Stand Alone Domains Allow Bloggers Unfiltered Freedom of Speech

After reading the AP article, “Rights like free speech do not always extend online” in which popular websites frequently delete massive amounts of user generated content that is in “violation” of company terms of service I am reminded of the fact that I can spend hours creating a blog on a website have a great following and every bit of the content can be deleted without so much as an email telling me why.

Years ago this blog got started on Blogger. Blogger and Wordpress.com are great to get a blog up and running in just a few minutes.  The drawback to both of these popular blogging websites is they bind users to Terms of Service that include deleting any content that the provider finds objectionable without notice.

That rule plus Blogger stamped my blog as a splog was one of the main reasons that I made the investment into a standalone domain and installed the Wordpress software on it.  Even though I still have profiles on blogger, wordpress.com, yahoo360, Myspace, and Facebook I do not write on them as I would for this blog.  Here I write about what I want and use whatever terminology that I want without fear that it will be deleted withoug my consent.  Even comments that I don’t agree with will still be posted in there original form.

Sure I still have to abide by the rules of my host provider but if we were to have a disagreement I have a backup of all of my content and could easily transfer this entire blog to another web host.  Such is not the case with free providers that offer no backup feature.

Wordpress and a standalone domain name allows me and millions of other bloggers the freedom to say what we want when we want and not have to worry about our content being censored.  The day that freedom of speech ends on the Internet will be the day that this blog shuts down.  I hope to never see that day.