Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Pattrick Ruffini responds to YearlyKos by turning to the classic question of whose is bigger. While many arguments can be made regarding the increased influence of the liberal as opposed to conservative blogosphere (with Libby reviewing some at Newshoggers), my main concern is over who is right on the issues as opposed to which blogosphere is bigger. I’ll leave it with Libby’s arguments and point out a portion of Pattrick’s post which I found of interest for other reasons.

Freepers is used by many in the liberal blogosphere as a derogatory term for conservatives. Personally I avoid this, primarily to avoid granting a connection between freedom and the right wing blogosphere which in many areas has become increasingly authoritarian as they backed the war, limitations on civil liberties, and defended the increases in Executive power under Bush. The term Freepers comes from slams against Free Republic, which at one point was much more significant on the right than it currently is. Ruffini describes why Free Republic has lost its influence. Keep in mind that this is a description from a prominent conservative blogger, not an attack against Free Republic based upon objection to its views:

At its height, Free Republic was the Daily Kos of the right. In fact, I think the stratospheric, un-blog-like traffic numbers of Kos can only be explained by Kos finally filling the Free Republic void on the Left. Who could forget shenanigans like sabotaging Gore campaign conference calls with toilets flushing in the background, or the cries of “Get out of Cheney’s house!” Freepers were able to move action virtually anywhere in America. If Daily Kos is the angry left, Free Republic was the angry right — and we were hooked.But Free Republic simply could not succeed in the world of the blogosphere, social media, and Web 2.0. The founders made the decision that they were going to hoard as much traffic on their servers as possible, by posting full-text articles (that eventually got them slapped with high-profile lawsuits from WaPo and the LAT). Early on, links to blogs were verboten. If you expressed your own opinion when starting a thread, that was a “vanity” and it was frowned upon. And fundraising for candidates was strictly forbidden, except for those pet causes approved by Jim Robinson. Their culture was very anti-blog and anti-original content.

Today, Free Republic increasingly finds itself marginalized. If you support Rudy Giuliani, who still has a decent shot at being our nominee, you’ve probably been purged. Free Republic’s walled garden approach worked in the days before blogs and broadband, but they actively resisted changing with the times. What we now have is a resource with more unique eyeballs than Kos but one that won’t work with others or push the envelope technologically. What a waste. Imagine how the history of the rightroots could have been different if Free Republic wasn’t still stuck in 1996?

What lessons did our activists learn from this? Freepers, who were our best online activists, never learned how to swarm to other sites, to take different kinds of actions, and to raise money for conservative candidates.