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Google and the Anti-Obama Bloggers (mischief by pro-Obama bloggers?)
New York Times ^ | June 30, 2008 | Miguel Helft

Posted on 06/30/2008 8:08:49 PM PDT by FocusNexus

The bloggers in question, most of them supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and all of them opposed to Senator Obama, received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential "spam" blogs. "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," the Google e-mail read.

In an article that appeared on Bloggasm.com, the reporter Simon Owens spoke with some of the affected bloggers, who said they believed that Google had fallen prey to a campaign by activists supporting Senator Obama. According to the bloggers, the Obama supporters had clicked on a "flag" on the anti-Obama blogs alerting Google that they were spam.

If so, that would be an embarrassment for Google. On its Web page explaining the "flag" feature, Google says that "it can't be manipulated by angry mobs. Political dissent? Incendiary opinions? Just plain crazy? Bring it on."

On Monday, Google would not explicitly rebut the idea that it had been tricked but said that the cause of the temporary blockage appeared to be elsewhere. "It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts," 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."

(Excerpt) Read more at bits.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2008electiobias; achillwind; antiobamabloggers; bloggers; censorship; dncbrownshirts; elections; freespeech; google; googlebias; googlecensors; googleconscensor; googledems; googlessp; howtostealanelection; obama; propagandawingofdnc

1 posted on 06/30/2008 8:08:50 PM PDT by FocusNexus
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To: FocusNexus
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."

I guess Google got all nervous about the fallout and ended up doing the right thing.
2 posted on 06/30/2008 8:14:52 PM PDT by FORTRUTHONLY (Easy as 3.14159265358979323846...)
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To: All

Some of the bloggers must have complained to the right people. Google is leftist.


3 posted on 06/30/2008 8:17:48 PM PDT by patriot08
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To: FocusNexus
Google probably noticed a drop in traffic which for them means money.
4 posted on 06/30/2008 8:28:55 PM PDT by monkeycard (There's no such thing as too much ammo.)
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To: FocusNexus

Much of what the left does could be called spam. If they were birds it would be a standard bird call.


5 posted on 06/30/2008 8:35:05 PM PDT by Domangart (editor and publisher)
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To: FocusNexus
It is passing strange that the mistake only affected anti-Obama blogs. A selective mistake, wow, who would have thought.

I mean no one would actually think an organization that would help Red China suppress their citizens would actually shut these blogs down on purpose./SAR

6 posted on 06/30/2008 8:37:13 PM PDT by calex59
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To: FORTRUTHONLY
"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."

Except in China, of course.

7 posted on 06/30/2008 9:08:27 PM PDT by VanShuyten ("Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.")
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To: FocusNexus

TO: OBAMA CAMPAIGN and SURROGATES SUCH AS “GOOGLE”:

Just keep pissing off all those old broads whose drawers are still scorched over Obama dissing Hillary and defeating her for the Dem nod. Yeah; keep it up because if just 5% of them vote for McCain, that could mean the difference in victory and defeat.

If an additional 5% of them stay home, turn out the lights, the party’s over......


8 posted on 06/30/2008 9:15:37 PM PDT by no dems (B. Hussein is an Obamanation)
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To: FocusNexus
Would call this more than than 'mischief'. . .
9 posted on 06/30/2008 11:06:38 PM PDT by cricket (Damn Political Correctness; before it irretrievably, damns us all. . .)
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