I’ve read many Catholic blogs recently which have had numerous negative comments concerning the candidacy of Barack Obama. Well if you use “Blogger” which many of you do, you too could be shut down for absolutely no reason at all. (Blogger was bought by Google in 2003.) Read this from a blogger from Maryland:
Some of you probably know that I live in Maryland. I’m the proprietor of the group blog RedMaryland which fights a daily rearguard action against the forces of corruption and socialism in the UnFree State.
Imagine my surprise to get a notification from Google that I’m running a spam blog and my blog has been locked.
We aren’t at a loss for suspects on how this came about. And we’re fairly confident that we’ll have the problem solved when Google decides it is convenient to do so.
One of the unfortunate facts of life on the internet is that Google is a law unto itself. The corollary to this law is that Google is a hotbed of slobbering lefties…and anyone who’s tried to post an anti-Obama YouTube clip can tell you. As this incident shows you don’t have to violate terms of service for them to screw with you, all you have to do is… is…. use their service.
Remember, Google allowed the communist Chinese government to have the search engine block “objectionable” search terms such as “democracy.”
Google has ignored many patriotic American holidays such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day many times while acknowledging an accomplishment of the communist Soviet Union which launched the Sputnik space satellite 50 years ago.
Here’s the thing, as this election cycle gets heated up and Catholic bloggers are invariably going to have some negative things to say about Obama and his anti-life stances, we should watch out for Google.
In case, you think that the threat is overblown, even the New York Times ran a piece on this last month:
Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service.
The bloggers in question, most of them supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and all of them opposed to Senator Obama, received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “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,” the Google e-mail read.
This is just 21st century censorship. Plain and simple. So just keep your eyes and ears open. Just to tempt fate a little bit, here’s a clip we at CMR made concerning Obama.
Update: The evidence thus far lends itself to the conclusion that someone is abusing the blogger spam indicator in a targeted effort against Catholic or conservative blogs. See Story Here.
August 1, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Thanks for effort making the video. I thought it was great.
August 1, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Yes, great video. Also, I moved the blog from blogger to St Blogs.
Thanks for the heads up.
August 1, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Don’t forget that the earth-worshipping, lunatic clown Al Gore is on Google’s Board of Directors.
August 1, 2008 at 4:51 pm
The same thing happened to the Catholic Fire today after Jean posted on P.Z. Myers. She is asking for help.
August 1, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Part of the Obama religion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xtNr5-up0U&feature=related
August 1, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I’ve never said a word about Obama, but my Catholic site has been blocked too.
August 1, 2008 at 5:18 pm
also,the deacon’s bench and happy catholic…that stinks google
August 1, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Welcome to the world of change and hope! White martyrdom is a blessing.
August 1, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Maybe Drudge might be interested in this…don’t know if you want to go there with this blogger mess.
August 1, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Not sure if I believe this or not. I’m very skeptical of unsubstantiated charges against corporations (i.e. “Starbucks is the biggest supporter of planned parenthood!”) which usually turn out to be completely false, and indeed begun by whisper (see: email) campaigns by their competitors.
I just received an email from yet ANOTHER group which claimed Google censors any anti-Muslim blogs as well. So…who to believe? If anyone has some proof I’d like to see it.
August 1, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Lord Acton once said (in response to the claims of infallibility then circulating for Pope Pius IX), “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Google may be the first company in the information age to abuse power in a wide variety of formats. Its popularity as a blogging service, an email service, a video archiving service, an Internet search engine, etc., etc., etc., places it in unique position to control a lot of what still passes as political speech in this country.
Let’s hope they learn that they have responsibility that goes with their new found power.
August 1, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Hello, I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Google fan but there are several inaccuracies in your blog that bother me.
First, did you read the New York Times blog post? The claim is that Obama supporters hit the flag button on blogger and that caused the problem. This is the same button that helps people target pornography that is hosted or fake doctors blogs. So Obama supporters use cheap tatics to make their opposition go away…politics as usual.
Also the accusation about China is pure FUD. While Google may allow the block things because of the Chinese government, it was the router vendors who first started the trend by offering such a capability. Cisco is the real enemy in that one, besides what should Google do when a government says comply or we block your ip.
At the end of the day, the data is being hosted by Google and they have a right to do with it what they want. If people really want to get away from these antics I would suggest paying the $10/month to get your own server to host your blog.
August 1, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Mmmm, interesting. I don’t run an anti-Obama site or blog too much on politics, but I did get shut down last night. My first thought was, ” “Google’s motto is do no evil but . . . I wonder. First they sell out to China and now they shut down an innocent Catholic homeschool mom blog accusing me of being an evil spammer.” Golly gee willikers.
August 1, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I would be much more inclined to believe the last explanation by “Anonymous”. The same thing happens on a number of forums and info sharing sites. Youtube is notorious for having blocs of users being told what to flag in the aims of having certain members/content deleted as innappropriate or spam.
Before you turn your eyes towards the sky looking for black helicopters, you should check the trucks passing by in the street.
August 1, 2008 at 11:09 pm
A Catholic Mom in Hawaii got shut down as well. Esther sent me an email explaining her disappointment.
We’ve got to start a boycott on Google.
I’m willing to drop my email and blogger accounts because this is completely wrong of Google to do this to the Catholic Blogosphere.
August 1, 2008 at 11:57 pm
To put this in some perspective, please note that Google’s Blogger service has itself been attacked by spammers who have figured out how to automate the sign-up process, and generate links to their favored web-sites, all for the purpose of upping their Google page-rankings. Just do a Google search on Google, blogger and spam, and you’ll find a link on page one to an article on websense.com with the details.
The problem, evidently, had very little to do with bogus users clicking on “Flag Blog”, and more to do with Google’s clumsy automated attempts to identify spam bloggers after the camel got into the tent.
We won’t know for sure, of course, until we get some hard stats on the blogs that were frozen, and only Google can supply that.
August 2, 2008 at 12:48 am
From the Blogger help blog:
Some blogs have been mistakenly marked as spam. Affected users are not able to post to their blog and received an email indicating Blogger classified their blog as spam. We are actively working to correct the issue. — latest update on Friday, August 01, 2008