Yahoo Censoring Their Message Boards?

lost_packet writes "Today's Boston Globe has an article about yahoo removing posts from their chat boards. quote:"The truthfulness of these messages wasn't in dispute, said Yahoo chief executive Jeff Mallett. But the company took down the material to reduce its impact. Yahoo has to ''be careful'' because ''what we publish can influence a lot of people's lives,'' Mallett said in an recent interview." " The scary thing about this is that if you remove messages, you are supposedly liable for the rest of them. Its definitely a sticky situation.

Comments

How would Slashdot react?

[Enoch Root]

That raises an interesting question. The article implies that they removed information that was confidential in nature and could have been harmful if kept public (something to do with Lockheed-Martin... Wish I knew the whole story.)

Now, the moderation system here works wonders. That is, it works wonders to moderate down '1st post!'-ers and other trolls.

But what if sensitive personal information was posted? Say, Hemos' phone number and sexual preference? Or the password of a few Government mainframes? (I'm not saying they're of equal sensitivity, mind... :) )

How would the Slashdot crew react, then? Should the posts be removed under the basis of, I don't know, unfair use of a public BBoard system, thus exercising editorial control however limited? Should the post be left there? Should a system be put in place for messages to be permanently deleted from the system by a sort of moderation process? (Say, if it hits 5 -1's, it's deleted, or a special moderation category.)

I hope such a situation never arises on Slashdot, because I like the system as it is, moderated by the people, and every message available for reading. (I read even -1 comments, because sometimes they're insightful if not well-spoken, or downright funny.)

But, well... What if?

"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"