Over the last day or so, I have written several posts criticizing Google’s treatment of Ann Althouse. So did my guest blogger Aaron Worthing.
I collected several examples of people getting locked out of their Google accounts in the last 24 hours after criticizing nitecruzr on the Althouse support thread. The people include Althouse commenters EnigmatiCore and Dead Dog Bounce, as well as Hoystory — and Aaron.
All of whom, as it happens, left criticism on the Google support page for Althouse’s blog.
The last box of Franzia I bought had a small leak. Now I wonder: did that happen because I make fun of Ann Althouse?
Scott
They’re months away from ranting about secret messages they get in their fillings.
MoeLarryAndJesus
My cat just threw up on the bathroom floor. I wonder if it’s because I made fun of Ross Douthat today.
Delia
Google has taken away the background design I chose for my Google homepage so I have to look at a plain white background now.
Help! I’m being oppressed.
Omnes Omnibus
You buy Franzia?
Dave C
The proper response to this is….”Who the fuck is Patterico?”
MikeR
I can just see the scene in Google security headquarters: “Damn … Althouse and her accursed minions are onto us. Lock Dead Dog Bounce out of his Google account, pronto!”
Villago Delenda Est
@Scott:
I think that ship has already sailed.
Daddy-O
“The last box of Franzia I bought had a small leak. Now I wonder: did that happen because I make fun of Ann Althouse?”
ha ha
Laugh of the Day! What fools these mortal neocons be…
gbear
It was the pinprick of liberty.
Linda Featheringill
did that happen because I make fun of Ann Althouse?
Indubitably.
Mark S.
Jesus, Patterico has a lot of time on his hands.
Isn’t he a DA in LA or something? You wouldn’t think that would be a job where you have a lot of time to fuck around.
LT
I just want to know why Brett Favre’s girlfriend is trying to sell me a solar panel in her underwear. And what I’m supposed to do with it once it gets here.
kdaug
Hey, wait a minute – my poo has been a little soft for the last day or so, but I didn’t criticize Althouse, I just read other people doing it. So this is guilt-by-association now?
Totally not fair.
NobodySpecial
@Mark S.: Plus he’s gotta be on the lookout for Mario George Nitrini. I don’t know how the man finds time to hate on minorities on the internet like that with all that on his plate.
piratedan
@MoeLarryAndJesus: well did you examine the puke from all sides to see if you could spot Jesus?
Dana
Whether neocon or zombie, a reasonable person can see that it is unusual that those who made public criticism of Google and their apparent representative during the Althouse kerfuffle, found themselves locked out of their gmail accounts, while those who did not publicly criticize, were not locked out. The first group was required to give their cell numbers for access while the latter group could easily bypass that requirement.
It’s reasonable to hope that smart people consider the possibilities of why this might have occurred, rather than simply taking the easy route of mocking….that is, anyone who enjoys and values their free travels on the interwebs.
Anne Laurie
Sorry, DougJ — even if you lure Patterico into this comment thread, screaming about his very serious important lawyer skillz and threatening to expose our real names & occupations for all the world to make notes upon, you will never match Tbogg’s epic takedown of that silly little man.
Besides, if Patterico and eemom were to catch each other’s virtual eyes, well… this poor globe just isn’t ready for the results of that lovematch!
Dee Loralei
Hah! Andrew Sullivan is in the Blogs we mock and monitor column!!
Mark S.
@NobodySpecial:
Wow, that guy’s still on it! I remember him showing up in Sadly, No threads fucking years ago.
The OJ Simpson Case
(I see he’s got a few new ones. Justice never sleeps.)
Halcyon
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, my primary response to this was surprise at learning that Franzia still exists.
srv
Better start checking their brake lines for nanothermite.
Joel
@Dana: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened on Roswell? Where are Biggie and Tupac?
jwb
@Dee Loralei: I see Moore Awards coming this way.
Citizen_X
@Dee Loralei: Hooray!
@Dana:
How ’bout we see some conclusive evidence that it actually did occur? Until then, as the kids say, GTFO.
Mrs. Bitch
Oh, I love teh Google so much I’d marry it and have its little Googlets if I could. There is nothing better on the whole planet than Google, except maybe Google employees. GOOGLE! GOOGLE! GOOGLE!
Hmm. Nothing yet. I’ll let you know if I win the lotto or anything.
eastriver
Man, the ego on these folks. Solipsist much?
James E. Powell
@Citizen_X:
What does it matter whether it actually occurred? Cokie’s Rule! It’s out there.
Sly
@Dana:
Considering the possibilities is not the purpose of intelligence. The purpose of intelligence is to take a range of possibilities and discard those that are impossible or improbable. To reduce the number of explanations to the point where the least improbable wins, and maintain that explanation until additional evidence is discovered that casts doubt on its veracity.
What you’re advocating is the “I’m just asking questions!” defense of conspiracy mongers. But you’re not really asking questions, nor are you advocating that people consider a broader range of explanations. You’re supporting a particular explanation, one that is not the least implausible, and trying to gain credence for that explanation by arguing (badly) under the rubric of free inquiry.
Doug Harlan J
@Dee Loralei:
I finally figured out how to do that. I also added a bunch of readers’ blogs to the blog roll.
Martin
So, what do I need to do in order to live in a world where everything is about me? I bought some cheese at the farmers market and it was a little moldy. I returned it and got a block that wasn’t moldy, but I missed the much more satisfying scenario where the farmer’s market was trying to kill me and my family because the previous visit I forgot to bring my nylon bags and had to use a $.02 plastic bag. What am I doing wrong where I think that the cheese just got wrapped wrong?
JCT
Do these people live in houses with mirrors on all the walls?
Talk about delusions of grandeur and importance.
Pathetic.
Jewish Steel
Did Google send their thugs out to jump in Yglesias in retaliation for enjoying an evening with McMegan?
What was it irresponsible not to do again?
Doug Harlan J
@Dana:
If these assholes were for net neutrality, I might have more sympathy. But still, I have limited sympathy for people who forget their passwords or forget that storms cause outages (my wireless has been spotty the last three days), etc. and then blame Big Brother Google for these problems.
BB
The martyr complex is so deeply ingrained that it flares up, like a verbal tick, at the faintest provocation. That person blinked when I said that Medicaid recipients were looters- it is probably an NSA spy sent to enhanced interrogate me!
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen_X:
Seriously.
Let’s suppose that “Dana” is the nom de balloon juice of, oh, I don’t know, Althouse herself. Of course we’ll see assertions, based on nothing more than, um, balloon juice, that some people were locked out of their accounts for daring to criticize the Overlords of Google in the wake of the entire Blogger outage, while others who did not were not locked out. Obviously, the correlation there is pretty similar to my assertion that the sun revolves around a flat earth, for example.
Every bit as based in objective reality.
Q.E. Frackin’ D.
Doug Harlan J
@Jewish Steel:
I feel like an asshole making fun of Yglesias over that, but still…you lie down with Sudermans….
beltane
@jwb: When it comes to Sully, we need a More award given in honor of Sir Thomas More, Catholic saint and sanctimonious asshole.
fasteddie9318
srv
@Doug Harlan J: Hey, that could be a great tact.
Dana, maybe Net Neutrality doesn’t mean what you think it means. MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Jewish Steel
TBogg’s gotcha covered. Maintain the high ground.
Dana
@fasteddie9318: Clearly God controls one occurrence, and Google controls the other…or are you saying they are interchangeable? Heh.
SFAW
I thought we answered those questions in an earlier thread.
And besides, Trump’s on it, even as we speak.
dmsilev
@fasteddie9318: Heh, indeed.
My theory is that Rahm enlisted the help of the rain gods for his campaign, and this is the price they enacted.
James E. Powell
@fasteddie9318:
Right. And I noticed that no one is the MSM is even mentioning that the Cleveland Indians, who finally started playing well, had two consecutive rainouts!
Left Coast Tom
That cannot be. Some right-wing “pundit” named after a beer house declared cardboard to be the perfect packaging material for wine. Therefore, if it didn’t work for you, the failure must lie within yourself.
fasteddie9318
I find it telling that “Dana” jumped immediately to “God did it” without even pausing to consider that the HAARP array could easily have been involved. Some skeptic.
BB
Let me get this straight… if this insane conspiracy were true… It is unconstitutional to tell businesses they they can’t discriminate against black people, but it would be bad for Google to discriminate against Republicans?
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Dana: Daaaaw, what a cute comment!
It’s not evidence of Google’s arch conspiracy against Ann Althouse and her friends, though. Try again.
Mike
@Delia:
“Help! I’m being oppressed.”
Come see the violence inherent in the system!
Chyron HR
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
But Google gave 98% of its money to Obama! How do you explain THAT?
Bill Murray
@Doug Harlan J: you wake covered in pink Himalayan sea salt but without your mixer
Yutsano
@Dana:
What does that MEAN?? Is that an honest comparison or a warning you’re about to make shit up?
Your premise fails since you have no evidence that the lock-out was in any way related to Google’s Great Revenge. Plus follow your logic closely: if the point really were to extract vengeance for these individuals based on their criticism of Google, why make them go through the standard method for unlocking a Gmail account in question? Why not make them call and jump through hoops before that happens?
PeakVT
@LT: You should do with it what one always does with a solar panel in Brett Farve’s girlfriend’s underwear.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Chyron HR: If you were familiar with David Icke’s work, you’d understand.
Suffice to say that reptilians are involved.
Left Coast Tom
One wonders in the midst of all of this…does Ann BeerHaus approve, or not approve, of strong consumer protection legislation? I mean, yes, technically she didn’t really pay anything to Google, but still…
kishnevi
Citizen X:
People who publicly criticized a particular moderator on a Google help forum almost immediately found themselves flagged as spam accounts and were forced to give their phone numbers for Google’s code verification process in order to regain access to their Google accounts.
This happened to six people, all withing a fairly limited subset of Google users. To suspect that the moderator abused his powers in revenge for being criticized is a very rational thing to do.
If this moderator did not do it, and the lockouts were part of some random Googleness, then there ought to be a higher number of people than normal who were similarly locked out of their Google accounts this weekend, but who criticized no one on any Google forum. The best way to prove Patterico’s suspiction wrong is to provide evidence of such people.
scav
I’d say we start speculating that some people are making a serious play for Facebook Funding by smearing Google. . .
Citizen_X
@dmsilev:
Don’t say that out loud. Rick Perry will be drunk-dialing Rahm nonstop!
fhtagn
@kishnevi:
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Barb (formerly Gex)
It’s sad how tiny and meaningless these folks have managed to make their lives. That they have to imagine these kinds of conspiracies to feel good about themselves and their place in the world is too pathetic to mock. Well, almost.
Left Coast Tom
@kishnevi: Where does the burden of proof lie, with the one making a positive assertion, or with those mocking the one unable to prove a positive assertion?
Besides which, does Patterico now approve of strong consumer protection legislation? Or is this supposed to be another right-wing whine-fest without general applicability?
kdaug
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: Can we leave the fourth-dimensional shape-shifting lizard-people out of this? They tend to be distracting.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Doug Harlan J: Not just Google. The evil Democrats that work at Google. All 98% of them.
Sm*t Cl*de
@kishnevi:
The best way to prove Patterico’s suspiction wrong is to provide evidence of such people.
I don’t think anyone gives a fuck about Patterico’s state of mind.
fhtagn
@kdaug:
Anyway, what does Galactic Emperor Xenu have to do to get a mention, hmm, hmmm?
Yutsano
@kishnevi: A) we’re cross-posted somewhere. Awesome. New one-and-done names to play with!
B) See above, applies to you as well. Plus, and I know this sounds, like, totally crazy, but did any of those affected actually CONTACT Google about the situation?
MoeLarryAndJesus
@piratedan:
Of course not. My cat’s an atheist.
Southern Beale
Ann Althouse is opppresssssssed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Citizen_X
@kishnevi: What Left Coast Tom said. You’re exactly backwards. So let’s fix this:
We are not obliged to indulge your paranoia. Seriously, now: supply the evidence or GTFO.
Warren Terra
It’s also worth pointing out that, whatever has happened more recently, in the original thread this Nitecruzr fellow was behaving like countless other habitual volunteers posters on support forums, or for that matter on Wikipedia: he was apparently trying to be helpful in a very self-important fashion and without paying close attention to the actual nature of the problem, rather than what he assumed it was, because that’s what these problems usually are. His interactions in the thread just weren’t obnoxious – they weren’t terribly helpful, in the event, but they caused no actual problems, and they were in no way abusive.
And now this enormous cloud of flying monkeys from the wingosphere has decided that he was some sort of bully, that he was saying Mean Things, and occasionally saying he must really be a Google employee and that he’s got some special power to make your Google searches get you the wrong results. They’ve gone so far as to dig up and to disseminate his real name. Heck, I wouldn’t be shocked if he did report some people as spammers – quite possibly people that sent him hateful letters accusing him of all the absurd behavior that, I repeat, he didn’t actually do.
Actually, I wrote a very gentle comment to a relevant thread at Althouse’s blog saying some of these things – without the flying monkeys and the like, just saying that Nitecruzr seemed to be a typically officious and oblivious forum haunter trying to be helpful in their own way and that people shouldn’t jump to accuse him. Somehow that comment never appeared on Althouse’s blog, although other peoples’ comments have appeared on the same post. I suspect Nitecruzr deleted my comment.
Bill Cole
@Doug Harlan J:
There is also a middle ground hypothesis that seems consistent with the claimed events…
Google runs things their free services like Blogger in the cheapest possible ways, such as blessing particularly eager and helpful users with the online equivalent of the gold star stickers and green sashes of Hall Monitors. For some people, this is adequate motivation for them to actually take on types of work that it is almost literally impossible to hire people to do. One such service that can only be bought with flattery: responding to non-paying users who have wild persecution theories and refuse to accept the simple truthful explanations of unpredictable random outages because they draw a clear picture of provider incompetence.
Google has taken that model to an extreme. It looks like they’ve automated the process of getting special influence as a user, to the point where there’s not much protection from someone getting de facto moderation powers (remove posts, suspend access, etc.) with very little human oversight from paid staff.
Having put in time on both sides of that sort of operation in BBS’s and Usenet in the 80’s and 90’s, I can testify to the fact that once in a while even a carefully selected bunch of “helpers” will at some point probably include someone who ends up using their special privileges in bad ways. I don’t care enough to have looked beyond the existence if the claims being made by the wingnuts in this case, but those claims seem to me to be consistent with one unpaid helper over-reacting to a nuisance.
Incidentally, that sorta touches what has been going on here recently. John does as good a job as any I’ve seen of keeping a fractious community from turning totally toxic or purified and boring.
Ghanima Atreides
@Doug Harlan J:
but you didnt put the LoOGies there.
/sadface
How become you’re the only one that gets to troll them?
Ash Can
Let’s consider the evidence, shall we?
1. Between the alcohol and the impurities, consuming copious amounts of cheap wine can rot one’s brain.
2. Ann Althouse is guano-wacko.
Ergo, Google has locked Ann Althouse out of teh intrawebs so that the fumes from her breath don’t fry Google’s servers.
Shame on Google — all they had to do was to tell her to wrap an asbestos scarf over her face when she uses the computer. But no, they had to go and get her and her little friends all upset.
Dustin
@Sly:
That response has so many potential uses beyond just this conversation it’s almost scary. Next time an anti-vaxxer, homeopath, or creationism proponent spouts off at my wife’s family reunions I’ll have to remember it.
Mark B
I”m familiar with Worthing. He’s a rather literal-minded dunderhead with the intellectual capacity of a Hoover vacuum cleaner and the imagination of an ashtray. A recently emptied one.
Jon H
FYI: Slacktivist moved.
Fred moved to http://www.patheos.com/community/slacktivist/
There was butthurt among his commenters about the Patheos site, so Fred let them take over the typepad site for their own purposes.
BattleCat
So, like, did none of them consider that maybe, you know, some people basically went through the entire support thread clicking the “report abuse” link for each poster?
I definitely did not do that, you know, but some other people may have. A lot of some other people.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Bill Cole:
or, perhaps the outhouse folks have been messing with teh googs as agents provacateur, seeking some response such as the one they got, to use as proof, minus the other activities that brought them to someone at goog’s attention in the first place.
some equivalent of the mccain volunteer who cut a B into her own face and claimed she was attacked.
not to out-conspiracy the conspiracy nuts, but its possible that they are o’keiffing with teh googs.
now, which candidate has an admitted google problem? who might benefit the most, from a sustained google doesn’t care about conservative people, type meme.
a frothy mixture of unlikely scenarios to be sure.
debbie
Not so. A blogging friend, blissfully oblivious of Althouse and not likely to criticize her even if she did, was locked out.
SFAW
Evidence disproving the meme will be ignored, thank you veddy much.