What is Abuse? What is Freedom of Speech?

From WordPress

Abuse

We suspend blogs or blog posts for the following types of abuse:

  • Personal threats
  • Calls to violence
  • Impersonation of a private person

We will not suspend blogs for other reasons you might find objectionable. For example, we don’t suspend blogs for describing a negative experience they have had with a business, or for being generally offensive (see this section on freedom of speech for more information). Instead of asking us to suspend such a blog, please consider either responding in the blog’s comments or on your own blog/site to set the record straight, by simply ignoring the issue (blogs that use insults and bad language tend to have low credibility and low traffic in the first place), or by seeking a court order against the blog.

If you would like to file an abuse complaint, please follow these steps:

  1. Verify that the blog in question is hosted by Automattic. We have no control over blogs that say “Powered by WordPress.org.” Those blogs use the open source WordPress software and are not hosted by us. Please contact the appropriate web host with complaints. We only host blogs that have “wordpress.com” in their URL or that say “powered by WordPress.com” on the site.
  2. Review our information about anonymity, defamation, court orders, and subpoenas. We have created a support document to describe our position on these issues.
  3. Contact the blogger directly. Go to the blog post in question and leave a comment with your complaint to see if the matter can be resolved directly between you and the blogger. All comments posted on a WordPress.com blog are automatically emailed to the blog owner.
  4. Send us your complaint. If the issue cannot be resolved directly with the blogger, send us your complaint using the form below. Please provide specific links and quotations of the offending material or your complaint will be discarded. If the blog is written in a language other than English, please provide a translation.

Freedom of Speech

The team behind WordPress.com strongly believes in freedom of speech. Our service is designed to let internet users freely express any ideas and opinions without us censoring or endorsing them. We think this has led to many great blogs being published on WordPress.com. However, you may also find the occasional blog that offends you. It might offend us as well, but while we are strict about shutting down blogs that violate our terms of service (no spam, personal threats, incitement of violence, etc), we will not shut down blogs because they are offensive. We think the right response to bad or offensive ideas is to speak out against them, not to censor them.

One comment

  1. […] Cathy Brennan Feel free to file a copyright claim. http://bugbrennan.com/what-is-abuse-what-is-freedom-of-speech/ […]

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