Lies, Malice, False Reporting, Hacks and Google

You know, I hate starting the week with a mega moan.  (Who am I kidding?  I love a bloody good moan).  But my Saturday turned into an online nightmare thanks to Google.  I was just settling down to watch some crappy TV, (a favourite Saturday early evening pastime), with half an eye on checking my emails, when I see an email from Google saying that they've removed a post from this blog because it has been reported as contravening their content guidelines.  Now, Google's regular censorship on the nebulous grounds of contravening content guidelines is like a red flag to a bull to me at any time, but even more so when the post in question was simply the one promoting the latest episode of the 'After Hours' podcast.  I mean, it simply comprised the promotional artwork for the episode, a brief synopsis, a link to where it can be heard and some brief notes on the creative process behind it.  Nothing that contravened any kind of content guidelines - certainly no promotion of violence, child pornography, illegal activities or anything else they list.  Of course, trying to resolve this sort of thing is made next to impossible by Google's penchant for secrecy, in that they won't tell you exactly what contravenes which of their guidelines, nor will they tell you who or what reported your content in the first place.  So, your only recourse is to use the link provided to request an immediate review.  Within half an hour of my having made my request, the post had been reinstated, with a cursory email saying that 'upon review' they had found that it didn't contravene any guidelines after all.  Well, no shit, Sherlock!  

Nevertheless, that quick turnabout on Google's part gives us a valuable clue as to what passes for their review process when it comes to handling alleged reports of material contravening their guidelines.  I think it is obvious that if someone decides to press that button to report content on a blog, they automatically sanction it, without question, without actually checking the content in question.  If a report is made, then the content is assumed to be in contravention. Which rather goes against the accepted principles of justice, under which one is innocent until proven guilty.  If you request a review then, it seems, your content actually gets looked at by a human being, at which point it becomes obvious as to whether the original report was valid or instead malicious. Which, in this case, in view of subsequent events, it most certainly was.  Because shortly after I dealt with this problem, I had Google blaring to the world that The Sleaze was a 'dangerous' site hosting malware, resulting in red screens and dire warnings on every browser when you tried to access the site, (unless you have the good sense to disable the 'extreme paranoia security settings).  I was effectively being blacklisted across the internet.  Bizarrely, Google had sent me an email, but I didn't see it because, as they had deemed The Sleaze a 'dangerous site' and blacklisted its URL, the message, containing the URL, immediately went into Gmail's spam folder, where i didn't find it until hours later!  Anyway, a malware check via my web host revealed some suspect files, (there seemed to have been a hack, which I haven't yet got to the bottom of), which were quickly dealt  with, followed by a reinstallation on the Wordpress code for good measure.

Once again, I had to request a review of the site from Google to get those warnings removed, which I had to do through the Google Search console, something I haven't bothered using since Google started systematically de-listing my site from their search engine, (I'm just one of many, many victims of this policy).  Now, here's the bit which really pissed me off - while Google is very quick to brand sites as 'a threat' and accuse them of peddling malware, 'social engineering', stealing credit card details and God knows what else, (all stuff they accused The Sleaze of, without foundation), they certainly drag their feet when it comes to withdrawing all that shit.  I was left, for the better part of a day, with Google spreading what were, effectively, slanderous misinformation about a perfectly legitimate site.  Going back to that false report about the blog post, I'm now pretty sure that that was intended as a diversion of sorts - while I was dealing with that, I was distracted from anything going on with The Sleaze.  So, while the real villains here are the hackers, they are aided and abetted by Google's own policies.  Moreover, Google now clearly considers itself as some sort of 'Guardian of the Web' and has taken it upon itself to act as judge, jury and executioner when it comes to supposed 'security' issues.  Who appointed them?  Who are they accountable to?  It is also deeply ironic that they have taken on this role when they have spent so much time over the past few years trying to destroy the web as we know it, putting vast numbers of sites out of business by denying them visibility in web searches, (basically, they have unilaterally decided that things like satire and humour sites, niche sites, informational sites and the like (anything non-commercial, in other words) have no value and that they therefore won't serve them up to users in searches, even when they may be the most relevant resource).  I'm left hugely frustrated by this whole business.  I mean, sure, if Google doesn't want to give me traffic, fine, but I get pissed off when they pull stunts like this to deny me traffic from other sources (which I still get - other, better, search engines exist).  Really, they are complete bastards who think that they have the right to decide which sites should or shouldn't be on the web.