Blogger takes the lazy option on spam blogs: new “flag” option
August 18, 2005 | By Duncan | Filed Under General
Not content with drinking and eating with the glitterati of the comment spam set, the folks over at Google have announced a half-arsed effort to appease recent critics of their inaction over spam blogs by launching a new option for Blogspot blogs titled “Flag As Objectionable”.
The next time your reading a blogspot.com hosted blog that’s been recently created (it only applies to new blogs) republished, you can know tell Google if you don’t like it and if they get enough complaints they’ll either “delist” the blog from the “Next blog” option found at the top of blogspot hosted blogs, or if they deem its really serious, god help us, they might even ban it. So basically get enough people together to target a site you don’t like on Blogger now and Google will help make sure no one gets to see it…that’s right, because they’ve also included “politically incorrect, potential hurtful, or just plain gross” in the criteria, but chances are if you’ve got a spam blog you’ll be totally unaffected.
Update: see comments below, its republished blogs not just new blogs, although its still the lazy option.
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and i’m sure it will be mighty useful for the millions of blogs out there created in the past with barely an entry or two.
This limits “flagging” to other BlogSpot users who are logging in… Frank’s Splog Reporter is at least open to all blog-readers .. although noone knows what happens to input left there. Anyway, I don’t believe in picking spammers one-by-one. Google has been very good in developing first-class spam fileters for Gmail, perhaps they have the brain-power to tackle the splog-clog in a more automated way … and if not, there are economic ways to fight spam, like I’ve proposed before.
This move will not help remove SPAM blogs. It will help unethical spammers remove legitimate blogs, and it will open Google up to lawsuits for illegitimate removals. Wait a year from now. It’s bound to happen without safeguards in place.
You can e-mail Jason Shellen (product manager for Blogger) at shellen@google.com if you want to advise him on what needs to be done to perfect the flagging process, or why you think it won’t work. Maybe he’ll tell us how it will, or fix it so it does.
“it only applies to new blogs”
Not so: it it applies to all blogs republished (either explicitly, or by adding new posts) since the feature was added.
Doesn’t help any with the many abandoned or dormant spam blogs, though.
A great idea…Unless they get rid of their Nav Bar (http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/01/remove-navbar.html).
[…] Blogger Makes a Small Step Forward at Fighting Blog Spam As reported on BlogHerald, it seems Blogger has been listening […]
I noticed that Blogger has a new option to require a string of text to be entered before a post can be made. That cuts down the spam to live human spammers. Maybe it will make a difference.
Death to free blogs! If you’re serious enough about blogging, you’ll create your own site!
Blogger may have the convenient introductory factor, but it’s made spamming too easy in the same way in the same way all the free email providers of yesteryear did.
Leave it to someone from the IRA to shout about death. The US is a democratic environment and as such, the idea of easy access to publishing is inherent in our makeup. Assholes usually fuck it up in the end, but it’s a noble effort.
I for one have pulled off the header (thanks to the link above) and will now sleep at night knowing the 1000 visitors a day I have will not have the option to ‘flag’ my site.
[…] oving reported splogs.” The Reaction; Pointed to by many including Darren Rowse and Duncan Riley. To quote Darren […]
[…] e polÃticamente correcto Publicado en 22 August, 2005 Blogger ha incluido últimamente una banderita en sus blogs mediante la cual cua […]
I do not believe that Blogger’s “Flag” feature will be an effective means to stop splogs. There is so much room for abuse in the system as well. More precisely, splogs are being treated the same as an unpopular speech. I can see democrats and republicans will probably flag eachother’s website to oblivion.
I’ve started a blog and began fighting this splog phenomenon as much as I can. I currently have 1500 splogs identified and I intend to go through them see what I can do to curb their growth. It turns out most of the splogs today are attempt to draw traffic to a website and jack up their ad revenue. AdSense ads and I think I can make a dent by hurting their pocket books. This is obviously first incarnation of splog and it will adapt and change as time goes on.
ugg.. sorry about jibberish of my last post… way too much coffee.
That is cool. I wonder what’s taking google sooo long in finding the right solution to splogs!
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