Chronicle Profile: Michael Tobey, founder of the "Croton Uncensored" Facebook page

In October 2023, a Croton resident launched a local Facebook page with no rules, no limits on what can be posted, and no restrictions on who can post. Today it has 879 members and is growing steadily.

Editor’s Note: In full disclosure, the editor of The Croton Chronicle is a regular contributor to the “Croton Uncensored” Facebook page, both of his personal opinions and of articles published in the Chronicle.

Michael Tobey, now in his middle 40s, grew up in Croton-on-Hudson. He says it was a somewhat different place when he was a kid.

“This was a great town to grow up in. We would walk to school, take our bikes to school, walk uphill and downhill in the snow.” That small town atmosphere “instilled certain values” he says, especially related to family. “It was a lot smaller, or felt a lot smaller. People knew who you were, or almost everybody did. It was a community that raised everyone else’s kids.”

In those days, Tobey says, you didn’t know someone’s views, political or otherwise, unless you knew them personally. And if you didn’t like something someone said, “you would let them know personally, you would tell them. You knew where you stood.”

But the internet has changed a lot of that, Tobey says, because so much of what people say is now public rather than private. Like most everyone else, Tobey adapted to the Internet Age, although for he usually used it for watching cat videos and other kinds of escapist entertainment. He did not rely on it for news, and certainly “not to tell people whether what they were doing was right or wrong.”

He did sometimes follow village Facebook groups, however, but for “basic information and not the ultimate truth” about any particular village issue. He regarded each post he read as “one piece and one view. It’s all about perspective. One person is looking through the window one way and another person the other way.”

But Tobey was aware that there was censorship on some village groups, and that sometimes people would get kicked off a Facebook page because of what they said, or how they said it. So suddenly, on October 1, 2023, Tobey started his own group, and called it “Croton Uncensored.”

“I think there was just a need for it,” he says, “filling an empty spot. Whether it turns out the way I expected it to or really wanted it to is not up to me. I put it out there and didn’t really think about it.”

Tobey says that at first he called it “Uncensored” because he personally did not want to put a lot of effort into it. But he quickly saw that villagers were attracted to it precisely because they could say whatever they wanted to without having to watch their backs. In the early days of the site, some posters argued that there should be some rules, that there had to be some limits to what could be said. But Tobey was never tempted to go that route.

“How arrogant would I be to think my opinion on what rules should be put in place are the right rules?” he asks. More recently, some members of the group have argued that anonymous posting should not be allowed, but Tobey is just simply not going there.

“It’s an option, you are welcome to do it or not do it. Who am I to restrict that ability? People are going to make fools of themselves or get mad at certain things, that’s up to them.”

As for how large the group has grown, Tobey expresses some pleasure at that, but adds that he never had any assumptions about it. “I didn’t even think of what it could possibly be. It is what it is. That’s my view of life.”

Tobey says he does not even read the posts very often. When he does, he does not comment or respond. “I am of the view that one person can make a difference, but one person’s views can’t make a difference. I prefer to watch the reactions of other people.”

Over the past year, the Uncensored page has been an important forum for discussing the controversies over housing issues in Croton, and for posting information related to the Board of Trustees’s actions and policies in that area. The site has also gained a reputation for being a hangout for conservatives in the village, although it is not their exclusive domain by any means—and liberal Democrats in Croton are known to lurk at the site and occasionally comment.

Since Trump’s election, a lot of the discussions have focused on his early actions, and they can sometimes be quite heated.

Tobey seems not entirely thrilled about that level of heat. “People go from zero to 100 way too quickly, and not taking into account that a 6 looks like a 9 to the other person because they are standing on their head. Someone is just not looking at it the same way you are. It doesn’t mean they are wrong or right.”

Tobey does have hopes that the Uncensored page could be a forum for more calm discussion, “but I don’t know if people have enough emotional control to do that."

Tobey would like to see things get back to the Croton of his youth.

“That’s what Croton used to be. It never had to come to blows, you could be right next to your neighbor and yelling across the fence, they would still be your neighbor and still help you out and be friends. We’ve got to get back to that. I can be on the left or right but you don’t have to be my enemy. It’s too bad more people don’t take that view.”

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