Hoax Alert: Ello Does Not Classify #GamerGate as Hate Speech

i was really excited for it too :/ @Redregon @harmansmith #GamerGate pic.twitter.com/kHc3ytj97k

— tinybaby (@tinybaby) September 25, 2014

For the past few days, the Internet’s been abuzz with invitation codes for Ello, which purports to be a considerate social media alternative that won’t collect and sell your personal information (see, we italicized won’t, ’cause it makes the competition look like…). Anyway, the mysteriousness of Ello’s beta test has already set the stage for a lot of misinformation, including—well, this.

The original image came from Twitter user @tinybaby, who’s on record as saying the e-mail is fake. But just to put the nail in the coffin, Ello c-founder Todd Berger confirmed to Betabeat  “we don’t even have the capacity to send an email when we ban someone’s account yet.” (The rest of their e-mail notifications seem to work JUST fine because my inbox is full of them.)

We reached out to Ello regarding their official ban policy, which we could not find anywhere on the site, but have yet to hear back. Berger told Betabeat, however, that so far they’ve only really been banning those who attempt to impersonate celebrities and corporations. Considering the service is still in beta, it’s likely they’ve focused their attention primarily on the technical issues they still have to work out in light of their recent popularity, and still haven’t gotten around to the community policies for banning and harassment yet.

Let’s hope that they do start to plan for it, they come up with a better system than the ones other social media networks use. We can’t imagine a better way to entice users off of Twitter and onto something new.

(via Betabeat)

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