Here’s Your Chance To Reclaim Free Speech

By Paul Elam: As many of you know, we just had a magnificent conference on men’s issues in London, England. It was a brilliant event that went off without a hitch. Thanks to the work of Mike Buchanan it was a full house, wall to wall with amazing people.
The only downer of the entire event was that I had to make the announcement during my speech that the A Voice for Men Facebook page was deleted by the management there. Also, at this point I can say that my appeal to have the page reinstated has gone ignored. 35,000 followers dismissed by Facebook for not towing the feminist, politically correct line.
This is part of a now quite familiar trend of social media platforms, which are essentially the modern equivalent of what we used to call telecommunications companies, controlling the expression and even the ideas of their customers.
Every time one of these events happens on Twitter, (and again) Facebook or other popular outlet, we see people in the comments lamenting the dogmatic discrimination and suggesting that “someone” needs to create an alternative platform.
They’re right. Someone needs to create alternatives that respect free speech and the open arena of ideas. So we did. It’s now located at socfreespeech.com.

Using Reddit open source software, we have created a platform where current events and self-published ideas can be discussed without the interference of political correctness.
As you will see in the terms of service, there is a very narrow range of postings not permitted. They are as follows:

• No doxing nor any content that in any way infringes upon the privacy of private individuals. Though our parent organization is based in the US, the stricter standards of EU privacy law are probably a good guideline about what is and is not okay.
• No violence, advocacy nor incitement to violence.
• No porn.
• No spam.
• No piracy or other intellectual property theft (whether software, music or movies etc), though we regard the US principles of Fair Use in high esteem, particularly where content relates to criticism and commentary.
• Nothing that is illegal in the United States (and the State of Nevada in particular).

That’s the list. Nothing else is disallowed. Users can create subreddits for men’s issues, feminism, atheism, religion, liberalism, conservatism or anything else you can imagine within the terms of service.
There will never be interference from management on any matter that does not violate the TOS as outlined above.
We don’t even care if you want to create r/avfmsucks. AVFM owns the property, but we don’t care what the tenants have to say about anything. AVFM staff has strict instructions not to interfere with anything that is not a violation of TOS.

The idea here is to create a web platform where free speech (at least the kind that does not get us into legal troubles) is the one and only rule of the day. We have lost touch with that throughout our society and it is time that someone actually sets an example by offering an alternative.
The new platform, while quite functional and operationally sound, is still a work in progress. It likely always will be. There will be bugs to iron out. This will be a community project in the truest sense.
Any experts in Reddit open source software that are willing to share their expertise are welcome to contact us, and we have created a subreddit for bug reports here.
With that, and on behalf of the entire AVFM staff, we welcome you to SFS! Anticipating that there will be those who ask how they can help, the best thing you can possibly do is go there now and register. Vote and comment on threads. Start your own subreddit to cover an area of interest in your life and promote it on social media.
You are also invited to hold our feet to the fire on our word. If you see anything that hints of suppression of speech that is not a violation of our TOS, please come directly to the comments of the most recent AVFM article and go off-topic to let us know about it. This won’t work without everyone staying honest and above board.
If you are sick and tired of ideologues invading public forums and fitting everyone for gags, as they have in so much of the online world, here is your chance to be a part of something they will never have a hope of co-opting. All you have to do is help us make it happen.

About Paul Elam

Paul Elam is an author, the founder of A Voice for Men and An Ear for Men.where he offers more material on men's mental health issues and personal consulting services.

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