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Bloggers who have been critical of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, are expressing concerns they are facing an organized effort to shut down their message, possibly with help from Google's Blogspot.com.
The ComeALongWay blog author reported the pro-Hillary site was deactivated by moderators at Google recently, only to be reactivated a short time later.
"I am not sure what to make of it, but I suspect that Blogger saw or heard about all the negative chatter and negative press …specifically mentioning this blog and responded," the blogger wrote.
But the writer confirmed, "Without any notice, apology, or explanation, my posting privileges ha[ve] been reinstated. Blogger's 'guilty until proven innocent' approach is appalling. As bloggers, it is a good thing we still have choices, and I have exercised my choice to leave Blogger and establish a new home at Wordpress. (I have been advised that Wordpress investigates charges before taking action.)
"Update: Hours after my posting privileges were restored, I receive an e-mail from Blogger. Interestingly, BlueLyon (another site with Obama criticism) received the same e-mail addressed to me," the blogger wrote.
The e-mail text said: "On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you've had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
The Just Say No Deal coalition of blogs is taking a stand against Obama. Some of the blogs are former Hillary-supporting blogs.
Carissa Snedeker regularly expressed her democratic views on her blog, created through Google, called Blue Lyon. She was among many other bloggers who supported Clinton but did not support Obama. Google moderators subsequently locked her out of her account.
"At first I thought it was just this random thing with Blogger’s spam bots," she told Hot Air.com. "I thought that perhaps in their looking across the blogger universe, that I got accidentally flagged somehow. Stuff like that happens."
However, when Snedeker discovered other anti-Obama sites had been deactivated, she wondered about a concerted effort by Obama supporters to squelch criticism.
Bloggers on the site are able to flag sites that they would like deactivated or reviewed by a human moderator. After receiving a certain number of flags, blogs are automatically locked for a period of time.
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