AOL Says: No Saoirse for You!
by Jack Flynn
(Irish Voice, Wed., Sept.1 - Tues., Sept.7; p.14)
AT the risk of turning America Online's mistreatment of its Irish subscribers into a weekly feature in this space, two more instances of the Internet provider's dispicable behavior toward some of its members have emerged in the past week. Amazing as it may seem, AOL continues to harass its Irish members for no apparent reason.
The first story comes from a reader in Philadelphia, who told the Irish Voice that she was given a Terms of Service violation for e-mailing the Sunday Business Post's recent piece about AOL's comical "ban" on the word saoirse to some friends.
Several hours after sending a copy to a number of AOL buddies, the reader (who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of having her account revoked) was knocked offline by the service provider, along with a terse message saying to call them immediately.
A friend of the Philadelphia reader had sent a copy of the e-mail to AOL, along with a note asking them if the allegations were true. In response, the reader was told upon calling that her account received a TOS violation for sending unwanted e-mails to AOL users, a practice more commonly known as spamming.
The only people who received the e-mail were friends of the reader, but AOL decided it was a spamming violation anyway. The service provider also responded to the person who sent the story, claiming that the Sunday Business Post piece was a hoax and that saoirse was perfectly acceptable as a screen name, none of which, apparently is true.
"It's all so absurd that I don't know what to think," the Philadelphia reader said. "This has really gotten me angry. This is so stupid. I can't believe that they're doing this."
In a second and separate incident, a subscriber claimed that an AOL representative forced the user to remove the word saoirse from their profile or their account would be revoked. If you remember, last week's story concerned the ban on saoirse as a screen name, with some lame excuse from AOL, about the letters "aoi" in tandem possible confusing other users.
Now all of a sudden, AOL is telling people to keep saoirse out of their profiles, an obvious indication that they are indeed taking issue with the Gaelic word for freedom. Over 50 AOL users (including your colmnist) have the word saoirse incorporated into their member profile; I guess we'll just have to wait and see if any of us have AOL accounts next week.
In December, when the Irish political boards were shut down, one had to be a bit skeptical of the claims that AOL was discriminating against its Irish membership, simply because the idea seemed to make so little sense. But as the complaints continue to pile up, it appears more and more that there is a significant amount of merit to that argument. The natural question, then, is this: what does AOL have to say about all these slurs against them?
For the second straight week, however, the Irish Voice has not been able to get a response from AOL. Why? Because AOL spokesmen have refused to answer numerous requests for information. It's hard to believe that AOL has a leg to stand on, when its corporate shills don't even have the ability to answer questions from the press.