Partisan platform Front Porch Forum should not receive public taxpayer subsidies.
Last week I read an article in VT Digger about Front Porch Forum, the Vermont community-based โclassifiedsโ social media platform where one can get help finding a lost pet, advertise a lawn sale, sell that thing thatโs been sitting in your basement for ten years, and โtis the season, play a little politics. In the Digger article, FPFโs founders, are cited boasting that FPF, โis a decidedly friendly online place where neighbors go to interact civilly with one anotherโฆ 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.โ
[A] โcritical 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.โ
FPF enforces a strict set of rules in its online public square, including no personal attacks. โWeโre not going to let people basically weaponize Front Porch Forum to do harm to our democracy, to our public health, things like that,โ 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 presentโฆ.
[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 Iโd call a โfriendly,โ civil interaction devoid of personal attacks. I would even go so far as to say it was intended to โoffend, incite and misinform.โ Itโs also baloney, given, among other data points, that Vermont Republicans made ours the only state to give Trumpโs opponent Nikki Haley a victory in the primary. Begging the question, what FPF employee reviewed this and decided it was okay to post given FPFโs stated standards and terms of use, and why? If this is about free speech, okay! Iโm on board. But that would mean Republicans are allowed the same leeway. Are they? Umโฆ. No.
I will confess that this issue is somewhat personal to me as I have been asked by several communities and Republican committees 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, 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 Standardโs impact, please see VT Digger’s latest story on the topic.
Thanks for your understanding.
Best, -Janeane
First of all, 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 was going to be, made a โ and dare I say defamatory โ conclusion that what I would say would be false, etc. Who exactly โidentifiedโ the things I hadnโt said yet as โmisleadingโ 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 Commissionโs recent conclusion that the Clean Heat Standard is too expensive, too complicated, ripe for fraud, and โnot right for Vermontโ rather vindicates the truth of everything Iโve been saying about this terrible policy for over three years.
FYI, hereโs the presentation FPF refused to advertise.
The case could even be made that those who have disagreed with my conclusions about Act 18 were the ones spreading misinformation, and that the Digger article FPF referred to as some sort of gold standard was, in fact, โfalse, deceptive, misleading, or misinformative.โ
Now, 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 be using 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 canโt play fair, then cut their taxpayer funding out of the next state budget. They donโt deserve it.
If you have an example of FPFโs political bias in your community, please share in the comments section, which I will open up to all subscribers for this post.
Share Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics
- Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politicsย including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermontโs free market think tank.
Leave a Reply