Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever



Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever

Reader M.H. noted that in a few articles of mine a few links to the blog "Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever" have turned to rot. I usually try to fix as many of my old articles as possible, updating and redirecting links that have died, expired or moved. I want to thank my readers for keeping me informed.

I was aware of the problem Becky was having with Google - last Spring a bunch of liberal idiots flagged her website as being offensive, and the morons at Google put up an interstitial page before users could visit her site, warning of potentially objectionable content -- you've probably seen these before (sample).

After reviewing her blog, Google removed the interstitial but in July it was back up. Becky complained on the Blogger Help Forum along with many of her readers in support, that in all the time she was bashing Bush, no one objected to her content and that only when she started to criticize Obama did the crap hit the fan.

The powers at Blogger denied that it had anything to do with politics (1) and that it was strictly based on the fact that a number of posts contain nudity. Of course, one can find tens of thousands of blogs on Blogger with even more extreme content without any warning splash screen. Back in 2008 I reported on the fact that Google was shutting down many anti-Obama blogs because liberals realized that Blogger was run by imbeciles.

As I wrote then:

The problem here is that anyone can have your blog frozen if you are any bit controversial. When I first started blogging on 16 Jan 2006 I was on the Blogger platform at plancksconstant.blogspot.com and with less than two months of blogging under my belt I decided that I did not want to write under the whim of any arbitrary system. I have been here on this hosted site since.

Amazingly, Google, which is so good at so many different things, is such a jerk as to how it operates Blogger. The correct way to take care of spam Sites is to do nothing until a Blogger employee has the time to take a look see. Otherwise to arbitrarily and without prior review simply freeze a website until some live person gets the time to judge the website does more harm than good. Is this how they practice "Don't be evil"?


She must have finally pissed them off because now all you can see at her blog is this.

Since the blog is blocked, you cannot see Becky's last post; however I happen to have a cached version:

Published on 21 Jul 2009:

Thought Crime

BeckyHey kids...

The time has come to say good-bye to the blog—and au revoir to my readers—I'll be back somewhere, sometime, somehow.

The blog was started about three years, and 1,146 posts, ago when my sister thought it would be a good outlet for me to share my stupid opinions and charming weirdness with the world, and spare my family and close friends.

I had no idea the thing would become as popular as it did. Up until last week I was getting over a 150,000 hits a month. While not exactly breathing down the neck of Matt Drudge or Ariana Huffington—a pretty good number for a little part-time blog.

I had a blast, not only sharing my annoying opinions, but interacting with, and irritating all of you—perhaps sometimes being entertaining as well--and not taking any of it too seriously.

But those days are gone. Some readers complained to Google, and the “objectionable content” splash page was inserted, no doubt by the click of some rather low-level Google employeetyranny of the constable is often much more oppressive than the King's tyranny.

The blog, which had remarkably high page rankings on a number of topics, is disappearing from the search engines by the minute--when an entry is not totally scrubbed it is replaced with an Objectionable Content Warning. Besides, I am not going to maintain a blog which is publicly identified and indexed as objectionable.

Rather than talk anymore about the persons who are responsible for the demise of my blog, I want to close my remarks by mentioning a vile homophobic organization, that I have personally done battle with—but who along with me has been marginalized by liberal do-gooders, and the acquiescence of Google.

A while back a number of people took it upon themselves to flag MassResistance—an ignorant group dedicated to the suppression of homosexuals and eradication of the mythical gay agenda. Google responded by putting up an “Objectionable Content” splash page.

What kind of country is America becoming when we believe that certain ideas should be marginalized and suppressed because they are unpopular or incorrect thought?

No one seems to realize that the beauty of free speech is that stupid and vile opinions are out there in the open for all to see and appreciate for what they are—much like a pile of dog poop in the living room.

But, we no longer trust the market place of ideas—the ideas of sassy libertarian dykes and homophobic idiots need to be suppressed—so that no one will get the get the erroneous impression they are worth anything. We are so lucky to have the officious intermeddlers that report bad thought to the Internet Companies, and companies that are willing to implement the will of the mob.

Many readers have commented that I should not complain about Google's behavior—after all I am a big free marketer and libertarian and believe the concept of private property is sacred.

Thomas Jefferson stunned the world when he pronounced the truth that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." The complaint of the Continental Congress was that the British Crown was denying citizens, residing in the colonies, their ability to exercise these natural and fundamental rights.

Does it really matter whether those rights are being denied by the King of England, the federal government—or a gargantuan Internet company?

Google is richer and more powerful than most nations. They have the right to do as they wish with their property—but not to get all Burkean—with that right and power comes an obligation and duty to exercise it responsibly.

And they do not have a good track record. Google cares much about “collective rights”--wisdom of the mob—but little about “individual rights”--the right of me and MassResistance to participate in the market place of ideas.

I do not believe that the federal government should regulate how Google exercises its power—they would only make things worse, and it would result in greater infringements of individual freedom. But that in no way lessens my disgust and disdain for a company that on a small scale will wipe me out with a key stroke, and on a large scale partner with Communist Party thugs in censoring the Chinese people.

These days most of the censorship is not the work of the federal government—it is the Titans of Silicon Valley , who also strive to know every single fact about every single living thing in the Universe, that scare the beejeebees out of me.

Or maybe you've been brainwashed too.

See ya'

BeckyBecky

*********************End of Becky's Post*******************

Others who weighed in on the story: RedState and Popehat to name a few.

As I wrote, I moved away from Blogger after only two months when I realized that it was run by morons who could shut me down for my views. Although one could argue that it's a free service and Google has a right to run it as they want, the real problem for any blogger is how do they know when someone will object to their content? Some prude may object to articles about breast-feeding or fat people might object to blogs that have recipes only for healthy food. Anyone could become a victim of some malicious, small-minded group of individuals who simply flag whatever they don't like and Google shuts them down. This is the same as shooting first and asking questions later.

For a company whose policy is "Don't be evil" they sure are evil -- and stupid. You don't shut someone down first and investigate later. Google has enough money to do it right. Someday, when I'm in the mood, I will simply flag as objectionable every blogspot blog I can find and after a shitstorm of thousands of blogs shut down, perhaps they'll change the way they do business. What maroons!






ENDNOTES


(1):

tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog, Blogger and adult content

That said, Blogger acted exactly as set out in our Terms of Service and our Content Policy: "there are some boundaries on the type of content that can be hosted with Blogger. The boundaries we've defined are those that both comply with legal requirements and that serve to enhance the service as a whole." We specifically outline the scenarios in which an interstitial will apply, including "image and video content that contains nudity" and point out that "we may put such content behind an interstitial."

We didn't take the blog down. We didn't prevent people from reading it (as evidenced by the many comments left on both of her most recent posts). We have in no way acted to prevent, restrict or otherwise skew the debate happening on her blog or any of the others discussing this that are hosted by Blogger. We simply responded to the fact that a number of posts there do, in fact, contain nudity. Visitors to the site flagged the blog as containing objectionable content, and as set out in our TOS, blogs that contain nudity may contain an interstitial to let readers know what they will find when they click through.




### End of my article ###

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