AOL Needs System Help, Not Censors

During the Olympics when Spanish-speaking soccer fans posted Spanish-language messages in its chat rooms, America Online arbitrarily deleted the messages because its online censors didn’t understand Spanish. A women’s group that was encouraging breast cancer education and prevention was censored because AOL objected to the word “breast.”

After the Aug. 7 debacle (“AOL Outage May Prompt Creation of Backup Systems,” Aug. 8), it’s clear that AOL would be well advised to spend more time maintaining its system and less playing Big Brother.

JERRY THORNHILL

San Francisco