Moles, Spies, Spammers, And Turkeys

In 1977, the late Charles Bronson - better known for his vigilante justice "Death Wish" movies - starred in a movie that capitalised on US paranoia about American - Soviet Russia relations. Set at the height of the Cold War era, the plot of Telefon featured 51 human time bombs - all ordinary Americans. Each had been hypnotised to perform as Soviet spies, when a specially coded telephone call was received, with each tasked to sabotage some specific portion of the American infrastructure.

None of the 51 human time bombs had any conscious awareness of their intended roles. Each thought of her or him self as an ordinary American, and lived that way - until a phone call from an evil renegade Soviet agent triggered their personal hypnotic suggestion.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep. Remember. Miles to go before I sleep.

In the action adventure genre of fiction (aka "spy movie"), these spies are also called moles.

This year, we have noted many ordinary bloggers, who have no conscious awareness of their roles, tasked to sabotage the Blogger infrastructure.

My Blog mentioned above got deleted and called SPAM. But I honestly didn't do any SPAM. I went through TOS but I really don't understand my blog was deleted. Please, I have put so much of my time & effort for this blog & now its a PR2. (This blog is gone).

and

I received this msg after restore the blog, how long I must wait to get reinstated. This is totally joke, the blog is about 3 years and have hundreds of post. (This blog is gone).

and

I have been writing almost daily for more than two years and am very surprised as to why my blog would all of a sudden be classified as spam. I really can't think of any reason except that there must be a flaw in the algorithm used for automatically detecting such. (This blog is gone).

Many bloggers, just out there trying to make a buck, have been hypnotised by Affiliate partnerships, Pay To Click and Pay To Surf schemes, Syndicated Content (pay to write), and similar "make money fast and easy" techniques. And now, they are out there, begging for Blogger to just unblock their blogs, so they can get back to work. Back to work - abusing the Blogger infrastructure, and damaging the efforts of genuine bloggers.

They are not spammers (in their own minds), just as the 51 human time bombs were not Soviet agents. But just as the human time bombs (some of them) successfully destroyed key portions of America, these spammers are destroying key portions of Blogger Spam Interdiction, and of the effectiveness of Internet based advertising.

By their volume, they make it hard for us to get genuine, personal blogs, unjustly accused of being spam, back online. And they are requesting individual attention from Blogger

Please, tell me why I am considered a spammer.

This requires further resources from Blogger Support, and Google Legal, who together must decide how much - and how little - to tell these bloggers about spam interdiction, and why they were confirmed as spammers.

These are the real life moles. Moles, recruited by the genuine big time spammers. I also call them turkeys, elsewhere in my discussions.

In the meantime, the genuine spammers are out there, continually republishing their splog farms, and damaging our efforts as genuine bloggers.

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Justice Is For The Poor And The Weak - And Small

In the modern legal system, justice is (supposedly) available to all citizens - regardless of colour, crede, or financial status - equally. In the Blogger legal system, justice (as in porn / spam classification, or URL availability) is available to all bloggers - equally.

If your blog is unjustly accused of hosting hacking, porn, and / or spam content, or if your blog is unfairly placed behind a content warning, you (the blog owner) are responsible for getting the wrong righted.

Due diligence requires that the blog owner has to report any problem with any Blogger blog. Regardless of how many anxious readers your blog may serve, you the owner have to request a review, when the blog is unjustly classified, deleted or locked. And, you have to do so promptly.

Blogger must serve owners of small and unpopular blogs equally, with owners of large and popular ones. The blog readers are not part of the review process. The only question is

Does the blog host hacking, objectionable, porn, or spam content?

Please, no coyote attacks in Blogger Help Forum.

Gobble, Gobble

Today, in the USA, we celebrate the national holiday of "Thanksgiving". Many people call it "Turkey Day" because the traditional cooking for the holiday meal is centered around roast turkey. The words "gobble, gobble" have two meanings.

1. Turkeys are attributed as making that sound, such as the cat makes "meow", and the dog "bow wow".
2. Celebrants of the holiday eat a lot of food, also popularly expressed as "gobbling".

So, we have a "double entendre", that is, still, relevant.

It is perhaps fitting that I explain my use of the term "gobble gobble", on this day.

Blogger explains spam, and its unacceptable nature.
Blogger provides an objective description of spam, and why it is not accepted in BlogSpot.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may contain material that's been scraped from other sites on the web, and may use other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

I analogise spammers as turkeys, as an alternate explanation.
As an alternative, I wrote my analogy Waiting For The Tap, and referred to turkeys, who wait in vain, for said tap.

In some discussions, I use "Gobble, Gobble" as a reference.
The expression "Gobble, Gobble", when included in my answer to a forum question, will refer to this analogy. The spammer (aka the "Original Poster" in the question) may, at his convenience, read this post - and accept the fact that he is a turkey.

Coyotes, Hyenas, And Turkeys

The 1978 cinema classic "Animal House", which starred the late, great John Belushi as John Blutarsky, was a comedy about American 1960s college life. It was described by one reviewer as

the best college comedy ever made. Nothing has ever come close to comedic perfection, and never will again.

It focused on one fictional fraternity, Delta House, the rejects of the campus fraternity system at the college.

The members of Delta house included screaming nuisances (coyotes), troglodytes and trolls (hyenas), and hapless morons (turkeys). Many inhabitants of Delta House, many years later, can be found as bloggers, posting in Blogger Help Forum.

Coyotes are individuals who, unhappy with the way they are treated by Blogger, convince the general public (their reader population) to conduct a Distributed Denial Of Service attack against the forum. The owners of their namesake blog, The Daily Coyote, conducted a DDOS in April 2008, when it was locked as a suspected spam blog.

Hyenas are individuals who lack self esteem or social life and who post endless amounts of crap, drivel, or lame spam in the forum. Coyotes conduct a brief and very energetic attack, yet they cease the attack when dealt with, firmly. Hyenas, on the other hand, conduct a slow, chronic attack over many months. One hyena has posted under many names, and has been attacking the forum for several years.

Turkeys are spammers who refuse to believe that their splogs, detected and locked by Blogger, will never be restored to them. They hang around Blogger Help Forum, periodically posting

When will I get my blog back?

as if Blogger will ignore the fact that their blogs were righteously detected and locked.

Welcome to Animal House, 2009.

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