You Don't See the Mess

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Apparently, there is now a special kind of genius online: the person who thinks that if they didn’t personally see a comment, it must have never existed.

This is always fascinating to me, because followers do not see everything that comes through a page. They do not see deleted comments, filtered comments, blocked comments, private messages, or the general pile of shit that gets cleaned up before most people ever scroll past their morning cup of coffee. And yet, somehow, the person with the least amount of access to the moderation queue is often the most confident in declaring what was said, or not said.

Interesting.

​So let’s clear this up.

Not seeing a comment isn’t proof it never existed. It usually just means I already removed it. Running a page means seeing material the public never sees. That is called moderation, not fiction.

If I reference a pattern in comments, I’m speaking from what actually came through the page, not from your personal viewing history. Calling someone a liar because you were not present for every deleted or filtered comment is not insight. It's arrogance.

The internet has produced far too many people who mistake limited visibility for full knowledge. You saw the cleaned-up version. I saw the mess. That's the difference.
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If someone wants to disagree with an argument, fine. That comes with writing publicly. But pretending that a page moderator has less knowledge of what comes through the page than a random follower is not serious criticism. It's stupid.