Saturday, January 15, 2022

Whelp! The Blog Got Removed! (...and then reinstated)

So, if anyone had trouble accessing this blog within the past 12 hours, it's because the blog was removed by Google.


Hmmm... who would flag my blog?  What enemies have I made this week?  
Although, it's a bit unclear if the blog was flagged by people or robots.  After I requested a review, I got this message.

I requested a review and (to Google's credit), it was reinstated within 12 hours.  So I guess I can't complain too much.  Still, I think it would be nice if they checked these things carefully before removing the blog.  I mean, I've put a lot of work into this blog over the years.  It seems a bit harsh to just preemptively remove it.  But then again I don't know how much volume of spam blogs they have to deal with.

I had a vague memory of something like this happening before, and I checked my email archive, and it looks like way back in 2007 one of my other blogs (https://workingtittle.blogspot.com/) was flagged as spam.  


What is it about my posting habits that trigger the robots to identify my blogs as spam?  Or is this a common occurrence that happens to most people?  (I wonder... most of the blogspot blogs I read and linked to 15 years ago are now all removed.  Were most of these blogs removed by the actual authors, or were most of them removed by the robots?)
It is also yet another reminder of how temporary blogs are.  I mean, when you're blogging, it often feels like you're creating a permanent record ("the Internet is forever" and all that), but just within a blink of an eye last night, my blog disappeared.  And then it was gone from the Internet for several hours, and only allowed to return because of Google's benevolence.  If I hadn't been checking my emails and requested a review, it would have stayed gone.  It makes you wonder how long this blog will last, and makes me start to be skeptical that this blog will long outlast me.
What was also a little bit scary was that during the time that my blog was removed, I couldn't access it at all.  Not even my blogger account--all of the posts I had written were just removed from my account.  (I had always imagined that if you're blog is being removed, blogger would give you a grace period to save anything you wanted to save.  But nope--it's just all suddenly gone.)
Well, at least most of this blog is backed up at the Internet Archive.  If I ever get permanently deleted, most of my old posts will still be accessible HERE.

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