Is It Smart to Allow Unmoderated Blogs on a Presidential Candidate's Site?

Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:28:00 am PDT

At Instapundit, a reader weighs in on the hate speech and antisemitism at the Obama web site, and of course insinuates that all of that stuff might have been planted:

The Community Blogs at Obama 08 are no more “official” than the rantings of BDS sufferers at an Obama rally. I have a blog there, just to prove how easy it is to get one, and Senator Obama has ZERO chance of getting my vote. You could have one. It’s as simple as signing up. There’s no vetting process of any kind.

Any nut with an axe to grind can post any offensive material on the Community Blogs, and the Obama campaign will be unaware unless someone raises a stink. In fact, it’s entirely possible that a McCain operative could go on the site, create a blog, post offensive material, and then leak the URL to LGF to “prove” how disreputable the Senator’s supporters are. Shades of Dan Rather!

The very fact that anyone can post whatever they want is a gigantic problem, and extremely unwise for a presidential candidate’s web site. All you have to do is look at the insane garbage posted every day in Daily Kos “diaries” to see what will happen if you don’t moderate these blogs.

By the way — no one “leaked” anything to me. And so far, only one of the blogs I wrote about has been exposed as a spoof—and a rather obvious one.

UPDATE at 6/9/08 10:35:20 am:

Please note this interesting point, made by the person who posted the “Jemaah Islamiya” spoof blog: The My Barack Obama Web Site « The Urban Grind

I decided to try a little experiment. I went to the Obama site, and just for fun, tried putting up a page called Jews Against Obama. Naturally, I received a message saying that my page would have to be approved by an administrator. (Sorry I have no screenshot.) So after waiting a few hours with my page not going live, I decided to try something else.

So apparently, they are watching what gets posted.