Tim Barrus, New York Times
The New York Times has banned my voice. I am a communist. Not their kind of person. I don’t see things (like life) the same way gatekeepers do. They have made it very clear. They are not banning me necessarily for the ideas I articulate. THEY BAN ME FOR WHO I AM. First my stuff gets accepted. Thirty minutes later it disappears. Why because one gatekeeper will let me in. But the supervisory gatekeeper says: Take it down because we don’t like what he says. This has happened over and over and again and again. How many people get told their work is accepted in comments. And then see that very work click off into a note: “The comment you are looking for is currently unavailable.” You have jerked me around for a long time. Because the New York Times Comments Supervisors wield their power promiscuously and arbitrarily with malicious intent by reversing earlier decisions made to allow my work to get published. Your employees and representatives have indulged in this discrimination time and time again by accepting my work and then suddenly, it gets pulled down. In house company email will prove this during discovery. This has never been done to any other writer. Banning writers and what they have to say is censorship and it has damaged me both personally and professionally and in a malicious way that has prohibited me from making a living. Banning voices they do not like is what these people do. They can’t even make up their own minds because the inconsistent way in which their policy toward these individuals is first to accept, and while Comments can manage their business anyway they like, they still can’t damage members of the public. They can be sued. They can be brought to heel. I have been discriminated against because I am a high functioning autistic with very well defined disabilities that have been filed with the New York Times they didn’t know any of this. Yes. You did. I told you what would happen and it did. The New York Times does not tolerate dissent, and my dissent is a matter of public record. There is a long paper trail. Comments supervisor who has deleted my professional work doesn’t understand that the names and addresses of all the people who work in comments can be requested during discovery. This would then be public information. We need to know if Comments People are damaging other writers and we will have to interview them along with all of the supervisors involved including the people who made the format called Comments. The question about how many people have been damaged by the maliciousness must be answered. There are perhaps a lot more disabled people who are not allowed at the New York Times because they have been banned for what they have to say. We will have to request records that can shed light on all of this. One more thing. The New York Times has no policy regarding literary rights claims of the New York Times regarding comments. I own everything I write. I have told the New York Times over and over and over again that I am publishing a book and that book is going to arrive with all the comments I have made and these will be juxtaposed against comments that were put up and then ripped down. By comments. None of this is a secret. My assumption is you just don’t care and that is fine. I have been informed that if you put MY comments together, you have a dialogue. The New York Times cannot retroactively claim they own everything in sight and from the past. Your policies are what they are. Why change them suddenly. You CANNOT claim you own my work because — look at what you are overtly doing as company communications will prove these people have exchanged their own comments with one another. About me. Personally. And about my work. How can we hurt him. This is collusion that facilitates overt discrimination against the disabled. And how they can develop policy that discriminates malevolently against me as a writer and I have been damaged as my voice has been obliterated time and time again in a pattern that we have constructed like a timeline. A pattern of abuse. Which is what the bait and switch tactics employed with yes we want it no we don’t. At one point you must have thought there was some value there. To only reverse yourselves. Yes, this is abuse. It has been a pleasure dealing with you, and I am going to continue comment submissions and I want you to focus on that word. SUBMISSIONS. This is a word that is common terminology IN PUBLISHING. As opposed to simply a meaningless cliche called comments. Comments are not important to you beyond journalism because you divide the two. Thusly, you did not give comments the same focus that you give to letters. Comments carry little value to you as you point out, many publications dropped comments. Fine. But many of those comments were about the publications themselves. I have published in the New York Times and I know how it works. Disabled writers are few and far between. They might arrive. And then they leave. It must be tough working there. You ban my voice. There is a pattern. This is about content that gatekeepers put in a personal context as they interpret my work and my very self with hateful contempt. We are allowed no voice, and I have the book to prove it. I do not want to hear from you. I have a voice. It’s not a nice voice but no one else has it and I am disabled. I face stigma and scorn. When are you going to realize that in comment moderation not everyone is going to embrace the same values. To ban writers is to suggest you are fundamentally intolerant. Why would you tell someone you are publishing them, and then capriciously — THE COMMENT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE. I am an Artist. Everything I do is art. Everything. Maybe I will just walk away from this. You guys are mean and you push people around. That’s not journalism. It’s called PETTY. You have no respect for readers whatsoever. You can’t even make your own mind up in knowing what you want. You don’t know what you want. Do you see any contradiction in the statements below. No. You don’t. I will continue to comment. I will publish comments you accept and comments you won’t. I can make a dozen timelines. I have been commenting for a long time now. You have as of today made no public claims to comments. The real problem here is that your moderators are not qualified or validated if they have no names. If they have no names, where do they get off making judgments about our work, and in my case, about me. Is he crazy, he can’t say that to us. You are basically unfair and it compels me to write about it. Or you could end comments and I would write about that. It is what I do. Comment moderation is going to be a main event as Congress peers into regulation of the Internet. The stereotype it will construct will be the good guys and the bad guys. My throat again. My media days are done. Don’t call me. I’ll call you. Civility is always what you define it to be.