Blogging note

It appears there may be an outbreak of censorship on Blogspot at the moment.  In the last couple of weeks two political blogs have been removed, apparently by the platform, without reasons being given.  One of the two bloggers is appealing the removal, the other has apparently given up on the process and is looking into other options.

I've always been aware of the possibility that I myself might be targeted for censorship.  There has been at least one attempt to get me shut down, a few years ago when I first started posting links about the transgender issue.  I'm not as easy to pigeonhole ideologically as some others are, and I'm not a political blogger as such -- but especially on an internet where so many busybodies, whiners, and bluenoses of whatever stripe practically make a hobby of being offended by things, I'm sure there are those who would find something here to get upset about.

My best judgment is that it's unlikely I'll get shut down, but it would be foolish not to be prepared just in case.  I would advise anyone who finds what I post interesting to bookmark my Tumblr blog.  So far I've just been using it to repost things I find on other Tumblr blogs, but can't link to directly for various reasons, so I can include them in the Saturday link round-ups.  However, I could write my own posts on the Tumblr blog.  If this main blog ever vanishes, check the Tumblr blog -- that's where I'll be posting updates on what I'm doing about it.  If I can't get the main blog restored, I might just use the Tumblr blog going forward, or I might set up a Substack blog.  Substack has a reputation for being firmly dedicated to free speech, but I'm not sure whether normal comment moderation is available there.  I'd have to investigate options and decide where to go if the situation actually arose.

I've also been going back systematically through older posts and saving the more valuable ones in a format which, I hope, would make it fairly easy to re-create them on another platform.  I'm doing the same with the substantive current posts.  I'd advise anyone who has a political blog to take similar precautions.  One of the censored bloggers reports that, right before his blog was removed, he got a huge increase in fake page views -- about a million in one day.  He thinks it might have been an automated "report abuse" attack.  So if you see something like that on your own blog, it may be a warning sign.

One way or another, if this blog is ever removed, I will be back -- probably fairly quickly -- with a renewed emphasis on posting the kind of material most likely to piss off the would-be censors.