Blogger censorship

Two of my favorite bloggers — Paragraph Farmer and Joshua Pundit — got “spam blocked.”  Their blogs are still accessible, but they can no longer post.

The way spam blocking works is that someone who doesn’t like the content on your Blogger-hosted blog clicks repeatedly on the little “spam” button up in the corner.  This flags Blogger that there’s bad stuff there, and Blogger then reviews the blog content to make sure it doesn’t violate company policies.

It sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?  You can see how it will be used to prevent people from using Blogger sites for pure commercial junk or, worse, form setting up sites that advocate pedophilia, that host child pornography, that organize assassinations, or that do other horrible and possibly illegal things.  What’s happening, however, is that liberals are trolling Blogger for conservatives sites and then harassing them by tagging them as “spam.”  Once this happens, the conservative blogger finds himself caught in a two or three day review process.  And if he’s away on vacation (God forbid) and can’t make a protest, the blog can vanish.

Patrick forwarded to me Blogger’ss form letter:

Your blog at: [site] has been identified as a potential spam blog.  To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at [site].

Your blog will be deleted within 20 days if it isn’t reviewed, and you’ll be unable to publish posts during this time. After we receive your request, we’ll review your blog and unlock it within two business days. If this blog doesn’t belong to you, you don’t have to do anything, and any other blogs you may have won’t be affected.

We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog like yours is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this error. By using
this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to bloggers like you instead of to spammers. For more information, please see Blogger Help:  [site]

Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.

Sincerely,

The Blogger Team

I’m all for fighting spam, but it’s horrible when people who oppose a non-extreme political ideology hijack a system to impose corporate censorship.  Blogger needs to come up with a better system.

And in a couple of days, be sure to check out Paragraph Farmer and Joshua Pundit, just to make them feel welcomed back into the blogosphere.