Oh Boingo! Please Free Me!

This is a letter that I wrote to Boingo customer service.  Boingo is apparently an ISP for WIFI airports and military bases.

Dear Boingo,

Many months ago, when a friend of mine was traveling through Phoenix airport, she reported that something called “Boingo” was blocking my blog and calling it a “hate site”. I looked up “Boingo” and found out who you were and after a few nice conversations with customer support, I am writing this letter.

Whatever my blog may be, it certainly isnt a “hate site” as that is generally defined. It is a site about several different things including the history of LA and visual effects, the role of the artist in the motion picture industry, contemporary America and its politics, a site for writing practice and other things. I think it would be fair to say that I have strong opinions and that I am very unhappy about the state of contemporary politics in America but that could be said about a majority of Americans these days.

I am also very sarcastic and cynical about many things, some would say bitter, and I have noticed that Americans in particular find sarcasm baffling and disagreeable. Also many AI programs seem to have a problem with sarcasm, or at least Facebook does. For that reason I stopped using Facebook to discuss many issues because I did not want to deal with their pathetic and incompetent filtering system.

I am sure there are many ways that we can solve this misunderstanding and release my site from its bondage. First, for all I know, you have already unblocked my site and we are done. That would be wonderful. If not, then perhaps you have a document you can send me that describes your policy, what defines a “hate site” and with this statement in hand we can determine if (a) the policy is itself reasonable and (b) whether my site is guilty of it.

In either case, I look forward to learning what the procedure is to unblock the site. Maybe all we need is a slight redefinition of terms. Maybe instead of calling it a hate site, you can put up a notice that warns that my sight espouses “strong opinions” and to “click here to enter site”. That would be fine with me.  But "hate site" is just not correct and is in fact quite demeaning.

I hope this will be quickly resolved.

Sincerely