by Wes Joyner

Created on: September 14, 2008

Weblogs, commonly known as blogs, have been embraced by the Internet community as a means to share thoughts, feelings, news, and personal reflections. The largely unrestricted freedom to present ideas to a prospective audience of billions transforms average people into important members of a global society, encouraging bloggers to freely speak their mind, quite possibly making blogs the most powerful tool of free expression in human history.

As we attempt to interact with larger social spheres, the masses tend to cry out for a uniform system of etiquette to ensure that their own sensibilities are not offended, with each disparate group of like-minded individuals seeking to impose their standards upon the whole. This is particularly counter-intuitive toward blogging, as it disrupts the blogger's ability to openly express his genuine view, including bias, offensive language, logical fallacies, and all the other fine points that make each blog unique. Implementing a universal code of conduct discourages writers from simply being themselves for fear that the "thought police" are lurking nearby, detracting from the personal nature of a blog by forcing bloggers to conform to a collective rather than individual sense of propriety.

The burden of determining acceptable conduct must primarily be shouldered by readers, who may choose which blogs deserve their attention. In a free blog market, writers must accept that readers will ignore content they believe to be inappropriate and wisely choose their target audience. Readers can likewise choose to boycott blogs that do not meet their individual standards, as well as provide constructive feedback to the writer that may serve to make distasteful blogs more appealing to a broader constituency.

Understanding that traffic is the driving force of every Internet endeavor gives readers tremendous power in the blogosphere. Blogs with high traffic generate revenue; unread blogs do not. The readers' power of choice can greatly affect the bottom line of blog hosts in addition to blog authors.

Ownership of the site on which a blog is hosted gives hosts the right to determine a code of conduct exclusive to their domain, commensurate with the property rights espoused in modern social contract and free enterprise doctrines. In a commercial hosting venture, advertisers can influence hosts by dictating the terms under which they will place ads. Hosts will expect their bloggers to cater to the same target market as the advertisers who pay the bills, and a writer can choose a host that best accommodates his style. Provided that site content is not illegal, site owners should not be expected to require their users to conform to any third-party standard of conduct.

Thanks to the advent of blogging, every man now has a personal soapbox, and readers have the choice to gather with the crowd to find out what he has to say or simply walk away. The mob does not, however, have the right to dictate how he must deliver his opinion, nor any grounds for silencing him.

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