Google Shuts Down John Hempton's Bronte Capital ... Why?!
Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 08:00PM [Update: By the way; here is John's latest post (that caused the shut down presumably) nicely tugged away in the Google cache.]
[Update 2: Bronte Capital is back online. I will leave it to John to explain the what and how of this. Nice to see swift reaction no doubt due to John himself pushing hard in the background, but it still begs the question of why the heck it was pulled in the first place.]
[Update 3: Here is Google’s Rick Klau who picked up on Felix' post and commented in the comments section.
We don’t go into great detail about what triggers a takedown, for the very reason you mention: we don’t want to make it easy for spammers to game the system. That said, we also have a number of protections to avoid precisely this situation – before I document what those are, I’ve asked the engineers responsible for maintaining them to explain to me why they didn’t work. Generally speaking, there were a number of indicators for John’s blog that should have very easily avoided any false positive spam classification – and I’m trying to find out how/why those got bypassed.
Rest assured that this is an internal bug – not any external players gaming our abuse reporting to try and take down John’s blog.
John – for restoring access, we actually met just ahead of the holidays to go through several ideas about making the resumption of service for legit blogs caught in a false positive situation (like yours) more seamless. Your idea is quite similar to reCAPTCHA (http://recaptcha.net/) – a service Google purchased in 2009, and one which we will be incorporating into Blogger in Q1. Glad we’re thinking along the same lines.
So, I might have jumped the gun on Google here, but I am not totally convinced that it had nothing to do with John's most recent post.]
--
I really don't have time for the details here, and the details are actually quite important in this case. However, since this is about a blog (on Google's blogger account) written by fund manager John Hempton which is shut down exactly, one would presume, because of these details I really cannot oblige you (yep I can, see below).
Felix Salmon, however, provides the gist of the situation and I fully endorse his points and arguments. On a personal note, I have semi-regular contact with John and I know his blog quite well. The idea that it should be spam is absolutely nonsense. Google has a big problem here! But then again, this is Felix' point too.
Here is to hoping that the situation is rectified very quickly by Google (and preferebly with an apology too).
Blogger.com, Bronte Capital, Felix Salmon, Google, John Hempton in General info
Reader Comments (3)
"Google Shuts Down John Hempton's Bronte Capital ... Why?!"
Well let us use our Imagination and speculate that the Vice President of the US of A is exactly what it says it is, and the DNA linkage in son and brother of Joe Biden would also make it most likely that the Vice President is fully aware and supportive of their business Modus Operandi, which IF and WHEN it is a Ponzi being perpetrated with IT and Global Communications Controls, is a Ponzi, will have serious and catastrophic implications for the .....well, the whole Fractional [Federal] Reserve Capitalist $ystem and with particular and peculiar focus on Wall Street. And that must be the understatement of the new millenium.
And it gets worse, for one then starts to ponder on the real worth in Bernie Madoff's Creation, the NASDAQ, for it too may be a house of cards fully reliant on the Global Beta Management of Perception for a Virtual Reality Picture which is Artificial Intelligence and a Quantitatively Eased Paper Tiger Economy Model, which is not Kosher.
And regarding the original tale which started all of this "investigation/lively speculation", and the Google, Streisand effect* response which has Felix Salmon sharing the Blogger takedown advisory .... http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/03/googles-evil-policy-on-shutting-down-blogs/ .... which says, "We received your unlock request on January 3, 2010. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we look at your blog and verify that it is not spam." ......it maybe should be saying, "On behalf of the NSA, we apologize...... " for it is much more likely to be spooky Fort Meade NSA types pulling Google strings rather than it being any SMART Text Analysing robots, for the National Security and International and InterNetional Integrity of the United States would be Severely Compromised and Irreparably Damaged from Within the Homeland and from the very Heart of the Executive and Administration by the Folly of those who would be Normally be above and beyond Suspicion of Great Deception and Perverse Subversion and would normally be Supposed and Highly Regarded as Patriots, Good and True.
And it would then most probably be a Global Conspiracy in Catastrophic Crisis and in Dire Straits Needs of an Immediate Virtual Solution to avoid Meltdown and Retribution, which might also be Chaotic Organised Anarchy and Swift Natural Rough Justice from the Baying Mob and Disenfranchised .... aka the Angry Duped and now SMARTer Enabled and Beta Informed and Phormed ..... EMPowered.
* Streisand effect .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
<a href="http://ezinearticles.com/?Day-Trading-For-a-Living?&id=2436009">trading for a living</a>