Today I noticed that a thread with strong criticism of the company behind the Envision Glasses disappeared from the front page, and after checking my own comment history, I noticed that my own comments to that thread were gone too, meaning that the thread itself was likely deleted or hidden from public view without any kind of explanation whatsoever.
I find this quite concerning for two reasons, with the first being the potential practice of censorship and the second being the total lack of moderator transparency that is inconsistent with prior cases, and this isn't even the first time I noticed this lack of transparency recently. Therefore I am posting this to inform that, from now on, I will be actively archiving every thread that I post or comment to on this site, starting from this one, to shame the moderation on other social media sites if my current suspicion of censorship becomes hard to deny, as well as to ensure that the Internet does not forget.
If anyone else wants to contribute to this effort, any public web page can be archived by the Wayback Machine, just look for the last button on that site whose label should read Save Page, move to the previous text field, enter the URL to the page whose contents must be archived,, activate the Save Page button, and then wait until the Internet Archive takes the snapshot, at which point it will display the URL to the archived content that you can save yourself for posterity.
Comments
fare criticism
Hope this doesn't become a patern.
Noticed some of my comments have vanished too
Just to give benefit of the doubt, I wonder if there are back end issues.
It could also be that we've just become such royal pains in the rear that Michael and team have given up on trying to stop us living our Brat 24 summer and are now dusting away our nonsense.
In the case of any conspiracy, it's important to look at the effect and what value it might have to individuals involved. In this case, I'm not seeing a line drawn.
Stay paranoid though. They are talking about you.
Re: Noticed some of my comments have vanished too
For starters I'm talking about whole threads disappearing, not just random comments, and secondly I'm merely communicating my suspicion and informing that I will be collecting potential evidence from now on, not really accusing anyone of anything.
This is also not about paranoia since it's not even about me in particular, it's just an issue that I began noticing recently and is inconsistent with prior moderation behavior so I decided to start taking notes and encourage everyone else to do the same, while at the same time providing moderation with the opportunity to explain what's happening and restore transparency if they so wish.
Finally I find it hard to believe that these observations would be in any way related to back-end issues since the nuked threads have not reappeared for quite some time and they seem to be selectively disappearing out of view, which isn't easy to explain by any kind of technical glitch, but you can have a try if you wish since you are presenting the possibility as reasonable.
Fair points
Hopefully the mods can chime in. I still fail to see why threads would be actively removed.
I think your plan is a good one. Personally I think there is a lot on here that could be pruned and summarised for the sake of easier parsing by visitorsāwe do tend to ramble. Though that is a diferent matter.
Mods? Could you clarify, please?
I don't know anything about it
Or what is going on with this. However, let us not forget that the original poster of a thread can also remove their thread.
Interesting
In the past if AppleVis deleted a comment when not like it, Michael send me an email about it. I think my threads were remove because people cry about it and did not skip the comments. This is the new America. Long live cats.
Don't think authors deleting their own threads was the case
I've noticed quite a few instances of this recently, with no prior indication that the original posters felt inclined to delete their posts.
The example of the thread with criticism of the Envision Glasses that I mention in my original post is one such case where the original poster gave no indication that they intended to delete the thread, since both him and a few other people were talking about its vendor's horrible return policies, and I even made a comment stating that the company could be bound to EU regulations that are quite consumer friendly given that they are based in the Netherlands, along with some sarcasm about the value of Canadian dollars. Another example was a thread announcing a test phase of an alleged agentic screen-reader, which got quickly nuked shortly after I offered my own engineering services and even posted a link to my Linked-In profile.
In both cases the threads disappeared without any explanation whatsoever, and in the latter case, the original poster also had an older thread regarding the same subject that stayed up at least until that point, so I don't think that the author of the second example actually cared enough to delete their own thread.
I did not snapshot the site back then, but since this seems to be becoming a recurring event, I decided to start doing so because it just doesn't feel right, plus if original posters deleting their own threads was the actual reason, I don't think that moderation would stay silent in the face of this thread. In fact, the longer they take to explain themselves, assuming that they're even consider doing that, the more credit they give my suspicion.
Oh wow
Geez, i haven't had this happen to me but if this is happening it's bad
They shouldn't be that long to reply
Usually mods are very quick, so maybe something big good or bad is happening somewhere.
@JoĆ£o Santos
I am sad of this thread removed, as a proud indian montrealer I'd have loved to laugh about my country money :(
One example of such things... We could never know, maybe apple is bad about vosh giving them a terrible image! It's a very unlikely but technically real possibility.
archiving threads
TIL how to archive a webpage thanks for that.
Not the first time
One of the threads in question had comments of my own, and disappeared as soon as I raised what I consider was a fair objection. Of course, what is or isn't fair is totally subjective, however I feel that the moderators should have had the courtasy to at least notify all the concerned participents including me that they were forced to remove a thread because the concerned participants had violated some community guidelines. Unless that's done, how is anyone supposed to know who has violated what guideline that forced the Mods to take the action? And unless that is known, how do we not keep making the same violation again? To put it short, this ain't the first time that I've noticed this, and personally, such blanket removals, instead of addressing any violation of the community guidelines (if it happened within a thread) will only encourage the violators to repeat the same behavior again, even if the violator is me myself.
Don't think this is personal
I don't think this has anything to do with me in particular, it's just that I only remember this happening to threads that I commented on because those are the only threads that I'm interested in, as I don't really recognize any kind of pattern in those threads that could plausibly lead to a conclusion of being personally targeted here. My comments might have contributed to those threads getting nuked, since I always try to remain on-topic and try to be highly assertive,, but I have absolutely no reason to believe that this is personal.
Thoughtfully Responding
Hi all,
I wouldn't normally say something until I'm ready to say something, but...
Just in the 1.5 hours it has taken me to research and write up a response, this thread is getting blown further and further out of proportion. I want to be sure we are accurately and thoughtfully communicating information about the Envision thread and the other concerns discussed here. Please try to be patient.
Thanks,
Michael
We are sorry Michael
Or at least I think :) we are.
Seriously though, take all the time you need! Really.
Apologies Not Necessary :)
Apologies are not necessary. š We are just trying to do the best we can, including gathering facts and explaining things well the first time.
From The Director's Desk
Hi all,
I appreciate the honesty and openness in the feedback shared, and I also want to thank you for your patience while I thoroughly reviewed your concerns and our response. I care about how we communicate, and I wanted to respond 'thoughtfully' and not 'reactively'.
As the Director of AppleVis, I am ultimately responsible for everything that takes place on the site. For those interested, I would like to offer some factual information about the situation and the points raised.
The āDisappointed with Envision...ā Thread
At approximately 02:25 UTC on 12/11/2025 (8:25 PM CDT on 12/10/2025 in the U.S.), a member of our team noted that the āDisappointed with Envisionā thread had begun to escalate and alerted me of the situation. In the thread, two members of the community were engaged in an unnecessary, off-topic, and increasingly personal exchange with no indication that the situation would resolve on its own. This occurred despite a prior effort to de-escalate and redirect the discussion.
The escalation took place late in the evening, at a time when our team had already signed off for the day. A full moderation review requires a detailed, fair, multi-step processāincluding rereading the entire thread, identifying guideline violations, determining appropriate actions, and contacting affected users. Performing this review fairly and equitably for a thread of this length can take several hours.
Given the timing and the risk of continued escalation overnight, it was not feasible to leave the thread online without intervention. I therefore made the decision to temporarily unpublish the thread until a careful and complete review could be conducted. Although we were not able to conduct that review today due to prior commitments, it should be completed by 18:00 UTC on Friday, 12/12/2025. At that time, the threadāminus the off-topic and personal-conflict commentsāwill be restored.
In hindsight, prioritizing the restoration of the thread sooner would have been the better approach, and we will keep this in mind for the future.
Missing Threads
Some questions were raised about why certain threads are no longer available. While it would not be appropriate or ethical to discuss individual cases publicly, threads are only removed for one of the following reasons:
1. Spam or Scam Content
A thread may be removed if itāor another post from the same accountāappears to contain potentially spammy or harmful content. Examples include:
When a potential spam or scam account is identified, the account and all of its posts and comments are removed, including any threads the user created.
2. Guidelines Violations
We remove content only when it is absolutely necessary. If a thread is fundamentally incompatible with our guidelines and cannot be corrected through a revision, it may be removed. Examples include:
When an entire thread is removed, we do not typically notify all participants unless their individual comments also violated guidelines.
3. User-Deleted Threads
Users may delete their own threads. When they do so, all associated comments are removed automatically.
I hope this provides clarity on the situation and the decisions that were made.
Best,
Michael Hansen
Director of AppleVis
Hard sell
While I can't really recall the exact times, I do recall that the bickering on that thread, which I personally ignored because I don't have a strong opinion regarding the subject being debated either way, was already going on the last time I posted to it, and I don't think it was that recent.
The decision to hide the thread was also not consistent with previous decisions including one involving a confrontation between me and Brian on a thread related to the merits of Windows, which lasted for a while until some of our posts got removed and we got privately and publicly notified, or another instance in which a thread asking how we use AI also got removed after I posted a comment showing the 120 billion parameter open GPT reasoning model from OpenAI running locally, which also got removed but at least I got an E-mail explaining that the thread was removed because it was allegedly posted by an AI agent from a company based in a big Asian economy.
As for the procedure itself, I don't really understand the need to actually hide or delete threads when they could just be locked with a proper explanation until a moderator could intervene. Even locking them in a way that would remain visible to the people who had comments there with a proper explanation would be better than simply nuking whole threads out of existence without any explanation.
I have no issue with how this was handled
This was the right way to handle it. Keep up the good work.