Commentary: "Croton Uncensored" Facebook group reaches 1000 members.

The site, founded by a Croton resident to counter censorship on other village Facebook groups, is the fastest growing social media venue in Croton.

Editor’s Note: In full disclosure, the editor of the Chronicle is an active participant on Croton Uncensored and often uses it to announce new posts in the newsletter, along with posts reflecting his personal political views.

In October 2023, Michael Tobey, a long-time Croton resident, decided the village needed yet another Facebook group.

We already had quite a few of them—The Croton Point, Croton Community, Croton Community Group, Croton Issues, Croton Crafts and Commerce, Croton Cortlandt Parents, You Know Your [sic] From Croton When……, Croton Hiking and Outdoors Club, Croton Friends of History, and so forth—but all of those groups suffered from a drawback Tobey thought was unfortunate. Most of the groups vetted who could belong to them, and pretty much all of them either moderated content before it was published, or sometimes engaged in after the fact censorship of posts and comments.

Earlier this year we published a profile of Tobey and talked to him about his reasons for starting Croton Uncensored. Here is part of what he had to say:

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.

The group has grown steadily ever since, in large part because it turned out that Tobey meant what he said when he named it “uncensored.” Early calls by some members to block certain “offensive” content, or to prohibit anonymous posting (of which there is only a small amount), were either rejected or ignored by the group’s founder.

The result is that, unlike most other Croton social media groups, villagers of all shades of opinion publish on Uncensored and are pretty uninhibited about what they post. Thus there are posts that we consider frankly racist and bigoted, along with many pro-Trump articles; there are unbridled attacks on Donald Trump and Elon Musk; and everything in between.

Not all posts are political, however, as many community announcements also find their way onto Croton Uncensored.

To a certain extent, the page has devolved into two distinct Facebook groups, one pro-Trump and one anti-Trump, with a certain amount of division due to each side blocking some members of the other. Despite that, there are often actual debates on the page, with each political tendency commenting on the posts of the other, although those threads are usually limited in length. Much more common are posts of dueling news and analysis articles, cartoons, and other memes.

An interesting recent development is that while for a long time Croton’s conservatives and pro-Trump citizens had the page largely to themselves, since Trump’s election his opponents in the village have begun to make greater use of the page to express their outrage at his actions and policies. That is made easier by the lack of censorship, especially since, as we said above, many other village Facebook groups do not allow politics or “rants” or at least severely restrict the political viewpoints that are allowed.

Moreover, we know that among the 1,000 current members are a lot of “lurkers” from other groups, who sometimes weigh in when they feel compelled to do so. In that odd way, Croton Uncensored has become a community page all on its own, a refuge or safe haven where even the most “controversial” and unpopular views can be expressed. In that sense, the group could be considered the one place where the First Amendment really lives and breathes in Croton.

In an era where “free speech for me but not for thee” is the operative mode of expression, we can be proud of this village site—even if, at times, what we read here disgusts, revolts, and offends some of us.

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