Google Reacts to Splogs

labnol writes "Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."

Finally

[ImaLamer]

I've been writing to Blogger/Google about a lot of fake blogs for a while and I'm glad to see Flag as Objectionable come into play. After a while I just got tired of doing it and stopped.

Up until now there was nothing they or the surfer could do - good work Google.

I thought it was a coincidence, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently this is that Mark Cuban, i.e. the Mavs owner who made a fortune in the dot-bomb era.

I was going to make a wisecrack about the letting Steve Nash go. [blogmaverick.com]

Re:good for google

[ImaLamer]

This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam. The number of such blogs is enormous -- most counts put it between half and 2/3.

Good thing it is being done too - I'd hate to be excluded from the other search engines because I've got a few blogs with Blogspot/Blogger. Gets rid of that whole "guilt by association" thing.

BTW: The 'flag as objectional' button hasn't shown up yet on any blogs I post to.

What about 'nofollow'?

[gregorio]

Does anyone remember that? Does Google remembers that? Why not 'nofollow' instead of annyoing distorted text confirmation procedures?

Can Google Solve the LJ_Abuse Problem?

[Khyber]

Ahhh, but will Google solve the problem that LiveJournal has? The problem I'm talking about is the LiveJournal_Abuse team, which has always been made up of volunteers and will ban anyone on any whim for any reason, reasonable or not. I made a community called "DIERIAA" and the purpose of the community was to point people to cool free music. Within twenty minutes of having the community made it was shut down for "promoting the illegal piracy of music." And not one single post had even been made in the community. Will Google be able to solve a problem like that?

"Questionable Content"

[Drew Curtis]

I hope this isn't part of their Chinese firewall partnership, so they can remove dissenting blogs - one of the last bastions of effective political change.

Sounds great...except...

[FuturePastNow]

What happens when (I didn't say if) affiliates of _________ political party start "flagging as objectionable" blogs written by those they disagree with? What happens when religious wackos flag sex blogs as objectionable? TFA says Blogger tracks the number of times a blog is flagged objectionable and base their action on that, not that they review whether something is actually bad. This could be trouble.

When is spam just a difference of opinion?

[Infonaut]

People are going to start reporting blogs with which they disagree as spam in an attempt to have it shut down.

That's not a far cry from some of the moderation I've seen here on Slashdot. Disagree with someone's opinion? Mod them down! In general human beings do not like to face things that make them uncomfortable, and coming face to face with opinions that are diametrically opposed to your own really freaks people out.

When I have mod points, I try to take care to only mod people down when I feel that they are engaging in personal attacks or other socially disagreeable behavior. I admit that it is difficult for me to mod up comments that are in opposition to my opinions, but if someone has argued a point well and isn't resorting to ad hominem attacks or perversions of fact, I can sometimes get past my biases and up-mod a post. The less important the issue being discussed, of course, the easier it is for me to up-mod an opinion with which I disagree.

I strongly believe that maintenance of a community that values diversity of opinion is important, both here on Slashdot and in the "real world." Unfortunately it requires effort to maintain community, and much of the communications technology we use today is making it easier and easier for us all to filter out that which we do not want to hear. Perhaps it's not an accident that political discourse in the United States has sunk to such a morass, devoid of any real substance.

Questionable content?

[nurb432]

By who's definition?

One persons 'objectional material' is another persons religion.. ( for example )

Yes, i know that its Googles' servers and they get to control content .. bla bla bla bla. Just because its legal doesnt make it the right thing to do.

Now, controlling spam.. more power to them...

Re:Oh yeah

[dedazo]

I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I'll tell you how I think it works...

Basically if you're using Blogger as a service and publishing through on your own server, it will index it every time you re-publish the index. That's what I think happens from observation and monitoring the Google cache. I might be wrong.

If you use the Blogspot service then you need at least *one* incoming external link to be indexed. A friend of mine created a blog there, and I linked to it from my blog published to my own server. Within a few days the "page rank" for his blog jumped from "not indexed" or zero to two. Most Blogspot blogs are not linked to from anywhere and so Google does not index them at all.

Take this with a grain of salt - it's just based on my observations over the past few months. It could be just a bunch of coincidences.