Have you been flagged by Google?

Google recently launched a new "flag" system for blogs hosted on its Blogger.com service.


The flag button appears at the top of Blogger blogs, and is designed “notify blogger about objectionable content.” This is ridiculous on its face. If anyone doesn’t like a blogger or disagrees with a blog’s content, bingo!, you’re “flagged” and could lose your indexing at Blogger.com.

A recent piece at Blog Herald, referencing outside material, says one blog “seems to have been targeted by people using the feature implemented by Google and that the site disappeared for at least some time.”

Anyone with a modicum of tech sense can remove the bar containing the "flag" button. I don't give a rat's pink, puckered ass, so mine will stay.

Google’s official rationale for the flag system is as follows:

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The "Flag?" button allows the blogging community to easily note questionable content, which in turn helps us take action when needed. So we're relying on you, the users, to be our eyes on the web, and to let us know of potential issues that are important to you.

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The official explanation says blogs will not disappear (the bolding below is mine, not Google's). Perhaps the downtime experienced by the blog mentioned at Blog Herald was caused by glitches in the new system. This wouldn't be without precedent. New technology never rolls out smoothly, especially on such a massive scale.

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The "Flag?" button is a means by which readers of Blog*Spot can help inform us about potentially questionable content, so we can prevent others from encountering such material by setting particular blogs as "unlisted." This means the blog won't be promoted on Blogger.com but will still be available on the web — we prefer to keep in mind that one person's vulgarity is another's poetry. Or something like that.

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Allowing average viewers to censor blogs is pure nonsense. There will be no blogs left because the bloggers who are angry about being removed from the indexing service will start flagging everything in sight.

It might be better to have a blog equivalent of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system. For mine, you would see This blog is rated NC-17 by the Blog Association of America.