Get To The Root Of The Problem - Blame The Spammers

For some time recently, we have been seeing two basic complaints a lot, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken.

I tried to post on my blog, and it says my blog is under review for possible violations, and cannot be modified. I have read the terms of service, and there is nothing in my blog that even remotely violates the terms of service.

and

It's getting so that I'm embarrassed to be asking my friends to read my blog because there's so much porn everywhere. I'm even thinking of changing blog hosts because of it.

Both of these complaints have a single cause. Spammers. 90% of the porn in Blog*Spot is on splogs, spam blogs that are obvious clones of each other. I went "Next Blog" surfing for a short hour this morning, and found one set of splogs ("splog farm") with over 2 dozen members, and other splogs too. 2 dozen of the same dreck, that I found in a short hour, randomly. And it's not real porn either, it's garbage. Garbage connected to hacking attempts, hacking attempts that are targeting the unwary.

The splog volume is part of the problem. You have one or two blogs. Several splog farms contain hundreds of thousands of individual blogs, each. Blogger fuzzy spam detection, in an attempt to detect a significant portion of the splogs, is going to detect innocent blogs as spam.

Even a significant portion not detected causes more complaints from bloggers tired of seeing porn spam in "Next Blog". There will be both false negatives (splogs that are not detected), and false positives (legitimate blogs that are detected).

Many legitimate blogs, falsely detected, won't be even marginally suspicious - they will have normal content, of widely varying subject matter. To reduce the false negatives count, you'll see more false positives, and vice versa. And the criminals behind the splog farms are constantly tuning the content of their blogs, to make them look more like normal blogs (such as yours) - further increasing the false negatives count.

Blogger #1 (above) claims

there is nothing in our blog that even remotely violates the terms of service.

and whines that Blogger has to unblock his blog. Blogger loosens the filters, Blogger #1's blog is declared clean, and we get false negatives - spam blogs declared clean, too - and we get more complaints from Blogger #2.

Blogger #2 (above) claims

I'm embarrassed to be asking my friends to read my blog because there's so much porn everywhere.

and whines that Blogger has to block the porn. Blogger tightens down the filters, blocks some of the porn, and we get false positives - innocent blogs (like yours) detected as spam - and we get more complaints from Blogger #1.

This is just two sides of the same problem, neither side recognising the real problem, and neither side solving the problem.

Things that might help mitigate the problem.

• Flag the splogs that you find. If a splog has the Navbar blocked, make your own "Flag Blog" shortcut.
• Report the splogs that you find. Spend some time surfing, make a list, and send the list to Blogger. You may also use Blogger Help:Report a spam blog, to report individual spam blogs.

Stop whining and start doing something. Blogger can't do it, on their own.

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If you feel the need to discuss the problem online, do so, and list the problems so they can be examined and / or dealt with. You may read more about the problem, in The Attack Of The Clones. You can read about recent changes in the "Next Blog" link, in It's Here - The New "Next Blog" Link.

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