Saturday, July 18, 2009

Another victim of virtual Maoists

An interesting post on Instapundit caught my eye today:

"GIRL IN SHORTS doesn’t seem to merit the Blogger Content Warning"

A quick look at the site not only confirmed the Instapundit's judgement, but also a revealing final post by the blogger herself. Becky C is closing the blog since she is being harassed by "virtual Maoists" who send streams of complaints to Google that cause a "content advisory" to be posted on the splash page, an action that acts as a barrier to the curious and uninformed (political readers would probably not proceed, while people seeking porn would be rather upset and not return either.) More ominous, the content advisory warning would also act to remove the blog from search engines, since it would no longer come up under any political category.

I have been posting about using the Internet as a virtual Galt's Gulch, but this indicates anyone interested in freedom needs to get active very quickly indeed before the internet is overrun by virtual "Red Guards" or Brownshirts. Choosing alternatives to Google seems to be the main axis of advance for establishing the virtual Galt's Gulch, the actions of Google in sanctioning and supporting censorship at home and abroad are deplorable, and consistent with the MSM's attempts to shape people's world view by restricting the flow of information.

Google technology is potentially liberating, and it is perhaps ironic that you can potentially purchase a Linux based server from Google to implement its search engine technology within any private network. Perhaps a series of "dark nets" using masking technology discussed earlier is a place to start.

In the mean time, you can send Becky a message of support, or take active measures of your own (how many left wing blogs should be shut down due to "offensive content"? Let Google know).

Freedom is a self help project.

1 comment:

Realist Theorist said...

George Reisman's blog hit a similar bump. Google flagged it as a source of spam or some such thing. Since there is no way it could legitimately be identified as objectionable, except for his views, it wouldn't surprise me if someone reported him to Google.

The volumes are so high, and the service is free. So, Google will block, send an email to the owner, and see what happens.

I suppose the lesson is to remove the intermediary. One will still have an ISP, but they're far less likely to act on complaints about content.