HOT STOCK TIPS AND GRATUITOUS JEW SLAMMING

HotCopper describes itself - "Australia's most popular stockmarket internet discussion site with 20,000 new members since 29 March 2004 and counting!" Membership is free, requiring nothing more than registration. Symantec, Weight Watchers and Virgin have prominent adverts on the site.

The topics discussed are pretty much as expected but there are also forums for humour, sports and general discussion. Tucked in amongst these are lots of nasty comments about Jews, Zionists, Americans (United Stupids), Bush (chimpy) and the Howard government. Such shenanigans are probably to be expected at any site that offers unrestricted membership. It is surprising, however, that such comments and even whole threads are allowed to remain in place: obviously no-one is moderating the site. And surely the prominent international companies advertising on the site aren't aware of the nature of some of this discussion. I mean, is Weight Watchers happy for its ad to appear on a thread about Jews and "Nazi support for Zionism"?

Okay it's probably understandable that such nasty non-business discussions are taking place mixed in amongst a huge volume of business related traffic. What is hard to understand though, is that this member blog is allowed to remain -- with over 100 posts dating back to August 2006. It's author is definitely no fan of Israel, calling it Israhell (clever or what?), with a recent post suggesting Israel knew about 9/11 beforehand. Now granted the blog contains no advertising but it is accessed via HotCopper and is described as a member blog.

So, are the HotCopper advertisers unaware of what's going on at the site or they aware and just don't care? And what about HotCopper's administrators? Maybe I should send off a few emails to find out.