{"id":145,"date":"2008-01-30T16:30:09","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T23:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/wp\/?p=145"},"modified":"2009-06-17T17:41:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-18T00:41:05","slug":"my-space-vs-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/2008\/01\/30\/my-space-vs-atheism\/","title":{"rendered":"My Space vs Atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day<\/a> and I plan to I am damned tired of My Space’s crappy design, banner ads, despicable parent company and spam, not to mention burgeoning privacy problems. If that is not enough to get you to delete your profile and salt the virtual earth, here is infuriating news<\/a> from the Secular Student Alliance:<\/p>\n

Cleveland, OH.\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Social networking site, MySpace.com, panders to religious intolerants by deleting atheist users, groups and content.
\nEarly this month, MySpace again deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group (35,000 members). This deletion, due largely to complaints from people who find atheism offensive, marks the second time MySpace has cancelled the group since November 2007.
\nWhat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unique in this case is that the Atheist and Agnostic Group was the largest collection of organized atheists in the world. The group had its own Wikipedia entry, and in April won the Excellence in Humanist Communication Award (2007) from the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University and the Secular Student Alliance.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153MySpace refuses to undelete the group, although it never violated any terms of service,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Bryan Pesta, Ph.D., the group\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moderator. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When the largest Christian group was hacked, MySpace\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is an outrage if Rupert Murdoch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s News Corporation and the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largest social networking site tolerate discrimination against atheists and agnostics– and if this situation goes unresolved I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have little choice but to believe they do,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Greg Epstein, humanist chaplain of Harvard University. News Corporation, Murdoch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s global media corporation which also includes Fox News, purchased MySpace in 2005.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My personal profile was deleted as well, and despite weeks of emails to customer service, plus a petition signed by 500 group members, MySpace won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t budge. I think these actions send a clear message to the 30 million godless people in America (and to businesses whose money was spent displaying ads on our group) that we are not welcome on MySpace,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Pesta.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Myspace.com: a place for friends…in Christ.
\nGoodbye.
\nUPDATE (2.1.2008)<\/strong>: MySpace.com has reinstated the group<\/a>, but not without some difficulties. Has this been a concerted effort from Myspace to discriminate against atheists? Maybe not, but their actions and inaction coupled with their other business practices continues to keep me well away from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day and I plan to I am damned tired of My Space’s crappy design, banner ads, despicable parent company and spam, not to mention burgeoning privacy problems. If that is not enough to get you to delete your profile and salt the virtual earth, here is infuriating news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","czr-hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71YpQ-2l","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnnylogic.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}