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Push The Limits, Expect Repeated Spam Classification

We're seeing a few blog owners, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, admitting to casual / multiple TOS offenses.
I have received many DMCA complaints - and I always sort them, as soon as possible. This time, my account was disabled.

How do I get my account back?
For this blog owner, there may not be an easy answer.

Blogger does not send out violation notices, so you can just stop what you're doing, when warned by the Policy Review team. They want you to stop what you're doing - and not do other things, that you're doing, that have not yet been detected.

Blogger is trying to eliminate abusive activity, such as copyright violation and spam.

They don't send out DMCA or TOS Violation notices to have you simply remove specific offensive material, from one blog - they send out notices as examples of what behaviour is not accepted, so you can clean up your act.

As a blog publisher, you are expected to read - and heed - both Blogger Content Policy, and Google Terms Of Service. You're not legally required to actually read the articles - but as an adult, you are expected to abide by them.

As Blogger puts chronic abusers - such as copyright violators and spammers - on notice, they are tuning the abuse filters.

Fuzzy and heuristic abuse filters will examine your blog, and similar blogs.

The anti-abuse filters are fuzzy, and heuristic.

  • When individual blogs are reviewed - and confirmed as abusive, the filters adjust to detect more blogs similar to what was just confirmed. That's "fuzzy".
  • When individual blogs are reviewed - and restored as not abusive, the filters adjust to avoid detecting blogs similar to what was just restored. That's "heuristic".

Similar blogs, being reviewed, will make the status of your blog cycle.

If your blog pushes the limits, with features and techniques that are borderline acceptable, the blog status will cycle from "abusive" to "acceptable" to "abusive", repeatedly, as similar blogs are reviewed - and either confirmed or restored.

In some cases, you may have your blog reviewed, and restored - and see it deleted again, later. Since the blog won't be whitelisted, you'll have to get it reviewed, again. It may, or may not, be restored the second time.

If you get repeated abuse / DMCA / spam violation notices, it's up to you to figure out what content / features are borderline acceptable - and remove whatever is causing the problem.

The repeated review cycle will take longer, each time.

If you don't remove what is causing the problem, and you keep stretching the filters, you'll be back in the forums, over and over, asking for help.

Each time that you request review, it will take longer to get reviewed, as the account / blogs are subject to more intense scrutiny. Blogger Policy Review staff want to tune the filters properly, so they look at the blogs more carefully - and that takes longer.

The repeated review cycle will eventually end.

Eventually, one of three things will happen.

  1. You will figure out what blog features are borderline acceptable, and remove them. Your blog will cease being a problem, and the cycle will end.
  2. Whatever blog features are borderline acceptable will be re defined as a legitimate spam characteristic. The next time your blog comes up for review, it will be confirmed as a spam host, and the cycle will end.
  3. Your Blogger / Google account will be terminated, as a repeated / non repentant abuser of the Blogger service, and the cycle will end.

Presumably, you want #1 to happen, before #2 or #3 happens.

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