Flashback Media Group
 | |
| Company type | Website |
|---|---|
| Industry | Mass media |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Sweden |
Key people | Jan Axelsson |
Number of employees | Unknown |
| Website | Flashback.se |
Flashback Media Group AB' is a Swedish media company who publish magazines, books, websites and also started Sweden's biggest discussion forum in May 2000.
History
Flashback originates from the local fanzine "Dead or Alive" founded and published in February 25th 1983 by the then fourteen years old Jan Axelsson in Norrköping. It developed into multiple projects focusing on different aspects of subcultures; mainly punk, and changed its name to Flashback in February 1993.[1]
Flashback's website was first published in June 1995 as a big supporter of copyleft. The company publishes "Scandinavia’s biggest neutral newsletter"{{}} with over 120,000 subscribers on a monthly basis. The proclaimed goal is to express underground opinions. The magazine and website are opinion neutral and have no religious or political affiliationsTemplate:Contested. Source?. The website has on multiple occasions been shut down by authorities and has been fined hundreds of thousands of SEK.
After a trial in 2002 it became illegal for Flashback to run a discussion forum in Sweden, unless all posts would be previewed by moderators before they were published. Flashback Media Group AB and Jan Axelsson each were fined 400,000 SEK on probation and were forced to pay the trial costs of 250,000 SEK.[2] Flashback closed down the forum in 2002. It opened again in 2003, and was now based in England, and owned by Flashback Enterprises Ltd. Since 2010 it's based in USA and owned by Flashback International Inc.
Flashback puts huge emphasis of free speech [citation needed], having 339 different sub forums ranging from "Baking, bread and cookies" and Lifestyle to the more controversial drug forums and forums such as "Pedophilia". Flashback forum has as of October 30th 2012 about 701,000 members who have posted more than 37.9 million posts. However, there is a very sizable quantity of racial debate and the website's own archive of articles shows a distinct bias against immigrants and in favor of right wing politics.[3] Criticism and exposure of such policies at Flashback would seem to be censored, indicated, for example, by the closing of such threads and subsequent critique of the poster's person by the moderator.[4][5]