Blogger has added a little censorship flag to the top right of its' blogs. Shame on you Blogger! I am a grown adult who can make her own choices about what I do and don't read. Will people censor blogs that they disagree with politically? What about bloggers who discuss breastfeeding? Pictures of baby bottoms? This is just ridiculous.
I read their explanation, and they sure as heck need to better spell out the type of sites they might judge “objectionable”… especially since it’s so easy and accepted these days for liberal owners to judge conservative things “objectionable”, and vice-versa.
How long do you reckon it’ll be until blog spammers invent a script that’ll start marking blogs objectionable at random?
I don’t think it will last for long.
I plan to abuse the absolute hell out of that button.
One way to make it go away would be to flag every blog you visit and use the “Next Blog” frequently to spread the flags out.
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see what happens when you “flag” so I clicked “Next Blog” thinking after several dozen clicks I’d find a spam blog to “flag.”
Instead, the very first blog from “next blog” was a spam blog. So was the second. The third and fourth were legit. The fifth was a spam blog. The sixth was legit.
That’s a 50% hit on spam blogs! I think the “flag” button is deceptively hidden under “objectionable content” but is really Blogger’s attempt to employ their users as labor to clean up an uncontrolable mess.
I still disapprove. There are blogs of porn stars and blogs of escorts and blogs of strippers and sex blogs all that many people might find objectionable but those people have the adult ability to choose not to read them. Just as I have the ability to choose not to be a patron of a strip club I can choose what films I do and do not want to see, what blogs I do and do not want to read, etc. These people still have the right to publish their stories.
I’ll be interested in seeing if my lottery blogs get flaged as spam. http://tnlotteryresults.blogspot.com/ and http://www.tnlotteryresults.com/blog/
I noticed that as well, and I think it appeared just in the last few days. I’m tempted to write a really racey post, report myself ,and see what happens…
My blog doesn’t have the “flag” … maybe I’m just not offensive enough.