Israel Matzav

Blogger attacks Gates of Vienna

Gates of Vienna, one of the most prominent anti-Islamist blogs on the Internet, has been shut down by Blogger (the same people who host my blog) as a spam blog.

Wait, it gets worse. I just received this from Dymphna over at Gates of Vienna, the best of the blogs;

Some evil troll has done us in. Here's the message the Baron is sending out:

I just attempted to post at Gates of Vienna, and was told by an automatic message that our blog is suspected of being a spam blog, and has been blocked by Blogger.

The full text of the message:

“This blog has been locked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots. You will not be able to publish your posts, but you will be able to save them as drafts.”

And here’s what Blogger says about what we are suspected of:

“What Are Spam Blogs?

“As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.”

Some of the most coherent writing on the web.

I followed Blogger’s instructions, typed in the visible letters to prove that I was not a bot, and am now awaiting a response from the Powers That Be.

In the meantime, I can’t even post a notice at Gates of Vienna about what is going on.

If you don’t think Gates of Vienna is a spam blog, please post a notice about what has happened. If you know of a way to contact Blogger or Google, please let them know that Gates of Vienna is *not* a spam blog, regardless of how politically incorrect it is.

As some of you know, I have had some problems with Blogger (which is owned by Google) as well. I was also treated as a spam blog for a while. After several days of typing in the letters to prove I wasn't a 'bot,' I sent them an email and managed to get that restriction lifted.

But they summarily kicked me out of Google AdSense last summer (which is why I don't have the Google ads you see at most other blogs) when my traffic went from 18,000 hits to 48,000 hits and nearly 70,000 page views during the month of July 2006 (during the Lebanon War). They suspended my account on July 16, four days after the war started (but after my traffic had kicked up due to what was going on in Gaza), claiming that I must have been clicking the ads myself. And although I sent them my site meter statistics as part of an appeal, my appeal was denied without explanation.

If this blog ever shuts down for more than a day or two without notice, you'll know why. At Gates of Vienna they have not been able to post since 11:30 AM yesterday Eastern time. Let's hope they're back soon. They're good people.

UPDATE 9:53 PM

They're back! For those who have never been to Gates of Vienna, go check it out. It's some of the highest level intellectual material you will ever read on the Internet.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:52 PM