Becky was indeed a bit off the deep end at times, but she was incredibly irreverent, bold and, more often than not, right. Becky had a blog called Just a Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever. When you click the link, you will be taken to a page that warns of objectionable content. It’s dangerous content indeed, and clearly objectionable to the enemies of ideas.
Becky describes herself as:
Becky describes herself as:
Mom, recovering attorney, post-modern neo-feminist, disrespectful dyke, unlikely punk, nice Catholic girl, passionate freedom-loving libertarian, thinking conservative, sappy romantic, spiritual redneck, softball enthusiast, shopaholic and unrepentant flirt.
Don’t let that fool you. She is a razor. A razor that will make you laugh as she cuts your nuts off. But don’t look forward to her next post or her incisive comments on the future of society, because there won’t be one. She’s closing up shop.
But don’t cry for Becky. I’m sure that ten new lawyer blogs will spring up in place of Short Shorts to promote their availability to represent the victims of airplane crashes, or to guide lawyers to financial freedom while maintaining a relaxed lifestyle. You know, the really important stuff.
H/T Our hinterlands correspondent, Kathleen.
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.If ever there was an awfully good reason to have a blog, it’s to irritate as many people as possible. It means that she had a point and made it very well. I bet that the wealth of (small “l”) libertarian bloggers will be on this outrage today like flies on feces. I can’t wait to hear their voices ring out against this travesty. If I was half as worthy as Becky, someone would put an objectionable content warning on Simple Justice. That you can access it without warning is a testament to my unworthiness.
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 employee—tyranny 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 as objectionable.
But don’t cry for Becky. I’m sure that ten new lawyer blogs will spring up in place of Short Shorts to promote their availability to represent the victims of airplane crashes, or to guide lawyers to financial freedom while maintaining a relaxed lifestyle. You know, the really important stuff.
H/T Our hinterlands correspondent, Kathleen.
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Nothing will down Shortshorts for long I have the feeling, not even Google.
We’ve been linked by Just A Girl In Short Shorts, and while I don’t speak for everyone who writes at our site, I liked her blog and found its mildly risque images cute. I also agree with a lot of what she has to say.
But if JAGISS doesn’t want to be labeled, she should buy a domain name and self-host. A capital or lowercase libertarian would point out that there are hundreds of reputable, cheap hosting options which come without Blogger’s user-flagging option. Most simply aren’t free to host, but then neither is Simple Justice.
Don’t go all Slackeoisie on us Scott. She signed up with a free service, so it’s difficult to sympathize that she has to live with its rules.
There’s always a curious reaction to issues like these where some, usually those who are more attuned to the technical angle rather than the substantive, believe the solution is to circumvent the problem. I don’t think that’s her point, and I know it isn’t mine. Rarther, that a few people who disagree with her ideas can get blogger to post a warning to her blog, as if moving forward would cause permanent brain damage, and cause her removal from google. The level of control over ideas is astounding and shocking.
Of course there are alternative ways for her to continue to blog. Do you really think that’s the best answer for a blog whose only “flaw” is that some readers dislike her ideas?
And what difference does it make that the service is free? If that precludes your sympathy, then you need to reevaluate the foundation for your beliefs.
What I mean is that beggars can’t be choosers Scott. If Becky paid for the Blogger service and didn’t get what she thought she was buying, I’d have more sympathy. I’d still say she should have read the terms of service (or even looked at a Blogger blog and seen the user option to flag any site as inappropriate), but I’d sympathize more than I do. Mind you, I like Becky’s site, and do sympathize to an extent regardless. But I’ve flagged dozens of Blogger blogs as inappropriate, for spamming my own site, and think anyone who keeps a site there should be aware that strangers have that option. Concerning paying for the site, blog-hosting isn’t a moral or professional duty, like defending an indigent where one owes the client one’s best no matter what. One gets what one pays for.
As for my beliefs, let’s analogize. I believe that if I rent an apartment, rather than buying it to own outright, I have to live within the terms of the lease. That means the owner can prevent me from keeping dogs on the premises, and neighbors can complain if I do. If I own my home outright on the other hand, I have no landlord and can ask the police to use force to remove anyone who hates dogs from the property. Perhaps in Texas I can shoot them.
There are those who argue that Google is so dominant in its field that it should be regulated as a public utility. That may be true (notwithstanding the alternatives of Bing, Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc) but it’s certainly not of Blogger. There are many, many alternatives to Blogger, and those who choose to host sites depicting pretty girls wearing short shorts should choose those alternatives.
Blogger’s content policy prohibits:
“Pornography and Obscenity: Image and video content that contains nudity, sexually graphic material, or material that is otherwise deemed explicit by Google should be made private. Otherwise, we may put such content behind an interstitial.”
“Otherwise deemed explicit” does in fact allow a drone to block a site. Do I think JAGISS was explicit? No. Do I think Mrs. Grundy might find it so? Yes. Their site, their rules.
Of course none of this has anything to do with Google Search, rather than Blogger. I can search for the vilest filth imaginable on Google, and will never get an adult content warning unless I choose to activate Google’s filter for the same. Google will merely direct me to what I asked it to find.
In this sense, Google the search engine and Google the owner of the Blogger hosting service are separate and distinct. And it’s the company’s right to observe that distinction, just as it’s Becky’s right to move her blog, with every word and image, to her own site hosted by a company that’s not so prissy.
While we pretend that the internet is huge, open, level playing field, the reality is that essentially none of us can access it, whether to add to it or take from it, without going through a private entity. When those entities start messing with content, the only question is when will they take a hard look at yours.
There was nothing about Short Shorts that was sexually explicit, and she was far tamer than many others. Yet, a few who disagreed were capable of shutting her down, silencing her, only because of the happy acquiescence of Blogger, a Google product. Had Becky spammed the world, or done a hundred other bad things, then shut her down. But what she did was express ideas that disturbed people who disagreed with her. And so those who disagreed complained. Blogger went along with it. Google disappeared her. And your issue is that she didn’t pay for the service.
Not to worry Patrick. I will still be there when they come for you. And I will defend your rights as well. I bet Becky will too.
Anyone who follows Becky’s blog knows that she has been discussing pulling the plug, and that it is not about Mrs. Grundy getting offended at her graphics. It is about Mr. Grundy or Ms. Grundy or both, a minority out there, offended — threatened — at her politics. She has her opinions and is not obsequious about venting them. This is what she sees happening, which she wrote a few days ago, July 15:
“No—they are offended that I do not worship the water that Barack Obama walks on—but when I was a pretty severe critic of George Bush these types could not get enough of me.”
Recollect that Becky has been around for three years without a problem until recently.
The Official Woman decided that the adult content warning and the deletion from the search engine was the way to fix her, i.e. shut her up. I doubt that Shorts will shut herself up forever and she states in the same post that she will not.
Couldn’t Becky avoid this by having the blog hosted somewhere else? Seems like Google is in control of the “objectionable content” page only because she’s being hosted by Google.
I feel contempt for the people who reported her as objectionable in an effort to silence her.
But I don’t get how this is an issue of “rights.” If Becky’s rights have been infringed, then so have the rights of the commenters you have banned or deleted here, Scott.
Should we, as consumers, speak out about companies that exercise their rights in ways we find contemptible, in hopes that the market will influence them? Absolutely. But let’s not encourage misunderstanding of legal rights, a problem already rampant enough.
Of course she could, but that’s not the point.
I think this seems more confusing than it is because there are two comingled issues here: (1) Google owns Blogspot and all the associated technical resources so, contract and tort law permitting, they have the legal and moral right to do whatever they want with them, but (2) this in no way preclude us from pointing out when they are acting like dicks.
PS After reading the title, I avoided clicking on this out of fear that there would be photos.
Terrible analogy between my comments and google.
Take it a step further away. Blogger couldn’t care less about short shorts. A few people who don’t like her politics complain. Blogger, without any further consideration, acts upon their complaint and post the warning, simultaneously causing her to be removed from google.
If blogger had a problem with her, that would be a separate issue. They don’t. They allowed a couple people who don’t care for her politics to “disappear” her off google and scare off any new potential readers. While blogger has the legal right to disallow use by anybody, it’s the use of this mechanism, without further review, thought, limitation, to silence a blogger.
There are ways around this, but this is mainstream blogosphere, and it’s that easy to shut down a voice with which one disagrees. The legal right doesn’t incorporate moral probity. But that those who profess to believe in personal freedom simply shrug off the silencing of a blogger because of her politics (libertarian politics at that) does much to undermine my faith that mean what they say, and personally enjoy in their own writing.
It appears that some people are libertarian only when it comes to their own voices. When it come time to stand up for someone else, they become ostriches.
I seem to recall that a couple of years ago there was an online bookstore that bragged that it would remove a book from its e-shelves if enough people complained that it was inappropriate. That was hideous because it was an affront to our notion of what a bookstore ought to be, even if they had the perfect right to empower anonymous users to disappear books like that. It’s rather like Liberty University’s recent banning of the Democratic Club — perfectly within their rights, but a betrayal of what the word “university” means to most people. In many cases, private entities limit expression in a way that offends us even if they have the right to do it.
You are completely right that “the legal right doesn’t incorporate moral probity.” A business model that allows — and encourages — readers to silence speech is obnoxious and offensive. That’s why I’d never use Blogger or any Google service, especially after reading about this incident.
But what, exactly, are you looking for here that you aren’t getting, Scott? Do you want expressions of outrage? Do you want angry emails to Google? What, exactly, should libertarians be doing to “stand up for someone else?”
Are we failing to “stand up” if we point out that a crucial element of libertarian thought is personal responsibility, and that Becky has chosen the platform that limits her? Is it failing to stand up to point out that it is an inescapable element of our system of free expression that Google can act like its acting, just as surely as you could set up a system where a commenter here can get banned if three other commenters demand it? Are we simply not being clear enough for your tastes in saying that the people who vote to classify her as offensive are whiny douches, and Google is timid and contemptible for empowering them?
What would standing up entail, here?
This is a more productive way to look at it. To respond, let’s first identify the issue. Short Shorts wasn’t sexual or commercial, but political. Blogger used its fiat to effectively allow the complaints of outsiders to shut down a blog based upon its politics. Again, it’s not because Google/Blogspot had a problem with Short Shorts, but because some who disagreed with Becky’s politics complained.
This should give rise to outrage across the blawgosphere, and the political spectrum, calling out Blogger for allowing itself to be manipulated into silencing political thought. It shouldn’t matter to non-libertarians that Becky’s politics are libertarian, but it should be particularly outrageous to those whose politics are akin to hers. Everyone should fear that a few people who disagree can so easily cause a platform to bring a blog to its knees.
Adding insult to injury, the removal of Short Shorts from Google, the primary conduit to search for ideas on the internet (whether anyone wants to admit it or not), should be of even greater concern. Since the basis for the complaints was solely political, and resulted in the disappearance of these ideas from searchability on the primary search engine, and since it wasn’t at Google instigation (which would reflect a different problem) but occurred nonetheless, an outcry from the rest of us would serve to let Google and Blogger know that of the outrage felt for their having allowed themselves to be a tool of political censorship.
If they chose, once they become aware of the issue, to shut down a blog because they find its political ideas offensive, they will then have staked out the position of political intolerance and we, the blawgosphere, will know that neither blogger nor Google can be trusted as a conduit for the free exchange of ideas.
I have no problem with publicizing that discovery — though it ought not be a surprise.
But I don’t really see why you are calling out libertarians in your original post, or in your subsequent comments. As you indicate, anyone on any side of the political spectrum should object as consumers and potential consumers of the product. Your calling out of libertarians contributes to the impression that you are suggesting that Beck’s rights have been violated, which they have not.
There is a large contingent of folks who are not geeky as others that they have the slightest clue about blogger and Google, and expect them to be content neutral. It might not surprise some, but it should shock all.
As to libertarians, I don’t call them out as much as alert them. I don’t want to see any woman abused, but if it happened to my daughter, I would be the first to pull the trigger.
Adding to what Ken said, the standard response in a free market is to walk away. If you don’t like Blogspot’s policies, stop using them. This is what some people here have been telling shortshorts to do. It’s a good response: Complain, walk away, tell others to walk away. If enough people do that, the problem will go away. Various Google (and Yahoo and Amazon) lines of business have been wiped out because people walked away.
Off topic, but it bears repeating: The key to controlling the destiny of your blog is to own the domain name. Pick a domain name and register it yourself, so that you always control where it sends people. I do this, and I have moved my website overnight whenever I felt like it.
And what we’re doing here is…
Well, Scott, it seemed that what you were doing in this thread was suggesting that people were betraying free speech and libertarian principles if their response was “complain and walk away and tell others to walk away.”
I was stating (not suggesting) that blaming Becky, making excuses, or offering suggestions to circumvent the problem were betraying free speech and liberatian principles.
And, since I’m not a libertarian, I add to the list: kick some butt in the process. I hope that won’t offend anyone’s sensibilities.
Taking it a step farther away, maybe Blogspot/Google does have a problem with certain thoughts, and opinions. How do we know that’s not true? The fact that Google silenced a blogger with or without a review, thought, or some process (and we don’t know, except that there was no communication with HER evidently) raises an inference, rational to me, that Google gives a hoot. About the content on its conduit. And about stopping her.
SHG,
I understand that’s not your point, since you made that clear in your comment to Patrick, above. I agree with part of your point, which is that the heckler’s veto is sad. What I disagree with, though, is that it’s “astounding and shocking.”
Google Blogger is a private platform for speech, and the potential to lose that platform seems clear from the terms of service. It shouldn’t be astounding and shocking that a bunch of babies would speak up and use the tool Google handed them to bar unfavorable speech.
Then you shoulda said that in the first place. Blogger’s TOS has limits, but none with regard to being either non-controversial or of a particular political point of view. I wouldn’t have thought this to be the case (hence my being astounded and shocked) and I would imagine that one or two other people are as naive as me.
And if Google is going to offer a free service, then limit it to certain political agendas, this should be made widely known.
.
She’s excellent, but there are a lot of much ruder blogs on Blogger that don’t get flagged. But because she’s so big, she was bound to set a moonbat off.
Maybe if she contacted them repeatedly she could get that fixed. In the meantime, people can go around FLAGGING all the Socialist and Left-Wing Moonbat blogs on Blogger they can find.
Tweet Becky, Tweet!
.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
outlaw most bloggers
license all the rest
monitor their writing
.
Libertarian blogger kicked off Google’s Blogger platform
Would it kill you to admit that even if one concedes that that feature is an option, that Google should not have allowed miscreants to abuse it? Clearly, this is a case of Google going milquetoast on its own TOS, allowing mindless ideologues and trolls to harm their users and their service.
“the removal of Short Shorts from Google, the primary conduit to search for ideas on the internet (whether anyone wants to admit it or not), should be of even greater concern.”
The fact that I offer a successful or even dominant service does not impose a moral obligation on me to run it in the way my customers would prefer. I have every moral right to shoot myself in the foot as much as I want, and if I do it enough my customers will leave and another service will become dominant.
As a practical matter, Google are idiots for allowing this Blogger policy to continue. As an ethical matter, they are perfectly free to run their business as they think best, including into the ground.
PageRank is not an inalienable right. If Google’s bad policies sufficiently diminish their utility to the blogosphere, we’ll go somewhere else.
Libertarian blogger kicked off Google’s Blogger platform
Here is a post by a Blogger Product Manager on the issue. As I understand him, he claims that Blogger responded to notices and noted that the blog did, in fact, contain images of nudity, and put up the warning page based on that.
If this is correct — that Blogger only put up the warning page because of nudity (apparently mentioned in its TOS), not because of written content — then the Blogger Product Manager may have a fair point. Can Blogger be expected to evaluate the subjective basis for “inappropriate content” complaints about pages that do, in fact, contain elements restricted by its TOS? In other words, is it Blogger’s place to say “you are only reporting that nudity because you object to her political views?”
I saw Rick Klau’s post, and I went back to Short Shorts to see where the nudity was. I never saw it before when I went there, and didn’t see it now. So Rick Klau says so, but I don’t see it. Did you see any indecent nudity? Did anybody see any indecent nudity?
Maybe Rick Klau can point it out for us, because I have yet to find it.
I think I saw a sideboob. But I didn’t really look around.
Yeah. What he said.
Filthy, disgusting smut. That changes everything.
This post, for instance, has rather mild from-the-side nudity in the second-to-last picture in the post.
Some posts under the sex tag also have some rather mild nudity.
Clearly, this is a covert porno site hiding behind a libertarian political front. No wonder the fine upstanding Americans at Google are upset, and rightfully so. Such absolute total filth! I’m appalled. Disgusted. Outraged. Let’s call out the Ladies Brigade to storm the castle!
You’re being silly. You challenged the assertion that the site included nudity, as the Blogger rep claimed. I spent about 45 seconds to confirm it. Now you’re acting as if I advocated censoring web sites with nudity.
Blogger claims that it only slapped the content warning page on because the site contained content like nudity, as set forth in its TOS. The site does, in fact, contain some nudity. We’re free, of course, to assume that Blogger’s rep is lying and that Blogger actually put on the warning based on political content. In evaluating that assertion, we might ask if this has happened to other political sites without nudity, or if it has failed to happen to sites with both nudity and political views palatable to Blogger. THat’s a lot of work. I’m not about to do it.
But let’s return for a moment to my question, based on the Blogger rep’s question. Let’s assume that people reported the Short Shorts site because they were mad about the political content. Let’s say that Blogger reviewed the reports, determined that the site included nudity, and applied a warning page based on its TOS. Should Blogger evaluate the subjective motivations of people reporting things that, objectively, violate Blogger’s TOS? Is that reasonable, or feasible? I’m interested in the response.
I don’t post nude pictures on my blog. Even so, I would not care to host my blog on a network that reserved the right to slap warning labels on it if it included nudity. I also wouldn’t want to host my blog on a network that included such an overt mechanism to report its content if they were annoyed by what I wrote. So I would look for other venues. But I suspect that’s more of what you call victim-blaming.
“How the Punk Girls Do Christmas.” Disturbed, warped, and sick sick sick!
Not so fast, amigo. I said indecent nudity. Is that skinny dipping photo what you’re relying on as so offensive as to constitute indecent nudity sufficient to shut down the blog?
Seriously, is that what you call indecent?
Libertarian blogger kicked off Google’s Blogger platform
I’m not sure what the point of your use of the term “indecent” is. Blogger’s content policy seems to talk about just nudity, not indecent nudity.
Are you arguing that a private web site ought only regulate indecent nudity, rather than all nudity? That’s arguable, though again I’d prefer to exercise my freedom to choose one that doesn’t regulate nudity at all.
You seem determined to ascribe prudishness to me for exploring this issue.
Hey, I didn’t appoint you to be Rick Klau’s sign language interpreter. You chose that role. Now, as to nudity, here’s the policy from your link:
PORNOGRAPHY AND OBSCENITY:
Now, while breadth of the policy may be argued to cover pretty much any piece of skin possible, my question is whether you are honestly suggesting that the skinny dipping pic falls within this policy. Ironically, I note that the policy does permit websites whose secondary purpose is to monetize porn, but that’s another story.
So here’s your chance to show whether you are a fine print type of lawyer. You tell me, does an innocuous, non-porno (unless you disagree) pic of the side of a woman skinny dipping fall within their “pornography and obscenity” prohibition?
Seriously?
Let’s leave aside for the moment that you are only focusing on the first instance of nudity and ignoring the nudity under the “sex” tag.
I suppose the question presented is whether the header “Pornography and Obscenity” should be used to limit the text that follows it. By analogy to rules of statutory construction, most jurisdictions follow the rule that the header should not be used to alter the plain language of the text (and most good contracts will have disclaimers saying that). Mere nudity — including but not limited to the sideboob in question — is not pornography or obscenity.
But it is “nudity” — and that’s what the language of the sentence (rather than the header) says. Moreover, the remainder of the sentence renders the distinction moot by giving Google unfettered discretion to determine that things may be “otherwise deemed explicit by Google.” That’s a term that would not survive overbreadth or vagueness challenges in a statute, of course, but it’s not legally problematically in a private TOS. It’s just a straight-up discretionary veto over content.
However, some of the other images under the “sex” tag probably also render the focus on the single sideboob image moot.
Are you going to answer my question? Is it reasonable to ask Blogger to police the subjective motives of people who report nudity?
You ask the wrong question. I don’t expect anyone to police the subjective motives of people who report nudity. I expect Blogger not to allow itself to be manipulated. Just because someone complains doesn’t make it so. And if we’re going to go all lawyer, then let us consider the implied duty of good faith in all agreements. Is zapping a blog over something that no one, in their right mind, would think is porno good faith?
You’ve become the blogger apologist here (again, of your chosing), so let me bounce the question back at you:
Are you suggesting that whenever someone makes a complaint, Blogger should close its eyes and just shut down a blog, or should its users expect a reasonably intelligent reaction? Which brings us back to whether you agree with blogger that this hardcore porn demands a warning.
And I don’t really think you’re a prude. Not really.
But what does this mean?
Granted. Do you know exactly what the complaints said? Do you know whether they accurately characterized the pages they complained about? Given the actual content of the blog, do you have a basis — other than the Greater Internet Fuckwad theory — to presume that the complaints were untrue in addition to presuming that they were motivated by political spite? I don’t — either way.
Once again: can anyone cite other instances of Blogger applying the instance page that support the accusation that Blogger does so in a manner that suggests that it does so with a political bias? Or are you just content to presume that, because you think it sucks that they run their company in a way that lets prudes complain about a little nudity?
Actually, I’ve repeatedly said I would never use Blogger because it allows such control over my content, which I find completely distasteful. But I’ve questioned the premise of and evidence supporting the attacks on Blogger, true. I have failed to wet myself in outrage over a private company making a business decision and exercising a right to cater to net prudes.
It doesn’t bring us back to that question at all. You’re conflating different issues — whether Blogger is following its own rules, how it should apply those rules, and whether it should have those rules in the first place. I don’t like hosts that restrict content. I would never use one. Because I’m a grown-up responsible for my own actions, I chose a host that wouldn’t. I think restricting content for adults — particularly, but not only, such benign content as seen on the Short Shorts blog — is petty and annoying.
But Blogger has a different business plan. It wants to market in a niche that, for lack of a better word, is prudish. They would probably prefer to say “family friendly.”
Because Blogger probably uses drones to evaluate complaints, I would not expect them to exercise any sophisticated analysis at all when someone complains about a nude pic on one of their pages.
Do we have any indication that similar nudity is tolerated in other cases by Blogger?
Since this thread is getting way too skinny, I’m going to keep this brief. As a wise man once asked, can’t you just concede that Blogger acted like a dick, that Becky is nothing near objectionable on the porn scale to any rational person, and that your opposition to my non-libertarian position is that you believe that Google, as a private company, can be as unreasonable in the application of their policy as they want to be, and the only appropriate response is to walk away. (Why you’ve felt compelled to go to the wall for their right to act like a dick is another matter, but not the subject of this discussion.)
I disagree. When someone behaves like a dick, I fight. Therein lies our difference of opinion.
I’ll try to be brief as well and then tap out. I don’t like the idea of a blog community that has restriction of speech as one of its basic elements. I wouldn’t join one. But I’m not sure it’s “dickish” to run one that way, open to people who want their blogs run that way. And even if the policy is dickish, I still haven’t heard evidence that the enforcement here was dickish in a way distinguishable from having a policy against nudity in the first place.
You place the burden on showing that Google was wrong to shut Becky down. I place the burden on Google to show that it was right to shut Becky down. I’ve seen nothing to even remotely justify Bloggers actions. I don’t think you have either, but you’re inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to the corporation against the individual. That’s where out perspectives differ.
Scott, I think you’re somewhat libertarian. I mean, c’mon.
I’m a political mongrel.
There is more than one level on which to be a “libertarian”.
Yes, Google’s property rights entitle its managers to impose whatever rules they like on people who use their services, and it would be unlibertarian to try to force them, by a lawsuit, to carry content they don’t want. (This conclusion would *not* hold if Google were a nationalized company or a monopoly created by law, such as a phone company before 1983.)
But it is not at all unlibertarian to express disdain for managers who would behave that way, nor to try to dissuade them by non-violent means up to and including organized boycotts. The (libertarian moral) right to refuse to do business with somebody is absolute, and goes both ways.
Also, someone needs to point out that the above relies on the assumption that Google’s management *intended* JaGISSTAW to be silenced for her political views, and I’m not at all sure that’s true. Google’s “objectionable content” mechanism is mostly automated, and was set up because Google hosts tens of thousands of forums and simply doesn’t have anywhere near the staff they would need to “police” their content themselves. This inability is inherent in the structure of the modern Internet, and if the law required sites like Google to do a better job, the sites would be forced to shut down by sheer cost.
And if, as I believe, this injustice is a result of neglect (note: I did *not* say negligence), rather than intent, on Google’s part, then petitions from people like us to Google might very well get it corrected. Let’s give it a try.
I dislike censorship. A lot. To the point that I’ve allowed people to post things on my blog that irritate the hell out of me and eat up my time as I usually feel the need to respond.
At the same time, I can’t help but enjoy the irony here, particularly after reading the post on her blog about the Kiss-In on LDS property.
Based upon that post, I suspect that she would not — or at least not without appearing hypocritical — support the idea that Blogger must be forced to allow her to continue posting without the “Warning” page being in place.