Many just for disagreeing, and others for "getting out of hand" to a far less degree than the people they were debating (who remain unbanned, and in fact have just gotten worse and more emboldened). On certain topics, there's a very distinct and grossly uneven double-standard, or at least there has been in the past year or so. Prior to that, the mods were a lot more even-handed.
Other biased and unethical stuff has been going on as well, such as repeated removals of someone's Freeper homepage for expressing an opinion contrary to the "party line" (without explanation or notification, even after repeated questions to the management about it), a moderator removing multiple messages that debunked falsehoods written by a good friend of the moderator (on a thread where the moderator was also participating in the discussion as an advocate for the same side under a non-mod screen name), upwards of a dozen people have been banned for no obvious reason at all or explanation, "coincidentally" all from one particiular side of certain issues, an old-time Freeper with thousands of posts under his belt was suddenly banned with the one-word so-called explanation of "Troll", publicly known and announced "sneakbacks" (people who were previously banned but returning under a new screen name) are allowed to remain here as long as they are on the "proper" side of the "party line", etc. etc.
Before about a year ago, all of the moderator decisions made sense to me -- even the times I thought they jumped the gun a bit or took a bit too long to take action, I agreed that things were near that point where action needed to be taken. But within the last year or so, dozens of their actions have prompted a, "what the hell??" reaction from me, as well as from a great number of other longtime Freepers I've discussed it with. Something has very much changed. Either Jim has altered his management style, and he says that he hasn't, or one or more intolerant moderators (who perhaps took on the job a year or so ago) have been pursuing their own personal agenda whenever they think they can get away with it against Freepers with whom they disagree.
Something has gotten way out of whack recently, and it's not good for FreeRepublic, and it's not right.
The place is marginalizing itself to hell in a bucket. Every science thread now is a snake pit, and it's the people who try to answer the freak show who seem to be on thin ice with the management.
Interesting. I haven't noticed anything different lately, myself.
I've been here quite some time. It's a big place, with lots of mods, so I'm not going to pretend that it's impossible for some of them to be unfair. I haven't noticed, but I've been pretty busy at work this past year. If so, that's sad. But to be honest, I don't think it's that big a deal.
This is a privately-owned site. It's JimRob's playground. I'm thankful to be able to play here, even if there's some kitty litter in the sand on occasion.
I tried to post at DU once, a while back, and got banned after 5 posts simply for disagreeing politely. I didn't complain, it's their site. I simply moved on.
Here, over the years, I've disagreed with the R party a *LOT*. Never once had any problems. Well, been flamed plenty . . . but I've got a very thick skin.
If you don't like it, leave. It's not your site and JR is free to run HIS site as HE sees fit.
The mods don't have access to the posters' profile pages. I do. And I've removed a few of them. Those that I have removed should take it as a warning (if I didn't ban them in the process).
Free enterprise dictates that you go out and start your own thing.
Just do it.