Blogger.com Makes It Too Easy to Censor Blogs - What to Do?

First, please read these two articles:

• The Wrath of Blogger
• Gates of Vienna Blocked by Blogger

What is the current status? As of 4:30 Eastern Time (US) 7/18/07, Gates of Vienna was back up.

So why be concerned about it now? Because other bloggers need to know about this situation, and because it's time for Blogger to do something to prevent its blogs from being shut down either maliciously or by mistake. Gates of Vienna is a respected counterterrorist/antijihadist blog that in no way deserves to be treated as a "spam blog." This situation also shows how easy it would be to misuse Blogger.com to censor another blog.

How did this happen? It is possible that someone unintentionally clicked the "flag" button in the Blogger.com toolbar while attempting to navigate. But then, if a single error like that can cause a blog to be blocked, something is very wrong with Blogger.com! More likely, Gates of Vienna was maliciously flagged as a "spam blog" multiple times by one or more individuals who object to antijihadistist messages being made available to the public. Either way, Blogger.com is allowing de facto censorship, and this is wrong. It allows wrongdoers of every stripe to muzzle anybody who may be trying to warn the public about the crimes they have committed or are preparing to commit. It also will intimidate some bloggers into keeping silent - though not this one!

Does this remind you of anything? It should! The Digg "bury brigade" has aroused intense controversy for exactly the same reason: because it became too easy for a few anonymous users to muzzle opposing points of view or to cover up uncomfortable facts simply by clicking on a little button.

What are we asking Blogger to do? Blogger should add safeguards to prevent the same thing from happening again to this or other blogs in the Blogspot domain. If Blogger.com fails to take action, then other blog owners will have reason to worry about losing access to their blogs. They'll migrate to other blogging systems and and hosting providers that will help them to safeguard their ownership.

You may recall that I've blogged before about the issues that Blogger.com has with spam blogs (see Does Blogger.com think your blog is spam?) but this is a different situation. There is a very big difference between the minor inconvenience of requiring the blog owner to enter Captcha characters before posting to the blog, and the major intimidation Blogger.com causes by blocking the blog entirely.

Now please do this:

• Link to the stories at Gates of Vienna and Foehammer.net from your own blog.
• Ask everyone else you know who has a blog to do the same.
• Publicize the story in every other legitimate way that you can think of: StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Twitter, Pownce, word of mouth, chat rooms, you name it.
• If you wish, post a comment here indicating where else this article is being publicized.

Contacting humans at Blogger.com: Google makes it especially difficult to contact anyone at Blogger.com directly. But at least for now, you can contact them at support@blogger.com. And here's a website with rolling updates on how to contact Blogger.com: How to Contact Blogger Support. So if you are not happy about the way Blogger.com is misidentifying Gates of Vienna and other blogs as spam, you can still let them know what you think.

Also see:

• Vigilant Freedom/910 Group Blog
• Jawa Report
• Blackshards
• Atlas Shrugs
• Blogjunkies
• DH Chaos

Keep the pressure on Blogger.com to do something to safeguard their blogging system against being hijacked by the same "bury brigade" that has rendered Digg.com all but useless! And for what to do about THAT, see How to Bury Digg.com.

Stumble It!

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Why StumbleUpon 'Owns' Digg

After all of the endless hype surrounding Digg, I was surprised to read this article by Darren Rowse at Problogger: Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic than Digg.

Hmmm, I thought, time to try it out! So, after finding out that StumbleUpon doesn't accept an all-numeric user ID, I signed up as 1389AD. I set up the little toolbar and started using it. Then, I ran across an article that came out a few months ago, but is still very much worth reading, so I used the toolbar to submit a review of the article on StumbleUpon: My Thoughts on Our Children's Children's War.

I was surprised at what happened next, and you probably will be too. Read all about it here: How to Bury Digg.com.

Stumble It!

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The Battle Against E-Jihadis: Why we need to know what we're up against!

This piece of good news:

Bad Day to Be an eJihadi/Cyber Terrorist

came in from The Jawa Report, not long after I had posted some remarks about an e-jihadist "hacker's kit" that had been making the rounds of the Internet. Evidently, two sites that had been hosting this malware kit are gone.

Keep in mind, though, that the perps will try to come back as soon as they find another venue. All of us - bloggers and other private individuals, Internet service providers, anti-malware companies, other corporations, non-profit organizations, as well as law enforcement, the military, and other governmental bodies - will have to be a lot more vigilant in the future about tracking and combating attacks from this quarter.

You might be astounded to learn just how much a lone blogger can accomplish. The Cyber Jihad is Real shows us how a lone blogger with no prior experience put the kibosh on several significant threats. Knowledge of Arabic or other foreign languages is not necessarily a requirement, though it is helpful. This article links to several other resources, including:

• The Blogosphere for Killers, described as "cyber-jihad 101"
• My Cyber Counter-Jihad, Shannen Rossmiller's personal account.

Now go and read:

Sunni Insurgents in Iraq Guilty of Cyber Jihad.

You may already know that Sunni insurgents are posting jihadist videos on the Internet showing U.S. troops being killed. It doesn't take long before al Qaeda's mouthpiece al-Jazeera picks up those videos and uses them to incite further mayhem. Foehammer makes a good case that the Bush Administration's attempts to keep the American public from seeing these images actually plays into the hands of our enemies.

Stumble It!

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