A bunch of specifically anti-Obama bloggers were blocked from their sites by Blogger the other day. Google's explanation is right along the lines I guessed at.
“It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts,” a Google spokesman, Adam Kovacevich, said in a statement. “While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.”
In a way this reminds me of the absolutely hysterical case of Tyson Homosexual.
Folks, spam is so bad it's a major reason for the success of GMail. Check your spam folder...I know damn well you have a Gmail account...and see
- how well it catches spam
- how well is does NOT catch non-spam
It's a volume thing...so many folks get so much of the same spam, it's easier to identify the spam, and to intercept verified spam before it makes it through all your accounts.
And all the bullshit rumors about Obama in said spam read remarkably like the web pages that were accidentally blocked. They really, really look like spam blogs, not because anyone complained but because their content is identical to vast amounts of current political spam.
One of the victims said it would have taken a human five seconds to realize her site wasn't spam, and she's right. It would have taken the same amount of time to find out no one's last name is Homosexual. But there's no point to automation unless you trust it enough to turn it loose. This sort of thing is just going to happen for a couple more years.
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