I’ve now had two sets of those, one at David Icke’s forum, the other at LetsRoll forums. Go try it yourself if you don’t believe me. They don’t like people who don’t agree with them, and you won’t last long. It’s one of the reasons this site exists - to discuss it on my terms, not theirs.

Ask yourself if these are the actions of honest people you can trust to give you reliable and impartial information, or the actions of uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites.

To be fair, things seem to be changing at Icke’s place, but you’ll still get the usual suspects swarming over any threads that threaten their safe little bubble of nonsense.

If you want to be open minded about the Apollo landings that's great, but bear in mind when you're looking at websites who don't like NASA that a lot of the people posting on them have their own agenda, are often intellectually deficient, and in some cases just downright dishonest. Being open minded doesn't mean just 'read the evidence you like and ignore the inconvenient stuff that proves you wrong', it means looking at all the evidence and applying the same standard of critique to all of them. Questioning authority doesn't mean just questioning the official stance of government departments, it means questioning anyone claiming to act as an authority, and that includes people posting scientifically illiterate and historically inaccurate videos on youtube.

5.12:  But all these websites say we didn’t go?

Oh dear, you've been looking at Youtube videos and conspiracy websites haven't you?

Why are there so many sites with all this information on them? Easy: follow the money. Ask yourself why they are so keen for you to visit their website and generate advertising revenue, or buy their book, or their DVD, or sign up for their mailing list. Is it from the goodness of their hearts or a desire to milk you of your money? I know which version I believe there.

Are these sites really interested in seeking out truth and protecting freedom of information and the right to freedom of expression, or are they just looking out for their own interests? Try going to places like David Icke's forum (search for it, I have no interest in promoting it for him) and expressing an opinion in favour of the Apollo landings, see how long you last. Try posting evidence in support of the landings and see how long it takes before you start accumulating warning points from 'moderators' claiming to be acting in the interests of the forum but really just inflicting their own bias on the place.

See how long it is before you're accused of being a 'NASA shill', of spamming, or deliberately derailing threads with off-topic material when no such official warnings are given to people posting against the Apollo program. See how long it is before supposedly neutral people turn out to be nothing of the sort, and in fact are just sanctimonious bigots.

See how long it is before you attract the attention of the wilfully stupid who really shouldn't be allowed on a computer, or lazy knee-jerk trolls who buy into every piece of bullshit they're fed by people selling them Apollo hoax snake oil, or the spambots who just want to bury your posts in walls of irrelevant ill-informed text. See how long it is before the moderators are collaborating behind the scenes to ban you on the flimsiest of pretexts. These sites love freedom of speech, as long as it's their version of it and you don’t ask awkward questions.

Other members are more direct in their efforts to act as discussion gatekeepers and goalpost movers, like this poster on AboveTopSecret who just couldn’t take being proved wrong time after time:

As one of the more balanced and even-handed websites, ATS quite rightly removed this comments pretty quickly, but it deserves to be recorded for posterity, if only because it’s really funny.

As a classic example of other website’s hypocrisy, a long standing thread at David Icke’s forum originally in their private ‘Rant Room’ for contentious and argumentative discourses was resurrected for public viewing. A post was made supporting the landings. Within minutes that post was deleted. Hey it’s their website, they can do what they like, but let’s not pretend they’re into open and honest discussion.

Here’s another example of what happens when you post what they don’t like: