Despite complaints from a Sandy Hook parent, Automattic has not taken down content from conspiracy theorists, citing Wordpress.com's content policy
Leonard Pozner says he spends hours every day trying to erase online conspiracy theories that the death of his 6-year-old son Noah at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. Tweets: @kludt , @sallyshin , and @nytimesbusiness Tweets: @kludt : Shame on you @wordpress, shame on you @automattic http://www.nytimes.com/... Sally Shin / @sallyshin : Wordpress (one of the biggest blogging platforms) will not take down Sandy Hook conspiracy theories because..."Posting conspiracy theories or untrue content is not banned from http://t.co/..., and unfortunately this is one of those situations" http://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimesbusiness : “It is a truly awful situation, and we are sympathetic to the Pozner family,” one tech company said after refusing to remove Sandy Hook conspiracy theories despite the pleas of a victim's father http://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Leonard Pozner's fight to erase 'hoax' claims about his son Noah has been building all summer: in July, Sandy Hook targets asked Facebook for a crisis hotline and a seat in moderation policy decisions, and within days of this story both Apple and Facebook moved to take down Infowars after Zuckerberg saw news of Apple's podcast removals.
Against that backdrop, Automattic's refusal to act on WordPress.com — 'posting conspiracy theories or untrue content is not banned' — makes it the outlier among major platforms. The pressure was immediate enough that three days later WordPress.com updated its policy to prohibit 'malicious publication' of images of minors, a narrow carve-out rather than a general conspiracy rule.
First-order effects
- Pozner and other Sandy Hook families are left doing the moderation themselves — hours of daily takedown requests — because WordPress.com's written policy gives them no violation to cite.
- Automattic stays host to conspiracy content that Facebook and Apple had just removed elsewhere, making it the visible holdout in an August 2018 wave of Infowars-related enforcement.
Second-order effects
- Public shaming from journalists like Sally Shin and Kludt converts into policy change: the minors-image rule added days later shows Automattic narrowing its policy at the edges rather than adopting a blanket conspiracy ban.
- Other platforms now face asymmetric scrutiny — a refusal by one large host raises the reputational cost for every platform still hosting the same material under looser rules.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to moderation-by-exception: platforms rewrite rules only after targeted, high-profile campaigns by victims, leaving gaps until each new case forces a patch.
- With formal channels slow, journalists and grieving families become de facto moderators — a dynamic the related coverage shows extending across social platforms later that year.
The trend: Platform content policies are hardening reactively, one victim-led campaign at a time, rather than through proactive rules on misinformation.