Battling Online Censorship – New Site Up
By Hillary Taft - Thursday, June 26th, 2008
In all my years online I have not gone through the type of chilling censorship I just experienced in the past 24 hours. My blog, Hillary or Bust, which used to be hosted at Blogspot, was the subject of an apparently coordinated attack against anti-Obama blogs. I received an email from Blogger last night as follows:
Dear Blogger user,
This is a message from the Blogger team.
Your blog, at http://hillaryorbust.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577
You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog. To request a review, please fill out the form found here: http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID=6898969606204551089
We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog. If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything. Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.
Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this erroneous result. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to users like you instead of to spammers.
Thank you for your understanding and for your help in our spam-fighting efforts.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
The keywords here are: “occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly.” On top of every Blogspot blog is a little button that says: FLAG BLOG. I don’t know how many hits on this button it takes to get a blog shut down, but apparently it’s easy enough that not only was my site hit, but many others on the Just Say No Deal site.
Two other blogs I know of that have also been shut down temporarily are:
http://mccaindemocrats.blogspot.com
http://bluelyon.blogspot.com
I’ve heard that there are many others.
There was another pro-Hillary blog on Blogger I used to read that got completely shut down in the past week. It was called President She. This person was actively posting on a daily basis, very impassioned, and then suddenly she dropped off the planet. Why? Where did her site go?
I have to say, it does not speak well of certain Obama supporters if the only way they think their candidate can win is by outright censorship and harassment of the opposition. What ever happened to DEMOCRACY?
You may not agree with my political views, but you as an American should hold my right to free speech as sacrosanct. If we don’t have free speech here, we are no better than communist China, which regularly censors blogs that don’t tow the oppressor line.
By attempting to censor me, you just gave me one more reason why I need to fight Obama and his most rabid supporters. People like you have no business being in power in this country. America is about freedom and democracy. It is not about shutting up people you disagree with.
P.S. I have a lot of clean up to do on my new blog here. I was able to easily import over all my posts and comments, but the categories are a bit messed up and I have to recreate my blog roll. I’ll be getting that done in the next week. Please update your links to my new domain name. Thanks for your support.
Tags: blogger, censorship, democracy
June 26th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Same email I got….going to be different but I will make do at WP.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Hillary or Bust,
Thank you for letting your voice continue to be heard.
You are correct, one more reason not to cast a vote for Obama.
June 26th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Mine got hit to, I was not and am not sure who did, I have made some really upset…
http://reflections-in-tyme.blogspot.com
June 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
This is so typical of that camp and not really surprising. This snarky guy and his cohorts remind me of the politician played by Martin Sheen in Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”. Bad energy surrounds this guy and I have to wonder about his supporters who can’t see it. People are so easily blinded by a good physique and charisma.
June 26th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
4 of our voter support sites were shut down 2 weeks ago for the same email. We were aggravated but we got the review approved and were back up and running now.
We do not allow any negative comments about the candidates on our site (just unbiased facts), so there’s really no way to tell why people would spam our site. Some people are just ignorant like that, but it’s quite silly to pinpoint these actions to Obama supporters just because yours gets shut down. The fact is that the “spam” icon is on the top of all of our blogger pages, so anyone who visits them can click it. Some people just have waaaaay to much time on their hands.
Don’t take it personal!
Good Luck.
Summer
June 27th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I have read your claim that your blog has been censored. I think you are jumping to conclusions here.
You said “The keywords here are: “occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly.””.
The complete paragraph is more revealing :
“Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. ”
I think the keywords in this paragraph are :
“We find spam by using an automated classifier.”
Automatic as in the algorithms that Google use to classify and rank websites.
” Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. ”
Fuzzy meaning vague.
I suspect also that you did not read the definition of a spam blog at http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577
When you read this help file, you can find an explication of what the Flag Blog is doing there :
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42517
Quote from the top of page :
“The Flag button isn’t censorship and it can’t be manipulated by angry mobs. Political dissent? Incendiary opinions? Just plain crazy? Bring it on.”
More quotes from this page. :
“The Flag button is a means by which readers of Blog*Spot can help inform us about potentially questionable content, so we can prevent others from encountering such material by setting particular blogs as ‘unlisted.’ This means the blog won’t be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the Web — we prefer to keep in mind that one person’s vulgarity is another’s poetry. Or something like that.”
So basically, your blog has been flagged as spam by an automatic system and human input by the Flag button has nothing to do with this.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am
“So basically, your blog has been flagged as spam by an automatic system and human input by the Flag button has nothing to do with this.”
If it had just been my blog alone, I might have considered that the software made a mistake. When a bunch of anti-Obama blogs were hit within a 24 hour period, that’s no coincidence. There is absolutely nothing in my content to make a computer think my blog is spam. Spam blogs are quite obvious to spot – they either use crazy nonsensical sentences, or they pull content off of other feeds. Mine does neither. Neither do the other blogs that were shut down.
It is more likely that somehow the flagging mechanism triggered this, or someone working over at Blogger decided to be a net vigilante and shut off blogs they don’t like.
I have seen my and other’s pro-Hillary comments deleted from threads over at major news sites when Obama comments were left up. I don’t necessarily believe that these companies are actively telling people to do that – however, there are human beings there moderating the boards, and people with those types of jobs tend to be younger. I would not be surprised if some of them weren’t die hard Obama supporters letting their political views get in the way of doing their job objectively.
So I would guess that if it’s not somehow the flag button being manipulated from the outside, it’s someone on the inside manipulating the spam catcher.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:36 am
“So I would guess that if it’s not somehow the flag button being manipulated from the outside, it’s someone on the inside manipulating the spam catcher.”
If you want.
I’ve offered you a technical explanation because as a computer technician, I try to find a technical reason to a problem.
There are many other bloggers whose blogs have been flagged as spam. These blogs are not anti-Obama blogs, sometimes they’re not even politicals blogs.
Try Googling : blogger spam “false positive”
You are probably right to move from Blogger to Wordpress. I compared both systems at Weblogmatrix and Wordpress seems superior.
I have been reading a bit on Blogger’s policy on abuse. You can post defamatory and slandering statements on Blogger and they won’t be removed unless obligated by a court order. It does not look like censorship to me.
I’ve had comments removed (or not posted) at Huffington Post, No Quarter and others places. Sometimes, I guess it was because I was a bit overboard, sometimes I guess it was that my comments were not deemed worthy of publishing.
Of course, sometimes I think that my comments were judged and discarded based on their political contents. It is possible.
Try posting comments bashing Bush at Redstate and see how fast they’re going to ban you.
PresidentShe ? I’ve got a 404 error (meaning an error accessing a page) on her URL for a week or so and today a message from Blogger saying that the blog has been deleted and that the adresse is NOT available.
Read whatever you want in this.
So what I think happened is that the spam algorithm at Blogger is buggy.
I don’t click on the Flag button when I read something I don’t like on a anti-Obama blog. First, I don’t believe in shutting up people whose opinions are contrary to mine. Sometimes, they bring interesting opinions to the debate. In any case, it open your mind to new ideas, which is something there is never enough.
Second. it is dangerous to always to hang around people with the same opinions as yours. It is nice and warm because people validate with their assents your opinion and you belong to a group. Problem is it narrow your view of the world.
Some of Obama and Hillary’s supporters are definitely cultist in their behaviors. My sure fired way to detect a cult is the following: I look at how they treat their dissenters. Blacks have been criticized for not voting for Obama and women have been criticized for not voting for Hillary.
Personally, I don’t care if disgruntled Hillary’s supporter vote for McCain. I think Obama will win anyway. It is going to be harder for him though.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I know you have a hard time believing this censorship is on purpose, but you can go read the comments for yourself over at Uppity Woman. Someone who is a shareholder in Google talked to someone over at Blogger about this type of thing happening and IT IS because people are reporting the blogs:
http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com/2008/06/if-your-blog-has-been-locked-due-to.html
Uppity Woman clarifies over there:
“It’s not the Flag that they are using. It is the SPAM reporting link. It is VERY easy to report a blogger as a spammer. All you have to do is type in their blog name. You don’t even have to confirm who YOU are when you do it. So basically, this shitbums who are just like the shitbum thug they worship, are reporting the blogs using that link en masse.”
As for your assertion that somehow the censored Hillary comments I mentioned were of lower quality or abrasive – absolutely not. In fact, teenager-level, screaming Obama comments were kept up on this particular thread I was on (on ABC, no less), and reasoned Hillary comments (more than just mine) were removed.
I was not the only one to notice it – several other Hillary people had too. This is the case of an intern using their job as a place for political activism. It’s one thing if someone shuts down a comment on a small, private site. It’s another if it’s on a major news network website, where the comments are being skewed to look as if there are more supporters of Obama than there actually are.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The letters are sent if mulitple people use this link to “report” you as a “spammer”. It’s not about algorithms, that’s the standard letter. They aren’t going to tell you that some pisspots reported you a hundred times. That’s not how it rolls. This is NO coincidence and we all know it.
The link below could be used a hundred times by one person and the person doesn’t even have to identify himself. So please let’s not get into algorithms. I wrote real time software when you were probably having bladder accidents at school. None of these blogs fit the profile of spam blogs and we all know it.
Have fun. Shut us all down, Comrades. Because we are talking to some press people. We are also looking into internet stalking and harassment laws. So makes my frigging day and click on this link and blow us all in.
http://help.blogger.com/?page=troubleshooter.cs&problem=&ItemType=spam&contact_type=Spam&Submit=Continue
June 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I repeat it is NOT the FLAG button. The FLAG button is for questionable material, eg porn, etc.
The link above can be used day in and day out to report a blogger as a spammer, even if it’s a lie.
I am currently communicating with wordpress as to how they would be handling sociopaths and marxist wannabees who like to stifle people who aren’t supporting Comrade Obama.
Once again, you will get the same letter no matter how you were “flagged” as a “spammer”. Your blog does not even fit the mold in the SLIGHTEST. Nor do the others. I just got a few more reports of more Anti Obama sites that have been locked.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
“I wrote real time software when you were probably having bladder accidents at school.”
argumentum ad personam
“Have fun. Shut us all down, Comrades. Because we are talking to some press people. We are also looking into internet stalking and harassment laws. So makes my frigging day and click on this link and blow us all in”
I repeat :
“I don’t click on the Flag button when I read something I don’t like on a anti-Obama blog. First, I don’t believe in shutting up people whose opinions are contrary to mine. Sometimes, they bring interesting opinions to the debate. In any case, it open your mind to new ideas, which is something there is never enough.”
June 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I repeat. It. Is. Not. The. Flag. Button.
See link above. Ok, here it is again
http://help.blogger.com/?page=troubleshooter.cs&problem=&ItemType=spam&contact_type=Spam&Submit=Continue
At any rate. I believe YOU. Not all Obama followers are a Holes. Just MOST of them. LOL>
Real time radar and infra red tracking software actually.
But we BOTH know there are plenty of Obama Children who would NOT find this beneath them. This is growing wayyyy beyond coinicidence. So I have posted the link at my blog. I am hoping they shut us all down so we can do a nice press release and invoke internet harassment laws.
June 27th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
…and went nearly blind doing it. Get out of this business! Become a manager and do nothing like I did! Seriously! You have NO idea what you are doing to your eyes, Obama friend.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
[...] Hillary or Bust [...]
June 29th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Sorry to hear about your blog being censored. This is really appalling. Even 2 or 3 years ago, I don’t think I could have imagined how quickly these assaults on our rights would have happened. I don’t want to think how bad it will get if Obama actually steals the whole election.
I look forward to reading more of your articles. I found out about your blog through NQ’s list of sites that had been hit.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:54 am
[...] Hillary or Bust — moved to its own domain [...]