Silencing the Critics?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 09:41Good thing we're not affiliated with Google, or an anti-Obama website (alas):
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,382452,00.html
It seems the fair and balanced people over at Google are being accused of quarantining 7 anti-Obama websites. Google has responded by saying the problem MAY have been caused by "mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of [anti-Obama] blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam," referencing a coalition of disaffected Democrats who adamantly oppose Barrack Obama's candidacy.
I found one blog's response extra special:
"Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science."
Huh. Well, don't you think your system should be able to tell a blog with nearly 700 posts and that's been around for oh, say, THREE YEARS, from a "spam" blog???? Let's work on that, shall we? And in the absence of this sort of flagging on YOUR end, how's about a little benefit of the doubt for the next set of bloggers that get caught in your "automated spam detection" maze.
Many of the site vindicated have packed up their things and moved on over to WordPress, yet a couple have decided to remain with Google in hopes that the "spam issue" is resolved.
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Reader Comments (4)
Given Google's biased track record, it's awfully easy to think that this was deliberate on their part, or at least passively complicit.
Well, for what it's worth, I did receive spam that mentioned one of those sites. (I had to go dig through my spam-filtered folder to find it; I didn't see it in my inbox.)
Let me put on my techie hat for a minute here...
For the record, there are any number of anti-spam products that can automatically block access to sites named in spam messages; for instance, they can be integrated with a Web proxy to deny access to "blacklisted" sites. I'd like to think that any blog host would block access to any of its sites that were mentioned in a significant chunk of spam.
These automated systems can be abused, of course. Given that most spam is, by its very nature, forged to some degree, it's a relatively simple matter to create a spam mailing that uses someone else's return address and looks as if that person originated the spam. (No, I won't teach anyone how to do it.) The anti-spam community refers to such an attack as a "Joe job". It's quite possible that someone "out there" crafted a spam blast to implicate these websites, taking advantage of the automated nature of antispam enforcement.
Before we judge Google's actions, I think we need to ask how many OTHER blogs Google has blocked, how many per week, and the like. If they've blocked (say) 200 of their own blogs for spam infractions in the last two months, that would put a different spin on things.
I did a bit of research, and found a similar episode just last month, with YouTube and videos critical of John McCain. Those videos reappeared within 24-36 hours; given what I know of YouTube's review policy for questionable videos, it would seem that someone tried to have them removed but failed the review process for final removal.
Let's see how quickly Google restores service to these blogs. Given the difficulties inherent in managing sites like these, I'm inclined to give them a few days to sort things out to their satisfaction.
Oh, so this wasn't quite as "questionable" as might have been first thought. I did a bit of looking, and found that the quote Redbeard posted above, from BlueLyon. More to the point, I found that their posting rights HAD ALREADY BEEN RESTORED when they made the comment Redbeard quoted.
Furthermore, I found this statement from the blog's author:
So, they WERE sending out emails that could have triggered spam filters.So, this boils down to one of two things. Either:
* Obama supporters were abusing Blogspot's "mark as spam" functionality to cast false flags against these particular sites, or
* The "Just Say No Deal" people's email triggered spam filters on the email side of things, which threw the red flag.
Either of these would have the same (automated) net effect. Either way, we don't seem to have a dark hand at Google.