My system uploaded an update to the Norton internet security web site list yesterday and your blog was on it. It was blocked by for containing “Sex acts.” Unless your blog has some hidden features I haven’t discovered, I suspect that you were put on the list by someone as a means of enacting liberal free speech (Speech for the left, but not for those who would disagree with them). I’m not sure what the process is to get you on or off the list (or maybe the hidden features make it a fair cop).
This is the first I've heard of anything like this. Is it really happening, and if so, what can I do?
UPDATE: I'm getting some good help in the comments, and just to be clear, I don't actually think it's a political plot. It's most likely that they just have an aggressive program, and since I talk about sex here sometimes, I got snagged. You probably don't want your children reading my blog. This isn't a blog for little kids! Anyway, it sounds as though Norton/Symantec is going to be secretive about how they operate their filters, so what can you do? I've thought of deleting all the F-words, but it's a lot of work to do that. And who knows how to get off the list once you're on?
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41 comments:
Lesson Learned: If you don't want to be banned for explicit erotic content, remove any photos of Ann Althouse from your blog. She's just too much for these haters to handle.
What is that leads some people to immediately suspect "the left" in any and every problem they encounter? Ann's blog triggered a net nanny--it must be the damn leftists!
Mortimer Brezny said...
"Lesson Learned: If you don't want to be banned for explicit erotic content, remove any photos of Ann Althouse from your blog."
Must be all those "scantily-clad photos of Professor Althouse" that she mentioned in podcast 75. ;)
Zorof was the professor in the 1980 movie Flash Gordon!. He was played by a guy named Topol. It was a bad movie, but so bad it is great. Any movie that has dialogue like:
"I knew you were up to something, though I confess I hadn't thought of necrophilia."
"Remove the earth woman. Prepare her for our pleasure!"
"Flash I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the earth!"
"Flying blind on a rocket cycle?"
Klytus: "Bring me... the bore worms."
Aura: "No! Not the bore worms!"
...and finally, a bit of dialogue from Max Von Sydow, who was simply born to play Ming The Merciless...
Ming: "Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?"
Klytus: "An obscure body in the S-K system, your Majesty. The inhabitants refer to it as the planet, 'Earth'."
The last quote even turned up in a Moby song... and yes, I know the professor's name was Zarkov not Zorof!
Ann, er... Althouse, you need to consider that in an attempt to suffer even outlandish criticism and invective without flinching, you routinely leave strings of the foulest language imaginable in your comment strings. One lower case dave comment would trigger any such filter. I must admit that I've occasionally been nervous that someone reading my decidely pg blog would click through to your page and get a snootful of the raving maniacs that appear in your comments--persons that are not prepared for such things.
Look at a site as bawdy as Fark. They have filters that automatically excise or change any foul language or derogatory comments about african americans or homosexuals, for instance, and immediately ban anybody that posts inappropriate comments or pictures, because they know if they don't, Fark will be banned automatically in all work settings, and tumbleweeds will be blowing through the joint when that happens. The denizens there get really peeved at anyone that posts anything that might trip those filters. It's the reason why swears have symbols like @#$% in the middle of them, if a person who is not a mouth breather feels the need to write them down on the internet.
I've noticed that many normal and thoughtful people seem to disappeared in general from your comment strings. It's kinda turning into a zoo, and many people don't want to paste their name next to sociopath ravings.
By the way, I never vote in the online thingies. I was interested in who the other bloggers were when you linked to the list. I thought I'd give them a look. I clicked on your hyperlink, and there was the contest page with the list of entries with radio buttons next to their names. At the bottom, it said: You are not eligible to vote as you have already voted in the last 24 hours. I checked it for a few days running-it said that every day.
I never voted.
How'd I mis "the one about the iPod vibrator"???
The urge to silence those who disagree knows no particular political affiliation
Instructions for defeating the blacklist, individually. It's not very likely that you ended up on the black list because of meddlesome lefties; you really do talk about sex, from time to time. The crawlers they use aren't particularly good at sorting garbage from non-garbage if there's any overlap in the lingo. It's why Breast Cancer sites so often get blocked.
Why is an adult filtering his/her own access?
The point was any picture of Ann is inherently erotic content. At least that's what my pastor says.
BarbO: Call your ISP.
Dawn: Norton's tools won't block any website unless you turn on content filtering, so that's a strange reason not to use them. (Now, not liking how much of a complete pain they are, that's a good reason.)
Oh, you conservatives and your victim mentality.
The thing I find funny is that is it conservatives who established the regime of content filtering, to protect their sensitive selves from being exposed to dangerous liberal cultural pollution.
And so what happens when it affects poor ol' Ann?
Why, you blame the liberals, of course!
What a perfectly seamless world view you have.
I second Sippican.
If you have a world view with seams what does it look like?
France?
Andrew Shimmin said...
"Why is an adult filtering his/her own access?"
My experience has been that a lot of them don't actually understand what they're doing - they just install the stuff they're told they need and try not to think about it. The average user is familiar with how to use a computer to read email and browse the web, maybe to type a document, but they aren't intimate with its mechanics. I had an email from a guy not long ago who referred repeatedly to "Outlet Express."
The computer has succeded precisely because it's become like a car: you don't need to know how it works to use it. I have no idea what process happens when I press the accelerator, but I know what the result is; likewise, your average user knows to open Firefox (or at least, to click on the blue "e"), and they know how to use google. I'd suggest that most people who are commenting on blogs (and who are doing so without typing in all caps) are above average users.
Mortimer Brezny said...
"The point was any picture of Ann is inherently erotic content."
You know, it must be a peculiar thing to be in your mid-fifties, and have a few commenters half your age who, for want of a more discrete way to put the point, think you're certifiably hot.
I rigged my own internet security system to block myself, as I find my posts to be largely vain, judgemental, argumentative, and generally insufferable.
So, you know, that way I can't even read this very post. Keeps me guessing what I'm actually reading anymore.
For Elizabeth: if not for conspiracies by the left, who is there to suspect for these obvious acts of treachery? I for one am glad to know that Norton (and, who knows, maybe McAfee) are part of the Grand Liberal Plot. Like those verification words. Clearly left-leaning (and -damn them- in code).
So, some of you are saying that I'm blacklisted just because somewhere in the comments, some people have used the F-word or whatever. Any ideas for a method to go back and find them? Also, note my emailer says he has me blocked because of sex acts not simply bad language.
Ann:
"So, some of you are saying that I'm blacklisted just because somewhere in the comments, some people have used the F-word or whatever. Any ideas for a method to go back and find them?"
I think Gerry's right, but on the off chance that he isn't, go to google and type the following into the search bar:
f*ck site:althouse.blogspot.com
(obviously replace the asterisk with a u). That gets 256 hits.
By way of comparison, the same search of Daily Kos produces 48,100 hits. So if they haven't been blacklisted for expletives, I can't imagine that you have.
And for that matter, I'm not sure that I follow why the Ipod vibrator would trigger inclusion, either. That post doesn't rise to any serious standard of explicitness.
See?
Conspiracy, I tell ya.
(P.S. verification word yohis ...need I say more??)
I don't get what it was about the vibrator post. Is it because the link took you to a site that sold a sex toy?
I've deleted the link there.
Can I get un-blacklisted by deleting things? I got that link through Metafilter, so by that standard, Metafilter should be blacklisted.
I'm chatting with a Symantec person now. Will update.
"Can I get un-blacklisted by deleting things?"
One of the two questions I've posed for them is how to get unlisted. The other is the criteria for getting on there in the first place. I'll let you know if they come back with anything useful.
My suggestion: Don't change a thing about your site, retroactively or now. First and foremost, this detracts from the essence of your blog, that which makes it...well, makes it Althouse. To do otherwise would be to alter your character to fit the constructs of what some proprietary software package deems acceptable. Don't do it.
Second, the Symantic product is, as I mentioned, proprietary and they likely have no interest in accepting your word on the content of your blog. Their business, and the purpose of this particular software package, is to lift the burden of thinking from those who purchase their product. So, Symantec decides (more probably their analytical robot software) what is offensive.
In that light, thirdly, my guess is that most visitors to your site are not running this software and the impact would likely be negligible.
Personally, if I knew you were holding back on expressing what ever it is interests you on your blog, Althouse would be less interesting as a destination.
If you now censor your own content, so as to comply with some unknown programmer or machine, isn't that going to violate some of your own ethics? Where is the tipping point in wanting to ensure widespread dissemination of your product, and being willing to agree to other people setting the standards for your content?
Ugh. Do you really want to expend part of your life trying to figure this out? Symantec will most likely (out of ignorance) be unwilling to disclose any useful, general info about their blacklist and how it is generated. Ugh.
Ann - I sent you an email. I'm still working with them, but we're making progress.
Everything's shiny, Captain. Not to fret.
Thanks, John.
Now, this Norton parental stuff, it's not the same as what businesses use, right? I'd be upset if people couldn't get here from work, but maybe this isn't the case. I do discuss sex a lot on this blog, and I'm not going to change that. The NYT discusses sex a lot! Not everything is for children.
I'm going back and deleting the F-word on old posts and comments. It will take a while to do it though, because there's a lot, even from some of the good commenters. (It's interesting to see the names of some commenters from the past. There are people we used to see all the time tha we never see anymore. I wonder what happened to them. Did they get tired of this blog? Did they die? Did they change nicknames? Did they kick the internet habit?)
I agree that I shouldn't change my blogging, but it's not really anything to put asterisks in the F-word and to expect other people to. I did that early on. The first time I wrote the word out was quoting President Bush.
Yetanotherjohn: So... you think it was quoting David Brooks that did it! David Brooks, discussing a big political scandal and a widely produced play. That's rich.
Now, this Norton parental stuff, it's not the same as what businesses use, right?
Small business, perhaps. When I was consulting more actively, I'd be working on site at various businesses of various sizes. It runs the spectrum from those who have no controls in place over employee web habits to draconian measures. Most seem to have some sort of monitoring in place and tend to weed out the problem employees rather than the "problem" web sites.
What ever the case, corporate proxy servers are likely to utilize enterprise grade filtering strategies and not the Norton product. Norton is meant more for individual PC's and such.
And who knows how to get off the list once you're on?
Stop saying things like "get off"?
Also, note my emailer says he has me blocked because of sex acts not simply bad language.
Well, being is a succession of acts. And being Ann Althouse is very sexy. You're too sexy for Norton Internet Security. Too sexy for this blog, so sexy it hurrrrrts....
Mort - gilding the lily...
Who uses those filters anyway?
For Elizabeth: if not for conspiracies by the left, who is there to suspect for these obvious acts of treachery?
Pogo, I give up. Who? Perhaps, if we don our tinfoil hats together, we can get to the bottom of this. Whoever they are, we can outwit them.
heh. My verification word: sshtt
It's as if blogger knows we're being filtered.
Too Many Jims wrote:
"If it is those crazy leftists at Norton that are blocking Prof. Althouse, couldn't the reader just remove it?"
TMJ, you're aiming the reader into a Hotel California experience. You can get rid of Norton, if you know how to uninstall; and when that fails, search and destroy all folders; and when that fails, use regedit; and when that fails, get through to the company to get a concealed utility from their website; and that may get it out. If not, format c: and reinstall windows and all the rest of yoru software. I've been dinged here by the hostess for quoting the Eagles, but you can stab it with your steely knives, but you still can't kill the beast.
Norton and my Black List, now and forever, one and inseparable.
Yeah, Norton is like herpes -- incredibly annoying and you can never really get rid of it. I switched to Mcafee, which is somewhat less annoying.
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