Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I checked this web site today and found there were a few WordPress updates to perform. So I did. All went well and seems to be working fine.

I spent some quality time with the site today, upgrading and updating things. Several plugins, things that work behind the scenes, have been updated and the main blog engine is now at the latest version.

There are a number of “themes” available that need updates, but most of them I am not using. It would probably be wiser to remove them. So I got looking at them and decided I didn’t like the one I was using. So, instead of it, I went back to one I had in the past, which I like a lot better.

It’s called Tigopedia Reloaded and I made a customized copy of it where I made a lot of custom changes. I always liked it and feel it a better look than the blocky, too white thing I was using.

Well, I haven’t been posting much here lately and most of my thoughts and rants have been going on Facebook.

They make it so easy, so seductive, to just put a short couple paragraphs or just a comment on someone else’s thoughts. It becomes too easy to spend time there.

But, once again, I’m in Facebook jail.

I don’t know why. They say I posted something that violated “community standards.” They gave me no details and I don’t remember what it may have been. Just suddenly, I can’t post anything. I can’t leave a comment. I can’t even like a photo of a furry cat.

I dug around and found – with some difficulty – a reference to their deleting a post.

I can’t tell from the little thumbnails what it was, or what about it they didn’t like. I have a “Page” where I post things. Things about Trump, our government, and politics. I started the page so I could keep those things off my personal timeline and let only those who want to read them see them. I was being considerate to those who might be offended by anything critical of our illegitimate president.

And, ordinarily, I avoid anything offensive. I lean towards the ironic, humorous, or satirical commentary.

95% of what I post is graphics – cartoons, memes, photos, and articles from major news sources. I mostly “share” not “create.”

And, yes, it’s mostly anti-Trump, anti-conservative, anti-GOP, etc. because, well, how can any moral, thinking person not be?

So, I am in the corner, getting a three-day time out from Facebook. Like that is supposed to teach me a lesson, whereas not telling me what the offense is does…

My experience with these things (I have known others who have also suffered the same fate) is that you usually get these things as a response to someone’s complaint. They are either processed by some algorithm or some person who reviews hundreds per hour. No deep thought is put into it. And there is no way to get a meaningful review. You can click a box that asks them to look into it, but I have not received a response.

From the thumbnails, I can tell it was a cartoon. That’s about all. I routinely download and keep the images I post, rather than just hit share. I do that because I want to break the chain of “So and so shared so and so’s post where they shared so and so’s…” I also sometimes copy and paste commentary along with it that I think the person may not want to have attributed to them. Public figures, I quote with full attribution, I spare the average friend.

So I checked through my collected images and did not find that one. It doesn’t mean it didn’t come from me, but it’s odd that I did not keep a copy. It might be left on a different computer that I don’t normally use. I only checked my laptop and phone. You can bet, if I do find it, I will post it here!

And, I did. I could not find it on any of my computers, but a couple of them have been reworked recently and may have been erased. But with a little Google-Fu and some help from Tineye, I found it.

That’s it. That’s the “offensive” post. I vaguely remember it. It was quite a while ago, so either they dug deep, or someone is going around looking for that particular picture.

This photo was found many times on Twitter. It was on Reddit. It was on Instagram and Pinterest, so it clearly doesn’t cross any lines for most places. It was totally used to target my account. There was also a version of it with a ghostly figure, possibly Jesus, leaning over 45.

So, I supposedly “violated community standards” by posting a graphic that came from the community. Hmmm…

Looking at the timing of it, where we are in the middle of the peak of the Trump impeachment Senate hearings, one has to wonder if it isn’t part of an organized strategy to use Facebook’s’ policies against anyone openly critical of him? Right now, silencing a bunch of his critics for three days without any hearing or recourse, would be huge. You almost wonder if it’s not a new wave of Russian hackers turning to suppressing criticism instead of posting pro-Trump propaganda?

I don’t flatter myself to think that I am that important, or widely influential to garner special attention. So, the explanation of a widespread organized process makes more sense. I just got caught up in it.

So, Facebook put me and possibly many others in Facebook Jail. I’ll live. Actually a three day break will do me good. After all, it got me back to my long neglected blog…

I just cleared out a bunch of comments that were being held for moderation. The spam filters I have on this site work pretty well. Nothing gets through them. Unfortunately, legitimate comments from first-time commenters are almost always held for review.

Most of the spam comments are just link spam. Someone, probably a bot, posts comment filled with links to other sites. They do this so that they will get better ranking in search engines because it looks like a lot of sites link to them. Easy to stop.

The ones I laugh at the most, though, are the ones that sound like a sincere message from someone who want to help make my site better and get better placement in search engines. The tip off that they haven’t even looked at my site is they always talk about improving my site to make more money. Ha. Money is the last thing on my mind here. But they think that I need their service to improve my SEO – or Search Engine Optimization.

I’m convinced that SEO actually means SnakE Oil.