Thursday I snapped awake at 2:30 a.m. And not groggy awake, either, but a super-focused awake that I suspected had something to do with the sleep aid I'd tried, sent by a Chicago company hoping for publicity.
I will do them a favor and not get more specific, except to note their "vanilla lavender sleep latte" contains valerian root. It's supposed to be a sedative but can also cause insomnia. Big time. At 3 a.m. I gave up, padded upstairs and logged onto my computer.
"Your Google Account has been disabled," I was informed, under a big red circle with an exclamation mark. "It looks like it was being used in a way that violated Google's policies."
Sometimes this sort of thing can be a phishing attempt, trying to get your data. But I had a big hint that my Google account was indeed disabled: my blog, built on Google's Blogger platform, was gone.
But the question remained: What happened? And how could I keep it from happening again? Email I could get by without. Mostly spam and come-ons touting supposed soporifics that turn out to be stimulants. But I had 11 years worth of writing on that blog.
Google does not tell you what you've done to get your account booted. A truly Kafkaesque twist evoking the opening line of "The Trial": "Someone must have traduced Joseph K because he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong."
Poking around Google, I found a laundry list of misdeeds Google suggests might earn banishment, beginning with: "Account hacking or hijacking" and including "Child sexual abuse and exploitation," "Harassment, bullying & threats" and "Terrorist content."
Only I hadn't done any of these. The only thing I could think of is, my account was deleted exactly at midnight, and my blog posts automatically at midnight. Thursday's was fairly benign: A reader cc'd me a letter sent to City Lit, the Logan Square bookstore that created international headlines by booting a writer off its reading club list for the author's Zionist leanings.
I ran the letter under the headline, "'Juden raus!' says City Lit bookstore.
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Damn the Internet. A couple of years ago I gave up my website, henrykisor.com, for lack of interest keeping it going in my old age. Some cyberpirate bought the URL and is now publishing rave reviews of romance novels under my name. At first I was in a tizzy about the (quite legal) appropriation of my old site but now don't really give a damn, even though technically using my name for bogus book reviews is a form of identity theft.
ReplyDeleteThat has to be frustrating. Not giving a damn is a key life skill, particularly as we age. It helps that the thing I care most about has shrunk to utter irrelevance. As a daily newspaper columnist, I feel like some freakish biological anomaly, like an Irish elk, surviving on some island far from the mainstream of life. But the whole Chicago Public Media thing won't last forever either, and I shudder to think what will replace it. Although ... I noticed that the Tribune did send a reporter and photographer to the Olympics in Paris, which seems off-brand for Alden Capital. So who knows....
DeleteTyranny in all form is evil. Wasn’t Google’s motto “don’t do evil?”
ReplyDeleteI for one am glad that "juden raus" triggered the shutdown, if that in fact is what happened.
Deletejohn
I am not. The context is extremely important. Someone should review a message triggering a lockout and it cannot be left to an AI. It should trigger a lockout if the context is antisemitic. This clearly is not. Are you going to disable academic accounts that are researching the spread of Nazism in pre-WW II Germany because they use these words? Where does it stop?
DeleteThat was a promise Stanford's class of 89 took. Peter Thiel was also a classmate. As was Gretchen Carlson.
Delete89 has a lot to make up for.
Facebook is even worse than Google. There seems to be no rhyme or reason when it comes to FB determining that you have violated their "gosh all wonderful and perfect" community standards. And, of course, there's almost no one to contact when FB shuts you down. You can file an appeal but almost always the reply is in the vein of "Emperor Zuck knows better than you and you should be grateful for that". I have a friend who finally had to take FB to small claims court to get things resolved. Google plays games too and that's why I try to avoid their ecosystem as much as possible.
ReplyDeleteYou were fortunate, Mr. S, to get your ban repealed (as were the die-hard commenters at EGD). How the hell did you pull it off? In nearly every case, the online powers-that be (like the Zuckers at Facebook) simply don't give a fuck. Messages, e-mails, pleas, and entreaties are usually blown off and ignored.
ReplyDeleteWhen WaPo repeatedly suspended me, and finally banned me, they lifted the ban after I re-subscribed. Then I was banned again, but when they reduced the length of time that comments remain on their site (from 14 days to three), I was suddenly un-banned again. Why? Who knows? Why ask why?
A third ban was apparently a lifetime ban. Messages from me have been totally ignored. Yet, they'll gladly renew my subscription and take my money, year after year. WaPo comments are mostly just hundreds of thousands of lefties patting each other on the back, at a venue I call "My Blue Heaven"...so I no longer care.
Nextdoor banned me for a year, reinstated me, then banned me again. Ignored my messages. Assumed I was doing life. It's happened to thousands of users. A couple of weeks ago, I clicked on the link, just for the hell of it, and there was my old account, ready to be used (and abused) again. No rhyme or reason for the parole, and no explanation given. After two years. Crazy. But now I've lost my taste for it. The site is just a whinery now.
I had no idea you were so controversial, Grizz. Here you're the sage voice of reason. Of course, it's a very low floor when you have pipelines of raw sewage that sometimes get firehosed in my direction. I pulled it off, as I mentioned in the piece, by clicking the button and following the prompts.
DeleteI got banned at the WaPo too for a comment, so I canceled the subscription.
DeleteI also got banned by the weird owner of Wonkette when I apparently pissed her off by telling her she's entitled to her own opinions, but not her own facts!
My wife is a long-time member of Wonkette, which is owned by the person who booted you, Clark, and we know her personally and have even met her a few times (she now lives three hours away, up in Michigan). She doesn't suffer fools gladly. or put up with shit, because she gets tons of it. Anybody she considers to be trolling gets a swift kick in the ass. I guess you must have qualified. Or else you just caught her on a bad day.
DeleteHere at EGD, I'm on good behavior, Mr. S. Exemplary conduct. Spent a whole year reading and lurking, before I posted my first comment...about Royko at the Billy Goat, and how I took a whiz next to him once, and didn't dare speak. We grunted our greetings at one another. Posted that in late '17 or early '18. Tempus surely does fugit.
Studied the tenor and tone of this place, to learn what flies and what crashes and burns, and what does and doesn't piss you off. I try not to rant, and I try not to bitch or pontificate or whine, or to engage in pissing contests. And when something isn't posted, I just figure it was either too long and rambling, or too edgy, and I deal with it.
Saw the red button, and I figured Google just puts it there to make you feel better, and to make you think that you have a shot, and then they just laugh. I still think you caught a break. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to be typing this.
I'm pretty sure she is a friend of some jerk I replied to who hated my reply. He said some actress won Best Actor at the Oscars & I said it was Best Actress. He then replied with some bizarre crap about "gender normative" which I have no idea what that means & said the movie academy awards Best Actor & Best Actress, which obviously pissed him off & he must have contacted her!
DeleteThat when I wrote, you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts & she banned me!
I think living in Detroit has rotted her brain!
Wonkette is a huge board...it has a membership in six figures. People from all over the planet, not just the Untied Snakes. The owner used to run the joint from a ranch, in fascist Montana. But death threats forced her to leave.
DeleteMembers suggested various places to relocate. She had some ties to Detroit, so she bought a big old house, almost a mini-mansion, in the inner city. Threw a big party last New Year's Day. My wife and I were in attendance. It was only the second or third time I have actually talked to her in Real Life.. She's sorta wonky, and weird, but she's True Blue, if you get my drift. And a leftist organizer, and a fund-raiser for good causes, not just for The Cause.
I don't know her all that well, but my wife does, as that's her hang-out, and not mine. Never joined...for just one main reason. Because I'd probably get snarky and nasty...and end up just like you did. Mooted and booted. Which would reflect rather poorly upon my wife.
And besides, I'm too busy, over at Fightbook. it's getting hotter there, pages are being shut down, and more and more people are going to jail. Love ya madly, Zuck.
Neil, if you haven't exported your site from Google Takeout and/or Blogger's built-in export, you really should. Make it a quarterly/annual task or however often you're comfortable with, and just do it as a chore. It's quick-ish. The Blogger-based export will give your site to you in a format that can actually be pretty quickly re-published to Wordpress or any other site that expects XML-based structure. The Takeout export isn't, but you'd still have all the content for a manual reload if you wished elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI also like the zen approach, as you note, of "well, that was a thing that is no longer a thing" and moving on with your life, but just wanted to note that getting backups is pretty trivial if you wish to.
I have — there's a copy sitting on my desktop, and one I put on a thumb drive. But I'm coming around to the notion that a blog should be ephemeral, like a stage play. All this thought of permanence is mere vanity.
Delete"All this thought of permanence is mere vanity."
DeleteWell, yeah, okay, but after all that effort of producing your work in the first place, it seemed odd to me to not care what happens to it. I read today's posting with one thought rattling around in my head: "He doesn't have any backups???" Rather than post that thought, I decided to wait and see if there was more to the story, so, good, you have backups (though I would suggest making additional copies on other machines or extra thumb drives).
That aside, something that has struck me over the years was how much easier it is to preserve every single thing we ever write, but how little organized effort we put into hanging on to it. Every now and then you read someone complaining about how People Don't Write Letters Anymore, with side comments on how putting things on paper makes you think more deliberately about what you want to say. Having grown up in the letter-writing age and evolved into the on-line age, I just don't see that perspective.
I can whip up a fully-formed essay on the computer in a matter of minutes, rewriting sentences, moving entire paragraphs and so on, as opposed to writing it out longhand or by typewriter, redrafting, rewriting, retyping, etc. The end result is either an article I can transmit instantly to an unlimited number of people, or a piece of paper with markings on it that can only be read by the person holding it. I think the quality of my writing improves when I can make changes instantly on the computer, as opposed to silently debating whether it's worth using another sheet of paper to write out yet another draft.
So in the future, I think my descendants will be able to see a lot more of my output (both writing and photography) than what they will ever learn of my parents' work, or their parents before that. I'm not saying that what I produced or achieved is better, but I can make a better stab at permanence if I want it.
I'm so vain that I still have files of stuff I wrote in blogs and message boards that died twenty years ago. Used to have even more, but some of it, upon further review, was so foolish and ignorant that it pained me to see it. So it went POOF.
DeleteWhat's especially maddening is that the banning at Google is done by their stupid AI, no human involved and it shows. They will allow Qanon, neo-nazis, antisemites, terrorists, and other crazies to publish their poison on platform like YouTube but then ban legitimate articles based on couple of words without bothering with the context. For most people removing the ban is almost an impossible task unless they are famous or manage the raise the ire of large number of Internet users.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to see really bad AI, just look at the comments on the NY Post. It won't allow actual quotes from the article you're commenting on! And if you hit the "Report" button & then give a reason for reporting a vile comment, you usually get back a email stating your report is rejected. Almost all anti-Semitic comments that are reported are rejected, so either the NY Post uses AI for the reported comments that has a built in anti-Semitic bias or they have people that are also outright anti-Semites doing the checking of reported comments!
DeleteYahoo does the same. Cannot quote from their article or list any supportive factual source.
DeleteI never used profanity, hate speech, personal attacks, etc. even when I was flamed by some incels and skinheads who are still posting despite their easily verifiable breaking of community rules.
I have never been told I am banned, but I haven't been allowed to post a comment for a couple of years now. Although I can sign in to vote thumbs up or down. Bizzare.
Every so often, I don't comment because EGD only allows using a Google ID. Not sure if it's something I said or it's a device Neil uses when too much shit has hit his fan. In another lifetime, late 90s when I bought my first PC, I was banned from FreeAmerica. I had posted a reply to a lie about Hilary Clinton and was voted off the island, long before that phrase had entered the culture. Citing my own experience in the 1978-79 cattle bull market and research from a conservative leaning, but honest blog, I showed how anybody could have turned $1000 into $100,000 in that market. I also pointed out that Hilary had probably not taken that route and had enjoyed preferential treatment. Still, the village people were after me with torches raised and the city gate the only avenue open for my escape. They did me a favor.
ReplyDeleteI don't use a Google acct to comment here, I just choose Name/URL, and type in my name but it doesn't require inputting an actual URL. I get EGD at my original Yahoo acct to read and comment.
DeleteI may have discovered a reason for the disabling. If they read the July 22, 2014 entry where, in the end, you took credit for delaying the yard work despite her advising you to wait in the first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAs part of my working life I build things from furniture to houses. I've built out bars and restaurants, theaters, courtrooms , recording studios even a dominatrix dungeon. I built the original wooden playground equipment at Oz park. Beehives at the Garfield Park conservatory.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong lots of people were involved with most of these projects and these days I've slowed to a putter but occasionally I think hey I worked in that building and go in for a look around. It's rare that any of my work is still in place All loaded into a dumpster and rolled off to a landfill. People paid a lot of money for most of this stuff but it's all temporary except maybe for the first Presbyterian Church on Clark and Washington . We refurbished that place but it's been around for a long time. It's probably going to be around for a while more .
I've ceased being concerned about the longevity of my work and pretty much feel que Sera Sera
I use facebook mostly for my lung cancer advocacy, although I have no problem commenting about the felon. By the way, any of your readers over 50 should ask their pcps about low dose lung screening, particularly it they smoke or smoked. It’s true, though, that you only need lungs to get lung cancer.
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