Blogger takes the lazy option on spam blogs: new “flag” option

Came across this post on Google’s new policy regarding Blogger blogs:

…the folks over at Google have announced a half-arsed effort to appease recent critics of their inaction over spam blogs by launching a new option for Blogspot blogs titled “Flag As Objectionable”.

The next time your reading a blogspot.com hosted blog that’s been recently created (it only applies to new blogs), you can know tell Google if you don’t like it and if they get enough complaints they’ll either “delist” the blog from the “Next blog” option found at the top of blogspot hosted blogs, or if they deem its really serious, god help us, they might even ban it. So basically get enough people together to target a site you don’t like on Blogger now and Google will help make sure no one gets to see it…that’s right, because they’ve also included “politically incorrect, potential hurtful, or just plain gross” in the criteria, but chances are if you’ve got a spam blog you’ll be totally unaffected.

Considering the percentage of B&P blogs on Blogger, and the percentage of abandoned blogs, chances are B&P folks are still safe. Besides, this obviously doesn’t affect Blogger blogs hosted elsewhere. Oh yeah, and there was nothing there about Blogger cancelling the blogs in question. From the general point of view of regular blogging folks though, the “politically incorrect” part sounds fishy… so should somebody not like your opinion on some touchy topic and you’re doomed? Where’s my freedom of speech and how different is this from censorship?

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