R.I.P. The New Republic

The New Republic is gone. We have no idea why and have been unable to contact the former owner. We also have no new information on the lawsuit.

A sad day all round.

If you use satire, don’t sue people for satire

We will not mention the doctor suing The New Republic by name for legal reasons.

However, what I will do is share with you some interesting information we’ve gathered about this anonymous doctor, because in my opinion it’s pretty ironic and worth noting.

If you’ve been keeping up to date with the story, you’ll know that the lawsuit is over a satire video created by The New Public and MentalNurse.org. But did you know that the plaintiff writes satire herself?

In fact, on her blog, it says: “I hope to deliver my message by blending my brand of Psychology with humor, insight, satire and calling a spade a spade.”

So, a satirist is suing a satirist for satire? To use the colloquial internet term, lolwut?

EXCLUSIVE STORY: EXACTLY WHAT’S GOING DOWN WITH THE NEW REPUBLIC

Yes, we have exclusive information on what the lawsuit against The New Republic is really about!

First off, this has nothing whatsoever to do with Wrong Planet or Autism Speaks as has been previously speculated.

The real $160,000 lawsuit being brought against the small British blog is rather unexpected and somewhat out of the blue. It’s over a video created by The New Republic and MentalNurse.org which was critical of a shrink in the US.

From the information we have seen, the lawsuit appears to be for libel. The suit claims that the video damaged this doctor’s reputation, lost her business, and caused her to lose sleep and become anxious.

Though we have been unable to access the video, it has been described to us by its creators, and it seems that the practices of a shrink in California were parodied in a rather extreme way, which has prompted the shrink to launch the libel lawsuit now facing The New Republic.

The problem seems to be that the bloggers disagreed with the views held by the doctor on the topic of personality disorders.

Unfortunately, we are unable to publish the video or its related content due to fears of a lawsuit being brought against us too.

This is a developing story. More information to come soon.

Autistic blogger sued for $160,000

The founder of The New Republic has been sued for $160,000 (£100,000).

A post on the blog says:

“News reaching the New Republic this evening reports that our founder, editor and guiding-light, Socrates is facing the High Court in an action for damages and costs which could exceed £100,000 ($160,000).

Due to the overwhelmingly restrictive Contempt of Court laws in the UK, we are not at this time able to bring you further details.

Socrates is refusing to discuss the details of the case publicly until expensive, over-educated people tell him what he already knows.

Speculation is rife on the internet as to the identity of the petitioner who has engaged a specialist law firm based in London, England to fight the case.

The New Republic’s founder and lead author is said to be ‘drinking heavily’ and ‘screeching like a baboon’ as he plans his strategy for fighting the legal battle which is (and uncharacterised for the New Republic, without hyperbole) ;almost certain to make national and even international headlines. 

Significant collateral damage is expected as the New Republic’s Inbox is flooded with requests to ‘just take it fucking down’ and ‘for fuck’s sake don’t give them my name’.

Further updates will follow as soon as we have them.“

The New Republic is a blog which reports autism related stories in a satirical style.

As of now, no one but him knows who’s bringing this lawsuit on, but we will report more information as we get it.

Reports will hit first at The New Republic itself.

Wrong Planet act to cover up censorship scandal

Just when you thought this story couldn’t get any worse, it does!

Over the past few days, it has emerged that Wrong Planet, after making contact with Autism Speaks, silenced an autistic for satire, then we knocked down Alex’s weak defense of the censorship.

Now, Wrong Planet is ensuring its members don’t find out.

Above are two screenshots. One is from this blog’s admin panel, and shows referring links – in other words, the URL someone was at when they clicked a link to us. As you can see, a Wrong Planet thread got us 11 referrals today.

The second screenshot shows what’s left of that thread – deleted by the moderators, despite the fact it didn’t break any Wrong Planet rules.

I happened to see the thread this morning. A Wrong Planet member was simply reporting the story. No “personal attacks” or anything Alex can use as defense were present at all.

As of typing, you can still see it in Google by searching “Wrong Planet SHOCK NEWS” (“SHOCK NEWS” being the name of the thread before it was changed to “To be deleted” and moved to a special hidden moderator section of the forum).

Pictured: information too dangerous for WP's moderators to allow

That’s right, people, you’re reading this right: Wrong Planet not only censored the original content, but they are now censoring anyone who even dares to talk about it.

Update: the original creator of this thread has told us in the comments that they marked it for deletion themselves. However, we have since received reports that at least one thread of a similar nature was removed by Alex Plank himself. An anonymous member of Wrong Planet has also told us that Alex is telling members posting links to The New Republic that they will be banned if they continue to do so.

 

Wrong Planet’s censorship defense

Yesterday, we broke the story that Wrong Planet had censored one of its members for posting a parody article aimed at Autism Speaks after being contacted by one of Autism Speaks’ many highly paid executives.

Just today, another blog reported the story, and they had taken time to ask Alex about his thoughts on the matter. Here was his response:

“A moderator removed that post because of the personal attacks it had in it. You can’t post this kind of crap on Wrong Planet … How would you feel if someone misattributed quotes like that to you? I’m all for a good parody but this clearly crossed the line.“

By “personal attacks,” what he really meant was that the article contained names of actual people working at Autism Speaks next to what he calls “misattributed quotes,” despite the fact that, as we noted before, the post said quite clearly that the entire article was fictitious and intended only as a work of satire.

Since this is his position, it seems clear that this is a man who is a complete stranger to how parody news works.

Let’s take a look at The Onion, the most successful parody news site online. Just today, they quoted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as saying: “if we suffer defeat, we will do so knowing we cowered away from absolutely anything we produced that was even remotely progressive or valuable in any way.”

Of course, he didn’t actually say that at all. But neither is he making The Onion take the article down. Because it’s satire, a respected form of humor which has been going on for centuries and is even specifically protected by law.

The bottom line here is that there is no real excuse for the blatant censorship which Wrong Planet has participated in, no matter how they try and justify it, and it’s far more likely that Wrong Planet let itself become pressured by Autism Speaks for reasons far closer to the wallet – remember the precious Autism TV funding that Autism Speaks is giving Alex?

Hit the read link below to check out a comic parodying the whole situation. Or come back and check it later. Don’t worry, we won’t take it down.

Wrong Planet assist Autism Speaks in silencing autistic for satire

You may remember, back in 2008, that Autism Speaks silenced a teenage girl with Asperger’s who created a parody of the Autism Speaks website, NT Speaks.

Since it happened so long ago, you could be forgiven for thinking those days were behind them. But you’d be wrong.

You see, Autism Speaks has bought itself a stranglehold over Wrong Planet. They are giving funding to Wrong Planet’s founder, Alex Plank, so he can produce his series of online programmes called Autism TV.

This had prompted a lot of negative reactions from Wrong Planet’s forum members, they were complaining of Autism Speaks “buying out” Wrong Planet and taking control. However, this could just be dismissed as paranoia. After all, neither Autism Speaks nor Wrong Planet had done anything to show this was true.

Until now.

Just this week, one of the many highly paid executives at Autism Speaks saw a thread he didn’t like. The opening post contained a quoted parody article which joked with the idea that Autism Speaks had spent millions of dollars on a new logo resembling that of the Nazis.

Below this article was a notice, in bold letters, stating clearly that it was entirely fictitious and intended only to be humorous.

So, a little satire poking some harmless fun at a massive organisation. It’s hardly anything unusual for any large firm; Microsoft has seen the same many a time and didn’t get anything taken down, and the same goes for pretty much every well known corporation in the world.

But this is Autism Speaks, and they still aren’t ones to take a joke.

So, what happened? Did this Autism Speaks executive just leave it? Of course not. Did he send a note to the thread’s author expressing his dislike for the post? Nope. Did he message the management of Wrong Planet and get them to take the whole thread down? Yes.

We don’t know the exact line of communication, but the author of the thread was informed by a moderator that the thread was removed because someone at Autism Speaks expressed his dislike at its contents.

In a message to us, the thread’s author said: “I got a PM from [the moderator] which said they removed my post, and it was made very clear that it was because one of the managers at Autism Speaks didn’t like what he saw. [...] The funny thing is, I didn’t even write the damn article! I was quoting it from an old parody news site. It’s been down for months now, which is why I didn’t put a source link on the thread, and maybe that’s why they thought I wrote it. But still, the mods, on behalf of Autism Speaks, are having a go at me for the contents of something I didn’t even write! [...] I used to think of Wrong Planet as a ‘safe haven’ for Aspies, as did many of its members. Not anymore. I can’t trust them now I know they’re actively co-operating with Autism Speaks like that. Lots of members are critical of Autism Speaks on the board, too.”

So, what can we gather from this?

• Managers at Autism Speaks do indeed read posts at the Wrong Planet forums
• If these managers don’t like what they see, all they need to do is send a message to the moderators expressing their concern
• When Wrong Planet’s moderators receive these messages from Autism Speaks, they’re only too happy to bend over and submit to their demands

UPDATE: Check out Alex Plank’s response!