Philosophy Now is a bit different because they hosted those comments plus facilitated the main article:
Taylor Swift: A Philosopher For Our Times, October 2024
I responded in their own forum about their calculated reaction:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250213220745/forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?t=43006
Someone apparently was attempting to bury my comments concerning the subject:
No one cares. Keep looking for ‘evidence’ where there is none. Take it up with Ms Swift or the police then if you are so worried about her ‘stalking’ you 
Look, I’m not saying that after I commented on that thread that they can backtrack your location, they took down that forum to do just that, and then planted a device near you that can read your thoughts. All I’m saying is that these are coincidences and none of us are involved. None of us, really.
Then this part…
They deluged the forum with dozens and dozens of articles from the magazine of late. I thought maybe they were shifting to an all online format. Nope.
My gut feeling, however, is that Rick and the powers that be there are increasingly less committed to the forum. The moderation is “uneven” to say the least and there are any number of posters there who would actually discourage those who do love philosophy from participating.
It’s just strange [to me] that ILP and The Philosophy Forum and Know Thyself are not plagued with bots. There are systems out there that effectively control them. Discourse, for example:
“Say goodbye to bots, spam, and bad actors. Our trust system means that the community builds a natural immune system to defend itself from trolls, bad actors, and spammers — and the most engaged forum members can assist in the governance of their community.”
That is the particular that the naysayers are missing, in that there was a PN article all about Ms Swift, that her PR team saw and utilised to her/their benefit.
I’ve seen such happen here/on ILP, where similar occurrences have happened, where things said on there have appeared else where.
Any evidence for that? And they didn’t ‘utilise his comment’. If they did then he would actually have a case.
Are you suggesting that ‘talking’ will get rid of bots?
You also make this site sound like a utopia for reasonable, thinking people. Right. I came across a thread in the first 5 minutes entirely commented on by incel woman-haters spewing their ‘Andrew Tate-worshipping’ revoltingness, started of course by the monstrous Canadian Greek turd ‘Satyr’ who was banned for life from PN years ago. There’s nothing that even comes close on PN.
Bye 
That’s what I initially thought, and one particular user sprang to mind for some reason 
Acceline? VT?
As with most online philosophy forums, there are going to be those who do submit reasonable and well thought out posts. On the other hand, there are also going to be those who, one way or another, turn the forums into what ILP once devolved into. In other words, the philosophical equivalent of a circus. 
Or a mental institution? 
Unless, of course, I’m wrong.
That’s an interesting word. Plagued. I wonder if the bots think Philosophy Now is plagued with humans?
If they’re talking about Taylor Swift, I’m gonna guess yes.
[ this space intentionally left blank ]
I think it’s most likely being caused by a tech savvy disgruntled permanently banned ex forum member. Does anyone know when this problem first started?
I found this:
‘’ The challenges of malicious bot traffic
Across the six major categories of bad bots, we can see that these attacks aren’t random; they’re typically driven by specific motives benefitting the attacker, including:
The only one it could be is ‘Disruption and sabotage’.
Hackers aren’t always pimply nerds living in a filthy basement surrounded by used tissues. I’m sure they can also be scummy, bitter older men with a giant chip on their shoulder.(or even Taylor Swift…)
Ok. I suppose the URL is a strange coincidence. What you are saying then is that it’s your fault the site has been ruined. Perhaps you should think twice next time before making such odious comments.
I clicked on PN aka the Twilight Zone and this came up:
"# Your connection isn’t private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from forum.philosophynow.org (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards). [Learn more about this warning]"
Then when you click on “Learn more about this warning” you get this: “Hmmm… can’t reach this page. Check if there is a typo in permanently-removed.invalid.”
When you click on forum.philosophynow.org you get this: “The Philosophy Now Forum is currently unavailable due to bot activity impacting server performance.”
My guess: Elon Trump, of course.
I just get ‘file not found’.
Hallelujah!
Here we go again at Philosophy Now…
It won’t let me log in and everything is in slow motion. You get this…
500 Internal Server Error
“A ‘500 Internal Server Error’ means that a website’s server encountered an unexpected issue and is unable to process your request.”
The bots seem intent on reminding us that philosophers are often in way over their heads when a “world of words” just won’t do.
I finally was able to log in and now the site is…fixed?
Nope. I got booted out again. Ten tries later and I was able to log back in. But more ominous still is when I tried to connect to the online magazine itself. It’s slow motion there as well.
We can only weep for the future of the PN forum. Fortunately, Carleas has reconfigured ILP into a site where, by and large, philosophy is actually being exchanged again.
.
I just visited the site and it’s working fine… no lag, no buffering, no stalling.
Strange
