(Posted by Dr. Dawg): I woke up this morning (Friday August 1) to discover that my blog had been locked down by Blogger as a spam blog. As I write this, it may be three or four days before my request for a review is acted upon. Many thanks to CC for the invite to stay at his place until my roof is repaired.Obviously my blog has none of the characteristics of spam blogs at all. I know a little bit about spam-detection software, and Blogger's would have to be primitive to the point of dysfunctionality to make that error in my case. There is no detectable temporal content or structural regularity at Dawg's Blawg--indeed, I pride myself on that. :) And while my loyal opposition might indeed snort from time to time about "irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text," to use Blogger's phrasing, I'm pretty sure I pass the Turing test.
However, as I found when I indignantly searched through the Blogger site, it appears that people may simply submit complaints, naming specific blogs as spam. Instead of triggering an immediate review by Blogger, the blog is apparently locked down until someone gets around to looking at it, which can take several days, as noted.
If the other side really wants this kind of war, I can think of a few wingnut blogs that sure look like spam to me. I would suggest, however, that escalating might be unwise. It seems, in fact, that we have our very own version of MAD (mutually assured destruction) until somebody at Blogger smartens up and decides to review first and shoot later.
I would welcome suggestions, however, about what we should do about this new dirty trick. Where are the speech-warriors now that we need them?
PS: For those reading and commenting on my "They breed like rabbits!" post of yestreen, my apologies. I made a quick editorial change this morning. But can I re-publish? Nope. Not until the "Blogger team" gets around to reviewing my blog. With CC's indulgence, I'll republish it temporarily at his place.
UPDATE: I probably should have held my fire on this one. If folks want a little Friday morning entertainment, go to Google Blogs and search, as moderate Republican Carrie's Nation suggests, on "google blogger spam censorship." The paranoid clamour is truly interdenominational. Conservatives, Catholics, progressives, are all targets of each other. The Illuminati must be laughing their asses off.
7 comments:
However, as I found when I indignantly searched through the Blogger site, it appears that people may simply submit complaints, naming specific blogs as spam.
Is it really that easy? Impolitical had the same problem yesterday; it might be due to some automated process that caused your blog to be flagged.
I would welcome suggestions, however, about what we should do about this new dirty trick.
Ditch blogger. From what I see, it's far more acommodating to trolls and dirty tricks than it is to people who blog in good faith.
Where are the speech-warriors now that we need them?
After I discovered the back channel smear campaign the warriors had got going, it just confirmed what I was always; *they* are the real censors.
Of all the days I have a full slate of appointments. This issue intrigues me, and I'd love to spend time looking into it.
And I have to disagree about retaliation; playing fair is obviously not working. Principled character-assassination, I say.
As I said in CC's latest post, while I'm unschooled in computer science, I did read around this morning about automatic splog detection. My blog has none of the splog characteristics that a bot would be filtering for--no machine-generated language, patterns of repetition, temporal posting regularity, paid ads, etc., etc.
The fact that it's now happened to a fellow progressive simply deepens my suspicions. Until this starts happening to our friends on the Right, I'll remain sceptical that it's merely bad software that's at fault.
Yeah! The breedin' bunnies are back. I was worried there, for a moment, when they did their disappearing act.
Debra/April Reign has done an amazing job customizing Wordpress for the needs of Birth Pangs. I don't think that it's beset with the same potential vulnerabilities as Blogger software is, but if it were, I trust she would be able to deal with it pronto monto.
Yes, it's not just you moonbats. It seems Google is an equal opportunity distributer of stupid.
Dr.D:
This happens every couple months to a blogging Tory "The Bacon Eating Atheist Jew". He gets spam blocked by neo-Nazis.
I'd take the opportunity to switch to Wordpress.com - I've never heard of anyone having these problems there.
Robert:
I've now set up a WordPress account at least to back up my Blogger posts. But WP insists on a huge string of letters and numbers as a Username, another huge string as a password, and it decided to allow me to import a measly 60 comments of the thousands that I have currently.
I know people swear by WP, but this isn't a good start.
Given that I only have time to read two blogs regularly anyway (well, plus Greenwald), and these are it, then I guess this is a win for me! Yay Blogger!
(j/k)
Post a Comment