SOPA and NDAA Critic David Seaman Back with Business Insider After Outcry, Adds Gig at Suicide Girls

Seaman said he was let go from his unpaid contributorship at the news outlet Monday afternoon after NBC News community manager Anthony Quintano complained that the writer had allegedly spammed the network's Web site with messages imploring the network to boost its coverage of the National Defense Authorization Act and Stop Online Piracy Act.

Seaman said his dismissal -- which turned out to be short-lived -- arrived in the form of a short e-mail message sent by a BI editor at 1:58 p.m. Monday:

Thanks for your note, the editor wrote to Seaman. I think it might be best if we revoked your account for now. We've drastically cut back on our contributors recently and while we really appreciate your posts there have been far too many of these types of contentious issues lately.

But on Tuesday, Henry Blodget, Business Insider's CEO and editor-in-chief, offered a different version of events in an e-mail to the International Business Times.

David was never 'dismissed' as a contributor.  He also wasn't 're-accepted,' Blodget wrote. We have some contributors who post directly to the site and others who work with editors. Given the contentiousness [of] some of the issues David chooses to write about, we figured it was wise to have an editor involved. David has done some excellent work on NDAA and other topics, and we look forward to publishing more of it.

Either way, Seaman tweeted the International Business Times at 2:52 p.m. Tuesday to announce that he has been welcomed back into the Business Insider fold:

BI letting me contribute again, he tweeted along with a link to a note he posted on his Google+ page Tuesday at 2:49 p.m. explaining how he ended up back in Business Insider's good graces.

Just spoke with an editor at Business Insider, had an honest discussion, and as of this afternoon, I'm happy to report I'll be continuing to contribute political commentary and NDAA information there, Seaman wrote. As before, my status is as a 'contributor' -- I was never, and am not currently, a Business Insider staff writer or employee. Also very happy to report I'll be joining the popular alternative culture (and naked women!!) web site Suicide Girls as a safe-for-work political contributor.

Read Seaman's first Suicide Girls post - headlined NDAA And Occupy Congress: What if You Now Live In A Dictatorship, And No One Told You? - at this link.

Seaman's dismissal had created a harsh, swift outcry from his followers on Twitter and Google+, some of whom said they would boycott Business Insider as a result of the spat, and that they thought Seaman should find a new place to voice his controversial views.

I honestly had never heard of @BusinessInsider until reading @d_seaman's articles about #NDAA, Twitter user Ecolabs tweeted Monday. Now that they've fired him forget them.

Quintano did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.

On Monday, IBTimes covered the events leading up to Seaman's firing in detail:

Seaman says he had posted a moderate number of comments on NBC News articles over the past week, imploring the network to cover NDAA and SOPA instead of celebrity news and other issues. Quintano, who did not immediately respond to a request to comment on this article, maintains that the number of comments made by Seaman was significant enough to qualify as spam, and therefore he blocked Seaman from posting comments on NBC News articles.

Seaman, infuriated by Quintano's move, wrote an article for Business Insider Sunday alleging that his being blocked amounted to censorship due to his opinions about the controversial legislation. NBC Universal has gone on the record as being in support of SOPA, as Seaman reported in a previous article.

'This morning, I commented on [an NBC News] post that appeared in my feed about a cruise ship accident in Italy (which killed 3), requesting they cover NDAA and SOPA, two of the most important news stories in the United States, and which affect ALL 307 million of us,' Seaman wrote in his Jan. 15 article. 'Less than a minute later, my comment was deleted, and I was blocked from viewing or commenting on any of NBC News' content on Google. The implications of this are scary.'

He then went on to implore his readers to 'flood' the NBC News site with comments asking the network to cover SOPA and NDAA.

Quintano responded to Seaman's allegations in a comment posted on his BI article that same day.

'I am the community manager for NBC News and would like to report that I am the one who blocked David from our Google page,' Quintano said in the comment. 'What this article fails to say is that David repeatedly 'spammed' our pages with a link to his website on every article we were posting this week. According to our rules on all of our pages we do not tolerate spam and therefore after repeated posting he was blocked.'

Seaman denied the claim in a Google+ posting, saying that Quintano's claims of spamming were 'unequivocally untrue. I would challenge him, or anyone at NBC, to produce these spam comments. Let the public decide if I was spamming ... It is also completely untrue that I had 'link to his website on every article we were posting this week.' That is 100% false.'

But Quintano went on to say via Google that he would 'also be contacting Business Insider on your false accusations towards NBC on censorship.'

The next thing Seaman knew, he had been dismissed from his contributorship at BI.