I thought Facebook AI bots were bad, apparently Google Blogger also is using the same idiotic AI bot workforce. Are they in cahoots? I was revising an old post from December 21, 2020 that I had started working on when I was staying one summer on Aquinas St. in San Rafael—it took a long while to gel.
When I hiked up San Pedro Ridge, I could see the characteristic telltale red earth—which piqued my curiosity about mercury mines. I banged out a rough draft, then, later, I began to research it and ran into multiple dead ends. It seems no one has ever written an overview of mines in the north bay.
I have worked on this particular blogpost intermittently since 2020, due to a lack of stamina and a lack of information, and suddenly the post was flagged after being published for four years. Hindsight? I thought it was photos or graphics that was triggering it. Not.
No, my violation of community Standards was: Regulated Goods and Services policy. “Regulated Goods and Services. Do not sell, advertise, or facilitate the sale of regulated goods and services. Regulated goods and services include alcohol, gambling, pharmaceuticals, unapproved supplements, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices.”
DEAR GOOGLE: Huh? You mean my writing about historic mines goes against Google’s policy of portraying regulated goods and services? How so? Just because the military once used mercury, then deregulated it, doesn’t mean I am facilitating selling something illegally. Maybe it’s the word “mines” that is triggering this flurry of censorship flags. Of course Blogger doesn’t tell you what it objects to.
I must be getting onto something significant. Nothing like raising the interest of a journalist to do more investigation. Am I willing to go down with the ship for my writing? You betcha. Mercury plays a huge role in California history from the gold rush to the Cold War. I write in order to learn. I didn’t know enough about the historical background of mercury mining, so I sat out to teach myself by writing about it—only to get slapped in arrears (pun intended) by Google.
Well, the good news is the erroneous flag forced me to rewrite portions of the blogpost, so at least it’s finally in a semi-finished format. Alas, no writing is ever truly finished. I did change the title from Mercury Mines in Marin to Historical mercury mines in the North Bay to include Sonoma County as it shares many of those mine sites near Petaluma.
Thinking it was the graphics that caused the flag— Google doesn’t tell you why it flags a post—I went back and researched all my sources, trying to figure out why the blogpost was flagged. But my sources were from publicly, funded agencies and organizations, I am not breaking copyright. Besides, there’s this thing called fair use.
What a horrible way to force a rewrite. And the hours of undo stress the Google flag caused because I couldn’t fully access my post (or changes) in order to save it off-line. I am increasingly unhappy with Google. Their parting email shot: “We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog.” They brought weapons to a tea party. Shades of 1984 and Doublespeak.
I wonder who in Facebooklandia flagged my post? I had posted it in a Lost Marin group hoping to get more leads and help with revising my post. It looks like my link and post was removed.
I am reminded how poet Ron Silliman was harangued by Google and his poetry blog was taken offline because someone had flagged it— And Google would not divulge which particular post was considered offensive or why it was breaking community standards. At least I knew which post was the offending post. Small mercies. I also now make an archive of my writing.
Dear Google, have you any idea how many times you have flagged this post within the past 24 hours and how many times you have reinstated it? Shall we go for an even 30 tries? Every time I make a correction on a typo you flag it take it off-line again. It takes me upon average of five attempts to contact you before you reinstate it. Will it hold? - From May/June/July 2021. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way if you ignore these warnings, google will, indeed delete your posts
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