dietsch

RoommateFinders.net seeks to clears up confusion

Back in January, I posted a link to a New York Times article about an online roommate-locater service and its owner. The owner of the roommate site--RoommateFinders.com--also owned, at the time (he might still, I don't know), a Holocaust-revisionist site that is critical of Jews. It appears that somehow wires between the two sites were crossed; email messages also critical of Jews and Israel were mailed out to people who had registered for the roommate site.
Oops.
I posted in this space back in January, linking to the Times article and commenting as follows:

This seems pretty vile; you can bet when it comes time to move from here, I won't be using RoommateFinders.

Now, to further complicate this story, RoommateFinders.com shares a similar name with an entirely unrelated roommate site--RoommateFinders.net. (Note the difference--dot-com versus dot-net; it's important.)
The woman who owns RoommateFinders.net has suffered harm to her business and to her personal reputation as a result of being unfairly associated with the owner of RoommateFinders.com. What makes it worse for her is that she is, in her own words, "a nice Jewish girl".
People googling the name RoommateFinders were finding my comments--and not just mine, but also the original Times article and comments from many others protesting the perceived anti-Semitism of the owner of RoommateFinders.com. Unfortunately, people weren't recognizing that RoommateFinders.net never had anything to do with either RoommateFinders.com or the Holocaust-revision site.
I hear it was once common practice--and may still be--for people to write into newspapers and make the following statement:

I am not the Michael F. Dietsch who, as your newspaper reported, was recently arrested for drunken driving.
Sincerely,
Michael T. Dietsch

Consider this a nearly identical letter: RoommateFinders.net does not equal RoommateFinders.com.

I apologize for any confusion my comments might have caused and I have edited my original entry to remove any reference to RoommateFinders. Anyone searching on RoommateFinders should find only this retraction and not the original entry.

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