FPF Really Means “For Progressive Favoritism”
Last week, I read an article in VT Digger about Front Porch Forum, the Vermont community-based “classifieds” social media platform where one can get help finding a lost pet, advertise a lawn sale, sell that thing that’s been sitting in your basement for ten years and ‘tis the season, or play a little politics. In the Digger article, FPF’s founders are cited boasting that it “is a decidedly friendly online place where neighbors go to interact civilly with one another… and discuss local issues without resorting to personal attacks. The site is heavily moderated by real people who read each posting and filter out items that offend, incite, or misinform.”
[A] “critical part of our model is that each member-submitted posting is reviewed by our professional staff before publication (which) is absolutely not how any other social media works.”
FPF enforces a strict set of rules in its online public square, including no personal attacks. “We’re not going to let people basically weaponize Front Porch Forum to do harm to our democracy, to our public health, things like that,” he said.
To which I thought, Huh! Really?
Then, this weekend, in my local Stowe FPF feed, I was treated to an 800-word screed that included the following:
Let’s be honest, the Vermont Republican Party, Lamoille County’s included, have recently aligned themselves with MAGA, which does not represent Vermont & our shared community. At the same time, they are trying to present themselves as reasonable & measured, as recently seen in posts here on this Forum. This is intended to provide a permission structure for Vermonters to align with a party that despite what it frames as banal is radically out of touch with the Republican Party of the past & the people of Vermont in the present….
[T]his year they have aligned themselves with MAGA, which denies women’s bodily autonomy, threatens the foundations of our democracy & offers fear mongering without real solutions. They are co-conspirators with forces that threaten all the values they claim to believe in, which undermines the platform they extol.
Call me sensitive, but to my ear, that was not what I’d call a “friendly,” civil interaction devoid of personal attacks. I would even go so far as to say it was intended to “offend, incite and misinform.” It’s also baloney, given, among other data points, that Vermont Republicans made ours the only state to give Trump’s opponent Nikki Haley a victory in the primary. Begging the question, what FPF employee reviewed this and decided it was okay to post given FPF’s stated standards and terms of use, and why? If this is about free speech, okay! I’m on board. But that would mean Republicans are allowed the same leeway. Are they? Um…. No.
I will confess that this issue is somewhat personal to me as several communities and Republican committees have asked me to come give talks about the history, impacts, and potential future of the Clean Heat Standard (aka the Unaffordable Heat Act). The organizers of these events in Brandon, Ferrisburgh, and Cambridge tried to advertise them on Front Porch Forum and were flat-out denied. This was the boilerplate explanation:
Thanks for your inquiry. We decline to publish postings promoting events by this individual because the information presented has been identified as misleading. Please see FPF’s Terms of Use (provision 2.8). [2.8 You agree not to submit content that is false, deceptive, misleading, or misinformative.]
For current information on the Clean Heat Standard’s impact, please see VT Digger’s latest story on the topic.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best, -Janeane
First, the ads these good citizens were trying to post contained no deceptive or inflammatory content. They just stated the date, time, and place of my presentation, along with a brief explanation/title of the subject. All true!
So, someone at FPF, with no knowledge of what the content of my presentation would be, made a – and dare I say defamatory – conclusion that what I would say would be false, etc. Who exactly “identified” the things I hadn’t said yet as “misleading,” and on what basis? As readers of BTL know, I bring receipts from original source materials to back up every claim I make about these policies, and, not for nothing, the Public Utilities Commission’s recent conclusion that the Clean Heat Standard is too expensive, too complicated, ripe for fraud, and “not right for Vermont” rather vindicates the truth of everything I’ve been saying about this terrible policy for over three years.
It could even be argued that those who disagreed with my conclusions about Act 18 were spreading misinformation and that the Digger article FPF referred to as some sort of gold standard was, in fact, “false, deceptive, misleading, or misinformative.”
If Front Porch Forum were an entirely private organization, it would certainly be free to do and say, include and exclude, as it pleases. But since we, the taxpayers of Vermont, from all political persuasions, contribute about a third of a million dollars from the state treasury each year to Front Porch Forum, I for one think it is highly inappropriate for them to use public money to further partisan policy and political agendas.
Vermont taxpayers are under enough pressure as it is. We need to cut back on spending to reduce taxes and every little bit counts. If Front Porch Forum can’t play fair, then cut their taxpayer funding out of the next state budget. They don’t deserve it.
If you have an example of FPF’s political bias in your community, please share in the comments section, which I will open up to all subscribers for this post.
