I’m on a rant. Yes, I am. I’m so angry that I’m pounding the keyboard. I’m FURIOUS at Blogger.com. The IDIOTS.
Blogger does the same thing my Hoover vacuum cleaner does. Do I have to spell that out for you?
Here’s why:
So, I decided a couple of days ago to participate in the x365 project (writing 54 words every day for a year about people who have passed through my life). I wrote about it here.
I started a little blog on Blogger, nothing fancy. I didn’t allow comments (because the blog is really just for me, though I would let you read it). And, I posted to it twice. The second post had the word “pervert” in it. I don’t know exactly what problem that Blogger had with it.
I received this notification:
Your blog, has been identified as a potential spam blog. For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help.
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. To request a review, please fill out the form.
We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog. If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything. Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.
Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam. We find spam by using an automated classifier. Automatic spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and occasionally a blog is flagged incorrectly. We sincerely apologize for this erroneous result. By using this kind of system, however, we can dedicate more storage, bandwidth, and engineering resources to users like you instead of to spammers.
Thank you for your understanding and for your help in our spam-fighting efforts.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Blogger Team, you don’t have my understanding. I am not amused. I’ve deleted the other blogs I had with you, and look forward to getting to delete that blog and stop dealing with you entirely.
A friend came to my rescue and put a WordPress blog together for me. Not only is it prettier than anything Blogger has to offer, it’s reliable. Here is the link to my new: [EEK! I didn't keep up with it, so all this ranting was for nothing! I'm plumb embarrassed.]
So THERE, Blogger. I don’t need you anyway.
Whew. I feel better now that I got that out of my system.
Other posts you might enjoy:
{ 8 comments }
Ah! Be prepared and get used to it. That’s part of the stringent security measures taken by Blogger.
A very positive step, it will eventually serve the noble purpose of Blogging, in the days ahead.
Nope, Allan, I won’t” get used to it.” I got rid of it! WordPress is the only way to go.
It appears comments are open on the new blog… I enjoy reading the x365. I browsed a few of the participants blogs. Interesting.
Leanne did a nice job on it for you- again!
Marcia’s last blog post..3WW – Conclusions
Wow. I know I wrote stuff a LOT stronger than pervert when I was on Blogger and never heard a peep from them. What a PITA error.
jen’s last blog post..Here it comes?
Yes, that would be a real pain. And, in my eyes, Blogger did really screw up at least one thing (see explanation below). For what it’s worth, though, I doubt it was the word “pervert”. That wouldn’t appear in most spam. Some combination of words triggered the filter, but it’s hard to say which ones. I suspect Blogger looks over a sampling of blogs identified each day as spam, just to tweak their filters, since the spammers tend to ‘evolve’ what they say to stay ahead of the filters. The oddest thing, to me, is the fact the notice said this wouldn’t affect any of your other blogs. If your blog was auto-created by a spammer, all the blogs on that user account would have been (presumably) set up by the same bot. So why would they leave them alone? And, if they see a user account with only one blog flagged as possible spam, shouldn’t that be a trigger for manual review before taking action? True spammers accounts (human or bot created) would have multiple spam blogs on them.
I’ve got to say, I’m torn in the middle on this. I have a Blogger blog, and if they did that to me I’d…
On the other hand, I work in social media (NO connection with Blogger) and have seen social bookmarking sites that didn’t have effective spam fighting regimes in place. They were ruined, dead, slums on the Internet. Ma.gnolia (NOT a service I have any connection with, either) has had problems, to the point they’ve had to take drastic action (they’re going to start rejecting new users who can’t verify their identity – they don’t want to reject users, so things must be bad).
The stats I’ve seen suggest Blogger gets maybe 100,000 auto-created spam blogs every day (those stats could be wrong, but that’s what I’ve seen as an estimate). So I think the spammers bear a lot of the blame. That kind and volume of attack does tend to complicate fighting the problem. And I don’t want to let the spammers off the hook. Still, as I pointed out above, there are anomalies Blogger should have caught.
And I really hate to be the bearer of bad news (please! don’t shoot the messenger) but after reading about Ma.gnolia’s troubles, and their comments that this is the direction the social bookmarking industry needs to move in, I’m not at all sure this kind of thing won’t become more common. The spammers and the scrapers really mess things up for everyone; I hope we can agree on that much. And Blogger did fumble this one – I know we agree on that.
the Wandering Author’s last blog post..Is Amazon Seeking to Dominate Small Presses?
Blogger is a different animal. I have written against the machine there as long as I’ve been blogging.
Damien Riley’s last blog post..Interview With Amy Palko: Blogger, Photographer Extraordinairre
I think what happened was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was the e-mail they sent to you. “Since you are an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not spam.” hahahaha! I just love that!
I almost feel bad for liking blogger-even after they lost my blog once! I think I’m overly attached to my template.
Jessica The Rock Chick’s last blog post..Each And Every Day Of The Year
That email they sent you is to much! Holy moly Blogger.
Kara’s last blog post..who needs another mouth to feed?
I find myself wondering why the blog of the Freelance Cynic was not treated so harshly.
Freelanceguru’s last blog post..How can I win the Lottery but still keep it real – Part 1
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 1 trackback }