Friday, November 19, 2021

Unpublished Doesn't Mean it was Never Published

I've had another run-in with an algorithm, this time from Blogger, Google's free web hosting platform, which is what I use. They sent me a notice that a post had been unpublished because it did not conform to community standards, under the category of "spam."

So I looked at the post in question. It was a vintage music video, with almost no commentary, no comments, and the only ads were those that Blogger places automatically through Google AdSense. What spam? Someone apparently complained, but I got no details.

The notice goes on to say that I can edit the offending content, republish, and they will check to see that it conforms with community guidelines. I see nothing to change, but that's the only recourse offered. It's only one music video, published months ago, so I don't really care.

Still, it's an algorithm that I can't argue with, and it could happen again. It's entirely possible that someone hit a "report" button by accident and the unpublishing was automatic with no review. Or possibly an overworked moderator trying to make quota in a hurry because he had a headache. There's no option to ask questions or communicate with any real person about it. This is our world today.  


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Apparently this is the same algorithm that Amazon uses to make hire/fire decisions.

xoxoxoBruce said...

Blogger is free.
Free to do anything they want with no comeuppance.
Your pain is not important to us, please hold while we run more ads.

WilliamRocket said...

One of the good things about your site/column/postie thing is that we, the highly intelligent viewing public, can comment whatever and whenever we want.
Should you too one day succumb to the temptation to censor or moderate our feeble offerings of humour, wit and tongue-in-cheekiness, then we would have no option but to put you in the same category as, say, 'The Queen is Not Amused' or even 'Ohio Guy' sites, both of which have mostly or sometimes entertaining content, but no facility for us commoners to rattle our toilet brushes of background noise.

Miss Cellania said...

Oh, you think I don't moderate comments? Ha!

DWVR said...

Once upon a time machines assisted people, extended their abilities. With AIs the people assist the machine, keep it functioning. I'm beginning to think of AIs as parasites, feeding off of us and giving nothing in return.