The Unwritten Hubpage Policy: A Lesson Learned

This morning, I woke up to my day off from real-life work. Going through my beat, I took off my bra and panties (j/k) and sat my hairy ass down. With one hand wiping my eye boogers, the other was left navigating my emails. I got a letter from Hubpages.

Hi Set,

Your hub has been flagged and unpublished for personal attacks, which
are against HubPages' terms of use. While disagreeing with another
hubber is perfectly acceptable, calling them names or attacking their
character is not.

--
Thanks,
Team HubPages

LOL. I'm laughing about it right now but to be honest, it wasn't too funny when I got it. I wrote Hubpages back asking for further information. Okay Officer Hub, I'll stop "attacking" people personally. There will be no names mentioned from here on out. Exactly what rules did I break? Lets look at it shall we?

Scrambling for an explanation, I decided to look for myself. I never really read this page. I've skimmed through it the first time and it has skipped my mind every since hub number 1 was published. What is this page? This will look familiar to most of you guys. This is the page that has all the "rules" you are supposed to follow when you create a hub. Let's look at each rule in detail.

1. No Spam - Pretty self-explanatory. Don't use Hubpages to promote offers or create hub only to promote other sites.
2. No Adult - No Porno of any kind allow. That means no BBW, fetish, amateur, BJ's, and absolutely no horse F-ing! There's a place for that stuff and it's not Hubpages. I feel you Officer Hub. What else?
3. No Gambling - No betting, scratch tickets, and no Powerball promotions allowed. Gotcha.
4. No Unfinished Hubs - Complete my hubs. I always finish my hubs Officer.
5. No Deception - Nothing deceptive about my title here. My titles matches my content.
6. English Only - Que? No habla Ingles! Just kidding hombre. You know I'm versed. What's next homie?
7. No Copied Content - I'm 101% original. Can I continue now Officer Hub?

So back-tracking a bit. I thought, "What rules did I break?" Was there anything else written? Yes. Turns out, Hubpages have a TOS. Below is section 4.

4. RESTRICTIONS AND PROHIBITIONS ON USE

In Your use of the Website and Service You must abide by the following restrictions and prohibitions on use. As a Website user or Author, You may Not:

• Publish Hubs or Hub or Author Content that include any content or links that are pornographic, defamatory, libelous, tortious, vulgar, obscene, invasive of privacy, racially or ethnically objectionable, hateful, promotes or provides instructional information about illegal activities, promotes any act of cruelty to animals, or is otherwise offensive.
• Publish Hubs or Hub or Author Content targeted at children under the age of 13.
• Use HubPages, the Website or Service to violate any Federal, state or local laws. Your Hubs must comply with all laws regarding online conduct and acceptable content.
• Hack the Website or modify any Hubs that are not Your own.
• Link to any worms or viruses or any code of a destructive nature.
• Link to pages or sites that are unrelated to the topic and content of Your Hub.
• Remove, decompile, disassemble or reverse engineer any HubPages Software (as defined below) or use any network monitoring or discovery software to determine the Website architecture.
• Publish Hubs or Content in breach of a confidentiality or fiduciary obligation You may have.
• Attempt to automatically redirect Website users to other domains, mislead users of the origins of the Hub Content contained in Your Hubs, or use Your Hubs as storage for remote loading or a door or signpost to a website outside of the Website.
• Impersonate another Author or any representative or employee of HubPages.
• Disrupt the HubPages Service, or any servers by embedding code in the Hubs or otherwise attacking the Service.
• Publish Hubs or Content for any illegal activities or to promote or make solicitations for any illegal or unauthorized activity.
• Spam any User or mass email any User in an automated fashion.
• Collect personal identifiable information about the Users of Your Hubs and sell or transfer that information.
• Use any automatic or manual process to harvest email addresses or other information from the Website.
• Harass, threaten or intimidate Authors or others who use the Service.
• Publish Hubs or Content written primarily in a language other than English.
• Promote gambling or links to sites that promote/offer gambling for money.
• Display misleading tags, categorizations, and/or titles that don't match the Hub's content, including irrelevant or excessive tagging.
• Engage in behavior that is overly promotional, including excessive linking to any one site or domain.
• Engage in behavior designed to manipulate HubScores.

The hub in question passed all of these hurdles except maybe 1. Lets look at the one rule and discuss it in detail.

"Publish Hubs or Hub or Author Content that include any content or links that are pornographic, defamatory, libelous, tortious, vulgar, obscene, invasive of privacy, racially or ethnically objectionable, hateful, promotes or provides instructional information about illegal activities, promotes any act of cruelty to animals, or is otherwise offensive."

Notice the vagueness in this rule? "Defamatory", "libelous"? What exactly injured this person's reputation? Getting a definition from Encarta, "defamatory" is the noun of "defame" which states, "to attack somebody or somebody's reputation, character, or good name by making slanderous or libelous statements." Okay, since it mentioned "libelous", let's look that up. "Libelous" returns us "constituting or containing a false published statement that damages somebody's reputation." So what exactly was "false" about my hub? I love the last 4 words. "...or is otherwise offensive." Just what constitutes "offensive"?

The hub that was unpublished was written in response to an author, who I won't name. This author was "offensive" to me in her hubs. I could be "offending" anyone right now. Translation: "We can flag and unpublish your hubs whenever we feel like it." This is silly. "Offensive" is such a loose term. I'm "offended" by body oder. Well, I guess Officer Hub is offended by real people.

What's even more shocking than rule number 4 is rule 5 of their TOS.

5. DISCONTINUATION OR MODIFICATION OF THE SERVICE

HubPages reserves the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service or any portion thereof at any time, without liability to You or any third party. In addition, HubPages, in its sole discretion, may terminate Your password, account or use of or access to the Service (including Impression services as further described below), and remove and delete any Hubs or Content, for any reason.

Translation: "We can suspend and delete your account and hubs for any reason at any time." So you don't need to have a reason for shooting me in the face Officer Hub? Please! I have..... cats! Who will feed them? Don't kill me! Okay, seriously, what gives? This rule is their ace I guess. Their trump card. My face could be offensive, and to some, it is. That could very well trigger Officer Hub to shoot. Will he? Maybe. Who knows. We all knew this when we signed up right? At least we do now.

Am I biting the hand that feeds me? Maybe. You can read in some of my hubs, I always advocate self-empowerment and confidence. Being bold sometimes means standing up to authority. Even if that authority goes by the name of Officer Hub. The author that flagged my post is a good example of a coward (not mentioning names for obvious reasons). In this society, I notice a lot of whining. The person that cries the loudest gets their way. Imagine a young child crying for some ice cream. You know that ice cream will spoil her but you give it to her anyways just to shut her up. Big girls don't cry. I guess some never grow up. Let's not reward crybabies. If you are a crybaby, I want you to look in the mirror. Notice how pathetic you look? Wipe them tears and grow up. Learn to take care of your own battles. Daddy's not always going to be there to hold your hand. Grow a pair... if you can.

I learned a few valuable lessons today. You can insult half the population and still get away with it if you have enough chap stick. I was never good at butt-kissing. I don't intend to be. Second, crying works on Hubpages. If you got a problem, cry about it. Problem solved. The last lesson I learned. Shut your mouth. If you disagree with an author and you win the fight with words, the author your verbally punched will cry to the referee, claiming a low blow. It doesn't matter how good you are. I could be throwing verbal flurries in textbook form, the referee could still decide the outcome of a match. The audience will know the turth. You know my jabs sting and my hooks rock. Sorry my internet words made you shed tears. I wish I could send you an digital tissue. You know I won the fight. That's okay. I'll shut up now. I'll take my lose like a REAL man.