Unofficial BLM-related Policy Change Discussion Thread

@Derpy Whooves  

 
I’ve been reading the discussion here and in the Ask the Mods thread before it was locked, and one of the most common counterarguments against the policy has been “why not just slap a tag on everything and require people to hide/filter it, rather than outright deleting images?” and the response has generally been “it generates too much drama and is too hard to moderate”.
 

 
The thing is, this was not enshrined in the policy. The new rule isn’t “you cannot post racist content” or “you cannot criticise BLM protests” or anything. It’s a very neutral-sounding “do not antagonise others in relation to current events”.  
Answers on what this means have been non-conclusive, and now we’re getting contradictory answers. Is the INTENT to reduce drama and controversy during times of unrest and notable “current events” going on? Or is the INTENT to “support the Black Lives Matter movement and suppress content perceived hateful towards them”? I really want to understand which it is. Because some mods have tried to say that, hey, if there was a case of violence against GOP members and people started making fun of it it would be suppressed as well. But now you’re implying that the entire intention of the policy is to support BLM? If that’s not what you’re implying, then I’m not sure what you meant there.
 

 
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a mod confirm that in general, if something is banned for “antagonising” in relation to “current events”, once these events are no longer current that image could be re-evaluated. But right now, your post as a whole seems to be saying that “this new guideline is just an extension of rule 0” and “if something was banned under rule 0, it broke the rules and isn’t going to be restored”. Now I’m not arguing in bad faith here, I’m genuinely trying to understand what your intention and policy is now.  
Let’s take, for instance, well-made art of zebras rioting. I do not believe it would have been banned previously to this change (in fact, that’s the kind of thing this change is meant to cover). Even though the zebras are clearly a stand-in for black people, the image is merely adapting, parodying, or stylising what is going on - there’s no question that currently black people are engaged in rioting, looting etc. Now, in the context of the ongoing riots, this is clearly meant to be antagonising (mocking the people rioting and their cause and anyone supporting them), so it is banned under this guideline. But let’s say in six months or a year, once the riots are long since past and mostly forgotten, and dozens of new outrageous news cycles have passed: the image will be nothing more than an adaptation of a year-old event. It probably wouldn’t generate more than 4-5 comments. It would certainly be very hard to argue that it would still be “intended to antagonise others in relation to current events”. Would it still be considered banned (e.g. just for being critical of BLM, or being mocking of black people)?
 
I would like to stress that, while I strongly disagree with this new policy, I’m not trying to argue or antagonise anyone here; I’m genuinely trying to understand what the intended scope and usage is. Because it was phrased in an extremely awkward way, surrounded with baggage, and now what appear to be conflicting statements are being given in explanation. It’s fine to say “we won’t stand for images that criticise BLM, and will delete them from out site”. It’s much less honest to think that, but publicly put out a neutral-sounding vague policy instead and confuse everyone as to what you meant and intend.

@Background Pony #CF7D  

 
All of this does come with it’s own brand of drama and is can be hard to moderate.
 
But that doesn’t have anything to do with tagging and filtering. People are still expected to tag properly, and to use their filters, and people whinging or whining about filterable content are still going to be asked to stop.
 

 
I literally quoted word for word the first paragraph of the Twitter post.
 

 
This is one of our core and primary rules; “MLP:FiM is about sharing, friendship, and understanding. Don’t drag the site down into flamewars and angst – keep it constructive and positive.” Attempts to antagonize others will not be tolerated
 

 
Both of those options have a lot of baggage on them, don’t you think?
 
As a site, we fully support the Black Lives Matter movement. As a site, we ask people to keep offsite drama off of our site.
 
But we can’t control controversy, all we can do is be responsible when it happens on this site. And so far I don’t think the content that I have been involved in deleting has been in the realm of “perception” - the stuff I’ve helped delete has so far been 100% on the nose “fucking racist slur die” levels of “No, you can’t do that here”, or edits of artist’s work clearly intended to fuck with the artist or cast them in the worse possible light - sometimes followed immediately by posts by the OP deriding the artist for having made such offensive art. So … at least for what I’ve been working on this is not ‘it’s subject to interpretation’.
 
So, yes - as a site, we fully support the Black Lives Matter movement and we ask people to keep offsite drama off of our site. But, as much as I want to say “why not both?”, I can’t because of all the baggage you assigned to each position. If I say that then I’m agreeing that the point of this was to “reduce drama and controversy” - we can’t control that. We’re just an MLP fan site. All we can control is what we host, and how we respond to things we choose to not host.
 
And, sorry for disagreeing with you, but it seems that the answers have been as ‘conclusive’ about this as we have been ‘conclusive’ about anything we’ve done. And to help you with the ‘contradictory’, maybe pay attention to who is saying the thing you are attributing to staff - there seems to be a lot of people being confused about whether someone is staff or not, and whether they are speaking for the site or not. When I say something about myself, that’s me. If the site deletes an image because of policy, that’s the site. If I talk about my approach to volunteering here, as I am in this post, then that’s my approach to the work I do as a volunteer. If an admin suggests that I change something I’m doing, and I agree with the suggested change, then I will do it. If not, then I can work on something else.
 
Remember this is like we’re at a convention together, and if I’m wearing my official con staff shirt, then I’m representing the convention. But if I’m drinking a beer in the con suite and wearing an Utena shirt, then I’m me and representing AWESOME. And if tomorrow we have a team meeting and because of something that happened overnight we no longer can allow people to carry open bottles of beer around the convention floor, as inconsistent as it may sound, you can no longer carry open bottles of beer around the convention floor. Yesterday that was fine, someone broke some shit and now we can’t do that any more.
 

 
I have, in fact, deleted dozens of posts calling for violence against GOP members and people who were making fun of hurting the President of the US. Today. Like, just a couple hours ago. And the people doing it have been banned from the site.
 
Does that match your description of suppression? If it does, then, yes - we suppress that too, although I would instead say we don’t want to host that shit.
 

 
I’m not implying anything - I quoted the actual text of the Tweet that the person I was replying to was asking about. If that isn’t “the policy” you’re talking about, what is?
 
I mean, it sounds like you want to know what the giant sign that got posted in front of the store means. And I think the sign means what the sign means. How we implement the new the sign in front of the store is exactly the same way we implement giant signs in front of the store in the past. We’ve had these kinds of giant signs in front of the store before, and we most likely will have them again in the future.
 

 
Sure - we do that all the time. Auditing deletions is happening right now … well, 10 minutes ago. Someone appealed a deletion and we reviewed it. It was related to current events. We’ll probably re-evaluate it moving forward, too. But there’s a point where we just say stuff is “grandfathered in”. That’s why we aren’t applying this new policy to past images - if it was uploaded a month ago, we aren’t going to open that box and start poking at it.
 
Audits and re-evaluations happen here daily. Sometimes it’s just one “Oh, we deleted this 3 years ago. Why did that happen?” and sometimes it’s a giant project with Excel spreadsheets. Like, we have this annual thing we do that audits long term bans.
 
But speculating about whether an image deleted yesterday might be restored in 3 months? Nah. My crystal ball doesn’t reach that far. Sure - maybe. It all depends.
 

 
Ok, this is speculation. But there’s some hard data points here that we can talk about.
 
First, we don’t care if it’s well-made. We are not a juried gallery. Someone can get an artist badge here for a stick figure of a pony drawn in crayon. And that’s not to say that ‘we accept bad artists’, we awarded an artist badge to an artist who was hospitalized and that’s all they could do because of their casts - we just don’t judge whether someone is now or is going to be in the future a good artist. If they make a unique copyrightable image that doesn’t break any of our rules, and it is apropos the fandom, then we generally speaking will host it.
 
So, it doesn’t matter if it’s an absolutely beautiful edit of someone else’s art - if the artist is DNP No Edits then it’s Rule #1. And if someone paints a beautiful, stunning, oh my god this is a high end professional recreation of a racist meme then it’s still a racist meme.
 

 
That’s speculative.
 
However, to make this about something that is not speculative, that is - to use an example of when this has happened in the past, I and no one who I know on staff is starting a project to go back through all of the Brexit images that were deleted to see if any of them should or could be restored. But if someone DID want to do that then they certainly could, and I’m sure some of those images would be restored if they didn’t break Rule #1 or weren’t just shitposts or angry edits.
 
And some images from that fracas I think were restored when the artist asked if they could be.
 
Should we go back through all the images deleted during the Brexit? Or all the images from the US 2016 elections? Or all the images from the Brazil election? Or all the images from Twilight Gets Wings?
 
It wouldn’t hurt, but we’re busy with other stuff right now.
 
But if the entire point of the post was to take someone else’s art and substitute the artist’s message with “racist slur” - which has happened in the last week - then no, we wouldn’t restore that. Because fuck that.
 

 
Yeah. Lots of baggage showing up in these conversations. Lots of people accusing others of having intentions, then asking them to defend those intentions. My apologies if I have unintentionally done that to you, and I forgive you for what certainly appears to be your attempts to do it to me.
 
Just - right now, we’ve got people accusing other users of being on staff, and accusing staff of thinking what those users said, and instances where individual staff members (myself included) have said our own personal ideas about things, and somehow those statements have been bandied about as “official policy” or proof that almost no one wanted this change.
 
For most of staff, this is not that much of a change - although what has been happening to the site the last couple of weeks has certainly been a change. The amount of vitriol and examples of people intentionally creating drama or antagonizing others has become a problem.
 

 
Any new uploads that we believe promote racism or attempt to downplay the Black Lives Matter movement will be deleted.
 
That seems pretty straight forward to me.
 
I am not saying that you are confused - but there obviously is a lot of confusion about this. I don’t know if this is a case of people getting lost in the details, or there is simply so much spin on this being put out by so many different people or tiny groups in the fandom that it’s all becoming impossible to grasp, but for me this is no different than, say, our Rule #5 change a couple years ago, or our new policy about tracing (both of which also had their fair share of drama and turmoil).
 
The actual scope of the implementation of these things seems to me to be a lot simpler, and less confusing, and certainly less overwhelming than the drama that people create around it.
 
Overall, I think we’re still under 3 original images in total that have been deleted because of this change (hard to tell because of artist takedowns happening at the same time), and still less than a dozen edits (again - difficult to know because it’s case-by-case and there’s been so many artist takedowns).
 
What is your impression of this?
 
Does it feel to you like we’re talking about less than a handful of original images that have been affected by this? Or does it feel like something more?
 
Either way, I’ve already done two walls of text, so I might not reply for awhile. I’ve got other things that really need to be taken care of here before I spend more time on this again. So, if you reply, and I don’t, that’s not because I don’t care. I just have other stuff I want to do.

All this is proof that authoritarianism with a cute face is still authoritarianism. In fact, it’s even worse because people will be less inclined to oppose it.
 

 
Bringing in real-world politics is bringing in flamewars and angst. This isn’t an uncontroversial political position of something like “terrorism is bad and we hope all people can reach an understanding peacefully,” it’s an expression of outward support for an outside-funded group that is notorious for causing social disruption and violence. When you say things like this:  

 
This is an open double standard. As a site you are interposing yourself into terrible drama yet you want the site to remain free of it? You cannot have your cake and eat it too. People don’t like it when a supposedly neutral community, whether that is a video game convention, a church, an apolitical charity, or a hobbyist site, explicitly takes a side that is inherently controversial. Nor is this a community where–despite what some say–almost every member falls on one side already. Most users appear quite disgusted with BLM’s cause, how it exploits a violent event for political clout, and how it views violence as a means to an end rather than an unacceptable tactic.
 

 
There are quite a few high-quality and frankly quite funny “racist” memes on this website. Of course they stirred up some controversy, but generally speaking the attitude has been live and let live and the same applies to zebra versions of blacked.com. Now people are rushing to archive as much “controversial” content as they can because they know any of it can and likely will be taken down at some point. Again, users will either go to /mlp/ or /mlpol/ (the latter has practically no censorship whatsoever) or they will jump to a replacement site that does not have these policies or politicization.
 

 
For many of us, it’s an open confirmation that DB is not interested in being an open archive for anything pony-related. It’s only a surprise for those who have not witnessed or heard of censorship being practiced in the past, but it’s not longer deniable.
 

 
The vagueness of this is Orwellian. Uploads countering mouthpiece art supporting BLM can be deleted as “attempting to downplay BLM” and any comedy with stereotypes of zebras (even if relatively benign) can be deleted as “promoting racism.” There’s a reason why the “racist” card is notorious for being used to suppress speech.
 

 
It certainly is for me. DB was never becoming more tolerant of different viewpoints but its present decline is very straightforward. Denizens of the internet have seen this over and over again where an apolitical site gets hijacked for a political message and kicks out or repels a significant portion of the original userbase. I’m sorry to see this happen to the MLP fandom too.

Simple question for the mods. WHY are you changing from an archival site to something else? Some of the most vile stuff possible is stored her simply because it is pony-related. So now you want to remove “insensitive” stuff that runs contrary to your opinions because it’s going to magically stop racism or something?
 
Yeah do your Black Lives Matter statement on Twitter like every other company or website who thinks people care about such self-righteous displays of corporate virtue but going down the route of censorship? When has this historically worked?

@Background Pony #B4AF  
Posting as BG pony to avoid getting banned from my servers? If you really feel this way about me, why so eager to stay?
 
@Nyra  

 
@Background Pony #41D5  

 
There’s this word called ‘empathy’ and it is essential to use when making rules and enforcing them. A leader who ignores empathy is a bad leader. It’s times like these I hope more people realise how valuable they are for just being nice people. If you care about the wellbeing of others then you have something that is deeply lacking right now. You are important and needed more than ever.
 
@Derpy Whooves  
impossibly_large_reply  
That is damn big! And answers a lot of questions! Thank you for breaking things down and being extra clear. I knew this was being handled the right way!  
Also I had a question. If I was about to upload an image that is related to these events, I know the comments will get locked, but is there any way I can give a heads up to staff to get it locked right away? I don’t want to even accidentally cause more trouble with it.

@Minus  
Nope, you’re still wrong about this.

@Minus  
Also, you’re continuing to confuse vagueness and generally unnecessary censorship with “empathy”, and there is a clear difference between to of those.
 
Take a seat.

@Minus  
Yeah, i don’t think these efforts to ‘be nice’ are appreciated.
 
They circle right back around to being awful.
 
And I think a more accurate term might be sympathy, the misplaced kind.

@Minus  
Here’s my answer to your “empathy.”  

 
–C.S. Lewis

Byte with the +5 modifier to evasion rolls.

Opposing censorship is racist according to certain individuals in the community who also frequent this site. That’s the level proponents of this decision have reduced the discussion too. It’s pretty sad to see.

@Derpy Whooves  
I went to bed after posting that and this reply is worrying.
 
I suggest reading through this thread along with byte[]s longish post on the matter in the questions thread so that we’re on the same page.

@Minus  
I suppose you could let someone know in -help or on Discord, or just report it as soon as you upload it for a reason of “other” and say what you want done in the text field. However, we aren’t really locking or unlocking anything based on artist request, and certainly not based in the uploaders request, so what will happen depends on the specifics of your upload.

@Derpy Whooves  
No. I mean, I’ve read byte[]’s comments and agree with them. But I’m not reading this whole thread again. If we aren’t on the same page, that’s fine. I’m not dating you or something, it’s ok if we disagree or whatever it is that you’re worried about. Whatever your opinion is, that’s fine. It’s your opinion.

@Background Pony #380B  
@LunarMadness  
Listen, I share most of these same concerns but let’s be calm about it. The mods have still not been exactly clear with it but are claiming here that this is going to be temporary and narrow in scope. Do I believe them? Partly, I think some of the mods probably would want to make the ball rolling towards censorship while others just want to legitimately avoid drama and I don’t think would want this space to be politicized in the direction of “even not saying anything means you have engaged in violence” tier logic. I think this mod is at least trying to engage with us somewhat.

@Derpy Whooves  
No it’s not that we’re disagreeing, its just that we’ve recieved contridictory answers.
 
Byte[] said the purpose of this new rule is to make your job easier.  
Byte[] also argued that this isnt NEW policy but a more strict enforcement of rule zero, and will potentially be enforced for future events.  
But now you have said it’s explicitly to support BLM.
 
I brought up tagging and filters because byte[] has said that the comment sections becoming a cesspit (My word, cant remember what he used right now) was a big reason for this new change.  
I argued that problem is fixed by your existing systems.  
You can add tags, you can make those tags hidden from the default view so that someone has to actively hunt for them and you can act accordingly if someone tries to circumvent it.  
If somebody actively removes their filter and goes to a comment section to start shit, then they run afoul of existing rules.
 
In short, given what byte[] said the purpose and intention of this new rule was, your existing systems made it redundant.
 
 
By “This will occur on a case basis” i was refferring to the idea that this rule was not only to support BLM, and would be used for future events.  
Likewise for my statement regarding timescale, as it was stated that images removed under this policy could be uploaded when it was no longer ‘current’.
 
 
I appreciate you taking the time to discuss and answer these posts.

@doloresbridge  
Thanks for your and some of the other kind words folks have been sharing. This is a stressful time, and we are trying to be as communicative as we can be, which admittedly is not going to be a lot, given that we’re such a loosely knit group of, basically, friends keeping a fansite running for fun who aren’t even ever all online at the same time.
 
Personally, I think we’ve been as clear as a handful of volunteers chatting on IRC about a fan site can be, really. Especially during the work week. And if people think there’s some secret hidden policy or unspoken plan here, then they haven’t been paying much attention to us for the last few years. We’re literally just fans volunteering on a fan site. That’s it. Personally, I think we’re doing about as well as a fan run convention might do, but then I remember with conventions there’s a buttload more money involved, so I guess even most conventions are more organized and planned than we are.
 
Anyway, I can see the reality of mod chat, and I’m sure that the perception is much, much different.
 
The truest truth is we’re mostly here because we like MLP and every single time IRL politics rears it’s ugly head here doing this stops being fun, and I honestly would prefer it if the political people to just do their political stuff someplace else and leave the ponies out of it. I mean, in our own moderation channels politics is strictly forbidden. None of agree with each other about any of that. Ask each mod what their politics are and you’ll get a different answer, if not an outright fight. So, I don’t know how people get the impression that we’re pushing a uniform agenda, or even have any idea what that common agenda might be.
 
Anyway, you will know the day when I decide to start unilaterally censoring the site - all of the “Fluffy Abuse” images will disappear without trace and about a day or two later I’ll be gone when the audit catches me. Because that’s not ok, and it would be caught.
 
But in truth that isn’t how I will go rogue. No, the day I go rogue it will start with me UNdeleting the tens of thousands of images that I had to delete because of artists takedowns - images that I adored and loved more than anything, images that inspired me to join this site in the first place. Silently reappearing from every backup I can get my hooves on, hundreds and hundreds of beautiful and wonderful drawings that were only destroyed because the person who made them didn’t want people to see them any more. I have entire hard drives full of images that would suddenly, magically, inexplicably reappear. And if I reuse old image IDs, it might not even be noticeable for days or even weeks.
 
Yes. That’s how I would go rogue with censorship.
 
Who cares about deleting images you hate, when you could be RESTORING IMAGES YOU LOVE!
 
I’m not saying that some folks are not looking at this right, but if you’re going to dream about world conquest, at least make it a world you WANT to conquer.
 
But that would mean denying them those artists their rights. So I don’t do it. But if I were going to do something unilaterally about censorship, that’s what it would be.
 
I’m sure that won’t change anyone’s mind. That’s fine, people are entitled to their opinions, and at some point we all have to get along. We only have one planet, after all. Gotta share it.
 
Some of you think you have the staff of this place all figured out, that you know what everyone on staff’s politics are, and that every image we delete is because we didn’t like it or because we even have some sort of opinion about the subject matter of the image.
 
But did some of you ever consider that some members of staff AGREE with the opinions or perspectives in some of the art we delete? Or DISAGREE with some of the art we do not delete and defend from people who want to see it deleted? There’s stuff I defend every week that I’d rather see deleted. And not a month goes by where I have to delete something that I absolutely agree with because it breaks a rule, or because the artist wants it deleted.
 
Right now in my queue I’ve got several hundred more images artists asked to have taken down tomorrow. I deleted several hundred yesterday because of takedowns. Some of those were images I made personal galleries for, or are images that I or a friend uploaded. That really sucks. But, it’s the artists right, and their rights are retained.
 
So please don’t assume we only delete images because we disagree with the image’s theme or content. In the case of edits, it’s not even clear what the editor’s intent even was with some of the images that got Rule #1’d this week.
 
Or that us agreeing with an image would result in us ignoring that it broke a rule.
 
That’s just a fantasy. That isn’t actually happening, and if someone tried to do it they would be caught pretty fast. Hell, if an image is accidentally deleted or incorrectly merged, we usually catch it and restore it within a day.
 
But, seriously. Take this as an insider tip - Watch for the Fluffy Abuse images disappearing … you think I’m kidding, but that right there is the real warning sign of the end of all things.

@Background Pony #AC85  

 
It does make our jobs easier. In much the same way the changes to Rule #5 and the new Tracing policy did.
 
It is also stricter enforcement of Rule #0. And it might be enforced in the future, too. Very much the way it was in the past during the USA election fracas in 2016. Wow, how time flies - feels like that was just yesterday.
 
And you were talking about the stated policy, and the only stated policy that I’m aware of is the tweet, so I was referring back to the only official stated policy that I’m aware of. And that statement of support was pretty explicit.
 
All of these things are true. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
 
I’m sorry, it doesn’t seem I can answer your questions. I can be more specific about specific examples, but it’s really not appropriate or even possible to speculate about what will happen in the future.
 
That’s why I tried to give you examples of things like this that happened in the past, to show you how we dealt with, and are dealing with, things like this that happened previously. I’m sorry that wasn’t helpful. I really thought it might help talk about what is happening.

@Derpy Whooves  
If you will show me good will than I will you. I understand that this time is stressful and I myself, on a microscopic scale, am in a similar position as a “mod” of a imageboard of like, 4 people I will try to articulate the fears from my end as best I can, hopefully somepoint tomorrow and maybe we can have a bit more constructive discussion rather than paranoia and hostility.

@doloresbridge  
Sorry, I don’t feel that I’ve shown you any hostility, and I don’t feel like you’ve shown me any either, so I don’t know what you are referring to. But if you feel I’ve been hostile toward you I apologise.
 
And I don’t know what the paranoia is that you are referring to.
 
So, maybe let’s just drop it. More walls of text aren’t going to help anyone, and if you’re concerned about hostility and paranoia now then maybe let’s just drop it. None of this is worth that level of concern. It’s just a MLP fan site.

@Derpy Whooves  
Sorry, I ended up going to sleep like 10 minutes before you posted that because it was it was like 2am.  
Thank you for the very detailed reply; it does clarify a lot of things and answer most of my questions.
 
To clarify something on my own, here’s where my original confusion came from:  

 
What this sounds like, to me, is that the last paragraph is the “new policy”. Surrounded by “baggage” as I called it, which is the motivation for introducing the policy, but not part of the policy itself.  
(To understand what I mean here, imagine airports introducing new security measures after Muslim terrorists attempt to smuggle bombs onboard (for instance, this plot whose consequences are still enshrined in current policy). And the airport put out a statement saying “We are abhorred by this islamist plot. Therefore, we are putting forward a new policy: people carrying suspicious baggage will be questioned and can be denied boarding.” But in reality they only stop and question Muslim people. That wouldn’t be right, would it? The islamist extremist plot was motivation, but not part of the policy statement.)
 
Anyway, my understanding then seems to be that “antagonising” images are to be interpreted by staff based on staff viewpoints, which may change in the future but is currently (explicitly specified to be) aligned with the BLM movement. (Which explans, for instance, why the oft-quoted >>2362292 (deleted) is still up.) And also that, yes, images which aren’t blatant racism trolling (like the hypothetical edit you described) would be open to re-evaluation once “current events” cease to encompass the riots etc.  
Is this a good understanding?

@Derpy Whooves
 

 
That is direct from the tweet.  
The current actions taken concern BLM, but the actual policy is far more general.
 
My primary concern is how this will be managed, and whether it will be enforced in a balanced manner.
 
Lets say an event happened in Scotland that somehow generated a lot of memes concerning scots, some mocking, some supportive, others just of the event itself at the same rate as current events.  
Would the images mocking Scotland be removed, or would it require significant user-shitstorm in order to prompt action?
 
The core problem now is that by supporting BLM by removing uploads, your stance has now shifted from “Neutral / Dont care.”  
Which is fine, except for the idea that if similar antagonistic material is uploaded concerning other groups and is not removed, the impression users have is that the antagonistic material is supported.
 
If a jewish group made the news and someone uploaded the following image of Aryanne the nazi pony  
>>1633386t (deleted)  
Then the image is required to be removed, lest the site appear to be supporting such things.
 
Now repeat this for every potential group of people and i hope you see the core problem of this new policy.  
It either never ends until nothing can be mocked / antagonised through art, or personal / polticial bias is more heavily involved and we end up with an image site that plays favourites with its content.
 
I dont want to see that happen, and given the replies you are giving here, neither do you.  
But can you understand why some people are concerned when it appears the first step has been taken towards either of those outcomes?
 
If the new policy was simply ‘we’re locking comments on this image for a while due to shitstorms’ instead of removal it would be far more sensible and in line with previous policy.  
Sanitizing content due to politicial or personal opinion goes completely against the idea of being an image archive and i sincerely hope this entire debacle becomes a one time thing.
 
I dont really know if i have anything else to say further on the subject, only that i hope you and the other staff dont just brush off the outcry about this subject being something along the lines of “/mlp/ just want to be racist asshats.”  
We can do that at home, i just come here for unbiased art and cute ponies.

@Background Pony #AC85  
In-site embeds don’t bypass filters. Even mentioned in description of rule 7.

@Background Pony #A2DD  
Thank you, edited my post in response.