Digital Redlining

Vocal likes to think of itself as one of the most politically correct and family friendly websites on the internet. It can point to its' highly developed and detailed censorship program, and the strictness with which it enforces the policies described therein as evidence of this. Despite this view however Vocal has a serious, very non-PC problem in its own backyard. It sits at the very foundation upon which the entire site is built, the so called writing "communities" where authors are forced to submit anything they wish to have published on this site. Simply put these communities are a form of digital discrimination. Their sole function is to exclude works which do not "fit" with their value and beliefs. To keep out anything different or threatening. To ensure only that which aligns with how they want to be viewed by the outside world is allowed to see the light of day. No author can opt out, as I surely would were it possible, and choose not to submit to a community. You can not publish here without choosing a community to publish in first. In addition to forcing all authors to submit to a community, within each community lies a dropdown containing a set of search keywords, among which you must choose at least one. Again, you cannot opt out and chooose none, and worse yet, you cannot asign your own key words as search terms. They are fixed for each community, and as far as I can tell unchanging. They also happen to be very, very restrictive and have very limited applications. Certainly this is the case for the topics I tend to write about, and/or in the style and genre in which I write. I take it as as point of great pride that the majority of what I write does not fit neatly into any one box. In fact I tend to view anything I write which fits neatly into a community here or has obvious keywords within a given community with a healthy dose of skepticism. Generally speaking those works are my weakest.

It is a form of discrimination much more pernicious then one based on race or creed or gender, instead it is based on thought. Specifically how you think and what you think, what you think about, and what you may want to write about. I am not suggesting by any stretch that the seriousness of digital discrimination on display at Vocal rises to the level of actual racial in the real world. Obviously the hurt caused by Vocal does not rise to nearly that level. Moreover, no one is forcing anyone to write and publish on Vocal. In contrast everyone lives in the real world and everyone is of a given race and they have no choice in the matter. And of course I also realize that Vocal is a business, a for profit enterprise, and, as such, they have every right to choose whatever policies they wish. That said, just because a policy is available as an option does not mean it is a good idea or that it is not discriminatory. Vocal likes to think it is blazing new paths in the realm of internet publishing, and it is. Unfortunately that new path is one based on censorship and discrimination. Please Vocal, consider an alternative structure or model. At the very least allow authors to opt out of communities if they do not want to participate in them. And, please, please, please, allow authors to select their own key word search terms. And, oh yeah, for the love of God drop the ridiculous six hundred word count minimum for publication. That policy is absurd, stupid, dumb, ridiculous, counter productive, and did I say dumb. So dumb.