs using specific terms with the sole purpose of promoting hate. Yahoo's comment on the reversal: "We recently re-evaluated the term 'Allah,' and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse.""

Comments

reversed?

[TheUnknownOne]

I wouldn't say it's been reversed so much as removed... If it was reversed they would be requiring the string Allah in usernames, then again maybe i'm just nuts.

Re:reversed?

[TubeSteak]

Slashdot is considering requiring Allah to be appended to all User Names.

Yours will soon be: AllahTheUnknownOne
Mine will soon be: AllahsTubeSteak

Yahoo!'s transition to a media company

[metlin]

While I don't recall Yahoo! performing any heroic deeds in the past, I don't recall them not having a spine, either. However, latetly I've seen the do some pretty spineless things - disclosing information to the Chinese government (twice!), this etc.

Is this because of Yahoo!'s change of focus? They're trying hard to become a media company rather than a technology company.

And of course, considering the fact that someone like Terry Semel (a media executive with little to no technology experience) is leading them, such policies would not be surprising. Ever since Semel's been on board, Yahoo! has taken great pains to build a brand-name, and a lot of tech folks have been replaced by older media people, and Semel has indicated that Yahoo! would "diversify" the way Warner Brothers did.

So, that probably explains why Yahoo! is afraid to ruffle any feathers. While companies like Microsoft and Google are still technology companies at heart, Yahoo! is probably attempting to get into the media, and having bad publicity in the media industry has worse consequences than it would in the high-tech industry.

Just a thought, that's all.

Re:Yahoo!'s transition to a media company

[Otter]

I agree on the China end, but the Allah thing seems to have been a stopgap measure put in to block some idiot and reversed once he got bored and went away. No one would have noticed it if some blogger hadn't picked that brief interval to try to register some *allah* name, flipped out and hit the blogopanic blogobutton.

Given that Slashcode is full of features designed to thwart some specific jackass who hasn't been here in five years, at least Yahoo deserves credit for cleaning this up afterwards.

You can use Mohammed in your name

[winkydink]

but you can't have a pic on your profile.

You might want to take that back

[eclectro]

and users can now register for IDs with this word because it is no longer a significant target for abuse.

Now that it has hit the front page of slashdot, it is once again the target for abuse.

What a bunch of dorks

[pclminion]

They don't have the balls to just come out and say "Yes, we banned Allah because we were afraid of terrorists blowing up our office." This line about the word being used abusively is a load of horse shit. Last I checked Jesus Christ was not a banned term. And we all know that "Jesus Christ" is never used as an expletive or in an offensive way. Whatever.

Now they've realized the idiocy of what they did, and again, rather than admit "Wow, we didn't realize how many words contain the letters 'allah'" they put out some garbage about how "Allah is no longer being used abusively on our sites."

Huh?

[thegrassyknowl]

We recently re-evaluated the term

Looks to me like a typical management-induced knee jerk reaction to a minor problem and the subsequent FUD to try and hide the fact that management were in error.

All I can say is...

[DemingBuiltMyHotRod]

Allah-eluiah

Re:Considering recent riots...

[Jozer99]

Callahans of the world rejoice!

Re:Reversed it?

[Otter]

No, it's a grave offense to Jews to use the name of our bread that way.

I think I've snapped from all the loonie news

[MarkusQ]

Yahoo Reverses Allah Ban

I think I've finally snapped from all the loonie news lately. My first thought was: "What!? Now you are required to have 'Allah' in your name? That's even worse!"

--MarkusQ

And before you give me grief, in just the last few weeks:

• Hundreds of people have killed each other over a bunch of cartoons.
• The vice president of the US shot someone
• Bell South wants to charge Google for using its bandwidth when Bell South's customers use Google's services for free and already pay Bell South for the privilege.
• We are engaged in a huge debate, not over the fact that the control of our nation's ports has been turned over to foreign governments in the first place, but rather over the fact that it may be racist to suggest that a nation that funded Bin Ladin, passed sensitive information to him, had top level meetings with him, recognized the Taliban, and was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers might not be trustworthy
• People have been caught distributing free software in accordance with the license, and had their CDs seized to protect the rights of the Authors who gave them permission in the first place

Re:Risky business

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a likeness of Mohammad: :-)

No, no look here: @:-)

Re:Considering recent riots...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Find images
2. Make t-shirts
3. Prophet

Allah=God, hate who ??

[Bahrani]

Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Arab Christians use it to mean 'Jesus' and Arab Jews use it too, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah#Usage