Welcome to another installment of "adventures in blogging".

Yesterday, I got a notice from Goggle that one of my blog posts was removed for violating community standards.  Specifically: "Your content has violated our Malware and Viruses policy."

The post in question is from all the way back in 2005.  You can view it on Internet Archive HERE.  It is a one-line post which reads "Thanks for the Shout out Matt. Good to hear what you're up to as well." and then contains a link to Matt's website

https://web.archive.org/web/20130524033258/http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2005/07/thanks-for-shout-out-matt.html

It appears that in the years since 2005, Matt's website has became defunct, and the site address was taken over by someone spreading Malware.  Or at least Google suspects it of spreading Malware.  (I actually haven't thoroughly investigated the current site myself, because I don't want to catch Malware.  I've just visited the Internet Archive edition and the Google cached version.  But Google clearly has the site labelled as unsafe.)

Now, it seems a bit harsh to accuse me of violating community guidelines because a link I posted in 2005 is no longer working.

But, the good news is, there doesn't seem to be any penalty attached to this.  Google simply notified me that they were removing the post.  No strikes, no warnings, no limitations to my account.

So, I guess it's good that Google is pro-actively flagging these things, right?  I mean, if one of my links gets corrupted over time, and leads to a malware site, I think it's good that Google's computer programs are watching out for these things.  I don't want anyone to get Malware from this blog.

They even gave me the option to update the post, and then, once they reviewed it, republish it.  So I did.  The post is once again available here, but the link has been removed, and I added an addendum describing what happened.

The only thing I wonder is, were any human beings involved in this at any step of the way, or was this entirely just by computer programs?  

I mean, no actual human beings were looking at my posts from 2005, and flagging them to Google as containing malware right?  

Also a human being would understand that this wasn't a "violation of community guidelines", it was just a link from 18 years ago that had stopped working.

This is the same question I had back in January of 2022 when my whole blog was (briefly) deleted by Google for violating their SPAM policies.  It's not clear from the language used in the communication, but I suspect there's no actual human beings involved in any of these decisions.  Or am I wrong?

PS:

The post that I linked to from 2005 is from Matt Van Dyke's website.  You can still read it at Internet Archive HERE.  

The post is a narrative of how Matt was surfing the Internet one night, and came across some blogs which belonged to old Calvin friends.  One blog linked to another until Matt had uncovered a whole interconnected web of people from our old circle of friends back in the dorm days.  

(2005 was, you may recall, peak blogging.  That was when almost everyone we knew was trying out their own personal blog.  At the time, I thought this would be the new normal.  I had no idea blogging was simply a short-lived fad which would be out of style within a couple years  Almost all of those blogs have since been abandoned as people have moved onto other social media platforms.  I'm one of the few holdouts from those days--one of the few that has kept their blog going.  I miss the days of peak blogging, to be honest.  I thought it was really interesting when everyone was writing long posts about their lives and thoughts.  I mean, I like seeing everyone's vacation photos on Facebook, but I miss the days when you guys would all write long-form essays about your life and thoughts.)

Anyway, I appear in Matt's posts as one of the blogs he came across:

Then things got a little "small e-world". Under the "comrades" heading on Brian Bork's blog I saw the name Joel Swagman. This was the first name I was able to put with a face in my head. Joel was a guy who lived in my dorm. Although we didn't hang out much (I was too busy squandering my college experience so that I would have a difficult time remembering it years later), I remember him as a remarkably bright and friendly guy. I wasn't really reading any of these blogs as much as I was sort of drilling around, so I wasn't certain that any of these people -- even Joel -- were, in fact, who I believed them to be (keep in mind, for me, it's awfully late). On Joel's site, I saw the name Brett Nelson and again the name rang a bell; I wondered if he was the shorter blonde-haired kid (I actually don't think he's short, but Joel was like seven foot tall -- or, at least he seemed to be to me -- so anyone who was regularly seen standing next to him appeared, well, shorter; Brett, if you happen to read this, please don't take offense, I'm just relaying the things that came to my mind.) who used to regularly hang out with Joel. 

I found that post one day when I was bored at work and was Googling my own name just out of curiosity.  (Something I occasionally do when I get bored--every now and again you get surprised at what turns up!  e.g. I'm currently being cited as a  reference in a couple of Wikipedia posts HERE and HERE.) 

I should have left Matt a comment on his blog saying hi, thanks for the kind words.  That would have been the courteous thing to do.  But for reasons I don't really remember, I was too lazy to write a comment, so I just linked to Matt's blog from my own blog, and said "thanks for the shoutout".  (I figured that since he was now reading my blog, he would see it.)

It's a small thing, obviously, but it is one of those things that has stuck in my mind over the years.  Sorry for not leaving a proper comment, Matt.