The BFD sold themselves as a new look to the old Whale Oil blog, but with the same authors and descriptions and promises of ‘moderation’ (effectively message control censorship). They even claim to be the same ‘fastest growing media site’ they same as they falsely claimed at Whale Oil.

But as legal pressures grow they are trying to claim that the new website is separate and nothing to do with Whale Oil.

A comment from All_on_Red at Kiwiblog yesterday:

‘ matter the Disqus list (note that the controlling login’s and associated passwords for the Disqus account is ‘property’

Sigh, I’m afraid I have to call it.

You’re an idiot.

Any blog can register with Discus to have Discus member sign in to use it.

WOBF doesn’t ‘own’ Discus members.

This has been explained to you multiple times but you still don’t seem to get it.

Now you are calling being banned a ‘criminal act’

Lol

Do you not understand TheBFD is a separate website and nothing to do with Whaleoil.

Are you retarded? It certainly looks so.

Resorting to personal abuse suggests they may be feeling some pressure. Making claims that conflict with what looks obvious won’t help their situation.

“TheBFD is a separate website and nothing to do with Whaleoil” – so why does whaleoil.net.nz have show this…

We have new home visit The BFD. Don’t believe everything you read online, just login and enjoy.

..and link to The BFD?

Why does @Whaleoil @CamSlater on Twitter have http://www.thebfd.co.nz as it’s website and now solely consist of links to posts at The BFD?

Why does Cam Slater @whaleoil on Twitter have thebfd.co.nz as it’s website, and consists solely now as a promoter of TheBFD posts?

The last post at whaleoil.net.nz

Today it is a farewell to the site from the team and I and a grateful thank you to you all for being part of the Whaleoil community. We are bigger now than just one man. We have a large community across the country and the site has constrained where we need to go to counter the increasingly shrill fake news that is delivered up by our mainstream media. It is time to do something about that. Join the new team and enjoy the new site where you will be able to enjoy the varied content along with features and functionality that a blog format could never deliver. We have created a new home for our community. It is called The BFD. It begins on the 1st of August.

It has a completely new look and feel.

All the same, writers you’ve enjoyed at Whaleoil will be on The BFD

Your existing subscriptions will be honoured at The BFD. In other words, just log in and continue as usual.

They claim a new team, but with “all the same writers you’ve enjoyed at Whaleoil”. This post was authored by SB/spanish bride/Juana Atkins, who appeared to be managing Whaleoil since October 2018, and is also prominent as an author at The BFD, with the same author description she used at WO.

When launched on 1 August The BFD content was all migrated from Whale Oil posts dating back to April 1 2019.

Whale Oil About states:

Most articles come from a centre-right political viewpoint, with constant analysis and commentary of political events. Whaleoil also breaks its own news, is a media commentator and provides other topics of interest and entertainment to its readers. Whaleoil is the fastest-growing media organisation in New Zealand. Its brand of news, opinion, analysis and entertainment is finding fertile ground with an audience that is feeling abandoned by traditional news media. Whaleoil wears its opinions on its sleeve, allowing readers to be informed and entertained even though they may not even share the same position. Whaleoil allows comments from its readers, so any mistakes or excesses are quickly curbed. Because of this, Whaleoil is also a community (The Ground Crew), with a vast network of people from all parts of the spectrum contributing and assisting in the effort. If you are new to Whaleoil, we ask you to pop in once a day for a week and see if it suits you.

The BFD About states:

Most articles on the BFD come from a centre-right political viewpoint, with constant analysis and commentary of political events. The BFD also breaks its own news, is a media commentator and provides other topics of interest and entertainment to its readers. The BFD is the fastest-growing media organisation in New Zealand. Its brand of news, opinion, analysis and entertainment is finding fertile ground with an audience that is feeling abandoned by traditional news media. The BFD wears its opinions on its sleeve, allowing readers to be informed and entertained even though they may not even share the same position. The BFD allows comments from its readers, so any mistakes or excesses are quickly curbed. Because of this, The BFD is also a community, with a vast network of people from all parts of the spectrum contributing and assisting in the effort. If you are new to The BFD, we ask you to pop in once a day for a week and see if it suits you.

The only difference is the name.

I suspect that retarded idiots may be able to see some sort of a connection with all of this.

They have even replicated “The BFD is the fastest-growing media organisation” – this was a dated claim at Whale Oil, which has been waning since Dirty Politics lifted a scab in 2014, and Slater and WO was suddenly seen and treated as toxic by politicians and media who had helped WO grow. It is nonsense to transfer this same claim to The BFD.

“The BFD allows comments from its readers, so any mistakes or excesses are quickly curbed” is another misleading claim. WO was notorious for censoring and banning comments that challenged or contradicted false claims in posts.

The day before The BFD was launched this was posted by ‘Nige’ at WO: A Message from a Mod

As we approach a new political cycle with the imminent appointment of a new National party leader and as we get closer to the election at the end of next year, I would like to make it clear that the Moderation team have certain expectations. We expect our commenters to get back to basics as we want to run a tight ship. We will be paying close attention to the comment sections on serious “authored” posts. The comment sections help commenters to express their frustration with the New Zealand mainstream media as well as the rubbish that is being dished out and sold to us literally as news via online publications and the dead tree media, which somehow still manages to exist despite plummeting readerships and sales.

They do irony well.

So it is with great pleasure that I announce on behalf of the moderation team that we will be buckling down and taking more of a quality over quantity approach for the next few weeks on serious posts. I hope that those of you who are part of our community will be responsible for your actions and will not cry victim but will learn from your mistakes. This post is the warning shot over the bow. Our deleted bin is going to overflow in the next few weeks as we ruthlessly cull unsuitable or unacceptable comments. There will be no warnings, comments will simply be deleted.

Commenters seem to be used to support and add weight to posts no matter how ridiculous or extreme they are, with alternate views and corrections censored out.

That seems to be how Whale Oil operated, at times at least, so even that hasn’t changed.

In addition, the domain registration of both whaleoil.net.nz and whaleoil.org.nz lists ‘Andrea Parkes’ (email @whaleoil.org.nz) as Technical Contact.

The domain registration for thebfd.co.nz lists exactly the same person and contact details (including email @whaleoil.org.nz)

But All_On_Red claaims “TheBFD is a separate website and nothing to do with Whaleoil.” Who are they trying to kid? Possibly lawyers and courts. But lawyers and judges tend to not be idiots or retarded.

They are trying to be different things to different audiences – they promoted themselves as largely the same Whale Oil with a new name and website, they had to do that to move their audience across from the old Whale Oil to the revamped The BFD.

But this looks like it could cause them problems with the liquidator of the company that ran Whale Oil and the Official Assignee dealing with Slater’s bankruptcy, and legal problems with possible asset stripping and not coperating with their liquidator.

Claiming The BFD has nothing to do with Whale Oil has hints of desperation from people who have dug themselves into a hole.