Tuesday, July 26, 2022

I Won't Give Up

 I  hope it was a glitch, but I'm not so sure.

The date of my post was November 19, 2014.  Don't go looking for it, because you won't find it.  It was disappeared (not a typo) on July 4, 2022, the day we celebrate here in the United States as Independence Day.

How ironic.  

I need to explain what happened, and I'll tip toe around some facts so nothing similar happens to this post.

On July 4th I was prewriting my Tuesday, July 5 post, "Finally Time for A New Phone?".

But when I tried to publish it, the blogging platform I use immediately tagged it as not meeting their standards for acceptable material.  It was put back into draft, and I was instructed, by a label they placed on the post, that I needed to review their standards and rewrite the post.  No explanation of what was wrong (from their point of view).  There was a link for me to read such standards.

I didn't see anything wrong with it.

I shortened it a little, and made a slight change to the title, and it published. 

I was sitting outside in the back yard when this happened, and when I came back into the house, my spouse said "What happened? You look like you just ate a cockroach."  I told him what happened.

Later that evening, when I checked my email, I saw a message that a different post had been pulled from my published posts and put back into draft.  No explanation, once again.  If I want to republish it, the post has to undergo a review. I'm noting this post was published in 2014.

The pulled post, in case you are wondering is about how certain technology that we think is relatively new actually isn't.  For example, did you know that the first electric car was made in 1890?  It was a post full of trivia.  That's all.

So, is said mega corporation crawling through all our posts, those of us who use that platform, looking for certain keywords?  Or was it some kind of glitch?  I somehow doubt it was a real person, looking for posts he or she could mark with a scarlet "C".

The post remains in my drafts with a big red symbol on it.

You who have self hosted blogs will probably tell me that since I don't have a self hosted blog, this could happen again.  I don't doubt it.  But it's not going to make me give up blogging.  Several times recently, though, hair has stood up on my neck when I'm ready to publish.  Maybe the cause of this incident was innocuous but it's necessary to summon the feelings of "something more".  It's the times we live in.

Right now, I need to remember how I felt the evening of July 4. I was blogging on my laptop in the backyard, and when I came in, my spouse remarked "you look like you just swallowed a cockroach.  What happened?"

Initially, I wondered  (because I linked to several sites where I obtained information about the age of the technology I was blogging about in that post) if one of those sites had been since taken over by a site which was now - ahem - not reputable.  That's one explanation.

Now, I'm not so sure.

I have prided myself in publishing one post (sometimes more) daily since I finished a blogging challenge in May of 2011.  Now, like a mouth missing a tooth in the front, I know there is something missing.  My writing tongue probes for the wound. 

This blog (I started it in 2009) has years of memories.  Years of information meaningful to me that I refer to from time to time.

Right now, I have to decide if it's worth the trouble to rewrite the post and try to republish it. I feel I am honor bound to do something.  I don't just want to ignore it and go on my not so merry blogging way.  The fact that it happened on July 4 is not lost on me. 

I should thank this blogging platform for doing this to me, because now I have a taste of what it feels like.  It's something brave writers have dealt with for years in other countries.

So my immediate question is one for those who use or have used this blogging platform.  Has this happened to you?

And if it did, what did you do?

14 comments:

  1. ...I have never had this happen.

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  2. When I first started blogging, I posted a picture of spaghetti I found on the web and I received a notice that the owner of the photo had complained and that I had violated the copyright. It was an innocent mistake since I was ignorant of all that stuff at the time, but I wondered how the person, who lived overseas, had found my blog.

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  3. That is weird!

    I have a friend who had to restart his blog because of some sort of glitch, not sure what really happened.

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  4. It's never happened to me (knock wood, just in case) but FB recently dinged me for something I said in jest (a well known saying), and when I asked for it to be reviewed, they still said it was against their standards. I hate feeling like Big Brother is always watching, but he is.

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  5. how awful. I would engage a tech pro to go over your blog and identify what is going on. Carol C

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  6. Weird. No, it has never happened to me. I would be flummoxed if it did.

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  7. I have not had that happen, but I've had my share of issues with the platform! I did have a strange thing with my Twitter account. I have only ever "tweeted" once, a comment to a company with only Twitter as their contact. That was years ago, never heard back from them. So, the other day I wanted to read replies to a Tweet I was reading about in a news article, and was told my account had been permanently suspended for violations! I did contact them, and within hours they lifted the suspension.

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  8. That's BS what about migrating to like the free version of WordPress. It's the same kind of platform but it doesn't cost anything. I may be able to help you if you want but I would need more information because some platforms I don't work with. I'm guessing Blogger which would be an easy change.

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  9. Weird. I've never heard of that before. There are bots that crawl all of our posts logging keywords for searches. But you'd think they would have caught something from 2014 before now. And, of course, there's no one to call to ask what's up so you can fix whatever issue the tech found.

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  10. You been blogging a long time.
    Coffee is on and stay safe

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  11. I have used blogger since the beginning. I am no allow to advertise with adsense but really they did nothing for me anyway. But if I were to go back to 2014? Hmmmmm...that is just strange.

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  12. Maybe it is weird, but there are automatically checkers and is it possible to have their own technical problems or they have some syntax that they reject, even your words seemed to be neutral, for a human opinion... We never really know without an insider opinion. I hate these kind of situations, but yet I did not have such an incident.
    There are others, a lot! The story has no closure. Depends on you to have one, if it's important and I feel it is!
    Think and do what your heart tells you!

    All the best!

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  13. Alana,

    If this sort of thing happened frequently then it would concern me. Perhaps an innocent word or phrase to you or me is set as a 'trigger' for a spambot to flag, if the later is the culprit then I expect more of this sort of thing will continue to happen. Like you, I pride myself to fix things amiss with published posts. You could go in, remove all hyperlinks and try to republishing it. If that doesn't fix it then see work through until you isolate the bugger. What ever you do, don't worry about it. If you republish the post with the same date, then it'll fall back into cue properly and only those who get push notifications from your site will see it immediately. ;)

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