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Google recently suspended several blogs on Blogger.com that were critical of Obama. 7 established and credible blogs associated with the site JustSayNoDeal.com , a coalition of websites and blogs opposed to Obama’s 2008 presidential candidacy, received messages from Google informing them their accounts had been suspended while Google reviewed whether or not their blog was being used for spam.
After bloggers & the media picked up the story, Google reactivated the 7 blogs in question, claiming they’d only suspended the accounts because their automatic spam detection had flagged sites associated with JustSayNoDeal because JustSayNoDeal’s mass emails were sometimes flagged as spam by recipients. However, these mass emails the coalition sends to their supporters never provide links to the individual blogs in question, only to the coalition’s site…so Google’s explanation does not hold up. Somehow, each of these sites must have been individually flagged and suspended.
Essentially, Google got caught censoring bloggers and refuses to own up to it. This event represents a dangerous precedent for free speech, and we need to quash it now and hold Google accountable so they know that they won’t get away with it again.
Whether or not you agree with the content of the blogs that were censored should not matter, this is an issue of free speech and if you don’t speak up for your political opponents’ right to have a voice, one day it may be your voice that gets censored.
We are demanding that Google accept responsibility for censoring the bloggers associated with the JustSayNoDeal coalition, issue a public apology, and pledge never to censor content again.
If they don’t, when 300 people join this campaign we will all move our blogs from Blogger to other non-Google platforms such as Wordpress.
