content notice

Normally, Blogger doesn't mess with my content, but just now, this happened:

click to enlarge

I'm pissed that this happened at all, but also frustrated because, even though the message says "this post," I have no idea which post they're talking about since the warning doesn't provide a link to the post in question. So, once again, my thoughts turn to moving to a different platform, preferably one with no censorious "community guidelines." You might argue that the post—whichever one it was—hasn't been censored: it's merely been placed behind a warning. True enough. But even that sort of measure feels heavy-handed and stifling to me. It'd be sad to abandon this blog after nearly twenty years, but I may not have a choice.

I've made noises about moving to a platform like Squarespace, but I suspect that Squarespace also has "community guidelines." (This doesn't look good. It appears Squarespace does deplatform people.) Meanwhile, if Blogger is looking to alienate its user base, well, putting up content warnings is a good way to go about doing that. I may end up having to create my own platform and blog from scratch—which means learning to code. Sigh... yet another project.

UPDATE: I saw, in my Gmail trash, that Blogger had sent me two emails regarding two posts that got placed behind content warnings. Those posts are divertissement (from 2003!) and the dangers of nosepicking (also from 2003). Both contain links to Rotten.com, a site that apparently no longer exists. You have to wonder why it took Blogger's censors nineteen years to flag these posts, and why the posts were flagged if the linked site in question is gone.