Google Shutting down Anti-Obama Websites?

Sure looks that way although the fault may lie with an organized attempt by Obama activists to silence blogs that disagree with their candidate.

The key to the shutdowns is found in the corner of every Google "Blogspot" blog. Blogspot is the widely used publishing platform Google offers free of charge to people who wish to blog. In the upper right hand corner of every Blogspot blog is a button you can click if you find the subject matter offensive.

Simon Owens of Bloggasm explains:

A "Flag Blog" link sits at the very top of every free Blogspot account. If a person finds objectionable content on a Blogspot site or suspects it's publishing spam, he or she can click on the link and it will send a notice to Google requesting "human review."

I spoke to several of the bloggers who had accounts locked and every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted - a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive.

The incident highlights the often-contentious relationship between online Hillary and Obama supporters. Popular sites like Digg.com have consistently posted anti-Hillary links and popular liberal blog Daily Kos experienced a "boycott" a few months ago when several Hillary supporters left the site.

A blogger who uses the pseudonym "GeekLove" (she wouldn't agree to a phone interview and wouldn't tell me her real name) said to me via email that when her blog, Come A Long Way, was shut down she thought it was a fluke as well.

"I also felt a little bit humiliated that someone would think to characterize my Blog as 'spam,'" she said. "I had no idea why it would be 'spam' I assumed it was just some sort of mistake. I did think it was an isolated incident. I requested the Blogger review. I then went to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a place I frequently participate in on line discussions, and I saw Nobama's post ‘Blogger just shut down my NObama Blog!!‘ Then when other Blogger blogs were affected, I knew it was more than coincidence."

So this is probably not Google's doing - entirely. Let's see how long it takes them to allow access for these bloggers to their own sites.

From my own experience with Google and my website that was shut down three times, I believe that Google takes such action at times to annoy conservative bloggers and perhaps try and get them to quit. Other conservative bloggers who have used Blogspot could probably relate their own horror stories. Bottom line: Google is guilty until proven innocent in my eyes and whether they deliberately shut down some of these blogs knowing full well they were not spam is a question we will probably never know the answer to.