Please see update at the bottom of this post.
Many Catholic and/or conservative blogs are being mysteriously flagged and their proprietors are being locked out of their own blogs without reason.
Happy Catholic has been marked as spam and frozen. Red State Maryland the same. And if you don’t order a review your blog will simply be terminated in 20 days. The Deacon’s Bench and the Paragraph Farmer. Vita Nostra in Ecclesia was just flagged as well.
This reminds some of efforts to take down pro-Hillary blogs during the divisive primary but now this is happening to Catholic and/or conservative blogs with curious frequency.
Someone or something stinks in blogdom. It seems to be a concerted effort to report certain blogs as spam in order to shut them down for days at a time.
This notice seems to be the standard note being sent out to bloggers being shut down.
Hello,
Your blog at…has been identified as a potential spam blog. To correct this, please request a review by filling out the form at http://www.blogger.com/unlock-blog.g?lockedBlogID
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:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577Thank you for your understanding and for your help with our spam-fighting efforts.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
It seems like it’s very easy to report a blog as a “spammer” and this could all be a collosal coincidence but some are thinking that there’s more to the story.
Update: Blogger indicates that this is a system wide issue with many blogs being incorrectly marked as spam. No indication of how long it will take to fix the issue or what caused the problem. It remains unknown if specific blogs were targeted or not. However, it does not seem to be limited to Catholic or Conservative blogs only.
P.S. For a little humor on the situation read, “A Blogalypse Now?”
August 2, 2008 at 12:58 am
You can read Blogger’s statement on the “Flag As Objectionable” button here. I personally think they have an “in your face” kind of attitude about it but they do say: “We track the number of times a blog has been flagged as objectionable and use this information to determine what action is needed.”
That in combination with the info they have posted on their Known Issues blog seems to indicate that this is either a glitch, or the doing of someone not associated with Blogger.
August 2, 2008 at 2:02 am
Google has acknowledged the error and it happened to blogs across the spectrum. They are working on fixing it now.
August 2, 2008 at 2:39 am
Lovely, just lovely. Yours truly has joined the ranks of those locked out of their blogs.
Anyone bring a deck of cards with them?
August 2, 2008 at 5:21 am
Hey guys, when this gets fixed, come on over to WordPress. We did and we love it.
Fr. J.
from The Black Cordelias
August 2, 2008 at 10:01 am
Glad that your blog is here. Perhaps you could switch to WordPress or something.
August 2, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I still find it highly suspect that Catholics (sic) for Obama had not been affected. Gaggle has a track record of evil and deserves our suspicion. Much like the USCCB, it has earned the suspicion and deserves ever vigilant caution.
August 2, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Seems to me that there are a number of people who just keep visiting for the sole purpose of flagging every Catholic Blog they don’t like, all in the hopes of getting rid of them. I wonder…
August 2, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Well if it isn’t limited to Catholic blogs I suggest you delete this post. Geesh!
:/
August 3, 2008 at 4:06 am
Well, let us post while we still can, because the days of our free speech are coming to an end. It’s only a matter of time until “religious speech” will be considered “hate speech” under this dictatorship of relativism.
August 3, 2008 at 4:12 am
It’s true! Thanks for advising the general public. Many times, I have found the more liberal news media will block a post or delete posts, which are conservative in nature. I was wondering how Obama seems to be controlling the web.
August 4, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Excuse me… but I don’t believe it for a second. Google owns blogger and their mantra is “Do no Evil” however they tend towards the liberal side of things.
This is why I have always said that you should move off of blogger, and other blog systems and BYOB (Build your on Blog)
While it may cost more, the freedom you get in return is worth it.
October 26, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Obama supporters who trashed Palin from day one are ranting about her wardrobe and other petty matters, while an anti-American Socialist / Marxist racist is about to highjack our government, with the help of voter fraud, and a corrupt biased media. You’d better wake up America … or, this country is about to experience an ugly 4 year long nightmare under Obama/Biden !!!