Via Before It's News, tip o' the hat to Cryptogon.
Activist Post Deleted! Google Erases Popular Alternative News Source
At mid-day on Friday, September 23, 2011, the popular alternative news blog, ActivistPost.com, was taken offline. Activist Post receives over one million views per month and has been hosted by Google’s Blogger since its founding in June 2010.
“We remain puzzled as to why Activist Post was erased completely by Google,” said chief editor and co-founder Michael Edwards. “When we tried to load our back-up file into our secondary Blogger account, that was blocked as well,” he added.
It remains unclear whether Google has acted to censor ActivistPost.com for their controversial reporting. Google is becoming somewhat notorious for clamping down on truth and liberty activists, of which Activist Post is known for.
“Clearly, this is a huge set back for us and the work we do,” said co-founder Eric Blair. “Our entire crew is working on resolving the issue and restoring the website. We certainly look forward to an explanation from Google.”
Activist Post will file an appeal with Google to restore the site in full, and asks their loyal supporters to make their voices heard as well. However, they also are seeking other hosting services to avoid these types of censorship issues in the future.
“We want to thank our loyal readers, contributors, and advertisers for being patient while we work this out. We plan to come on even stronger in face of this adversity,” Edwards said
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Until Activist Post is back in action, you can find their work at Before It’s News HERE
This is huge. Activist Post is/was a blog that I consulted at least a couple of times every day. Mostly a news aggregator, they did generate a fair amount of original content too, and many stories would appear there at least a day or two before showing up on Infowars, et al.
Obviously my blog is much lower-profile than Activist Post, but if the axe is starting to fall, there is no reason to think that it won't eventually fall here. It is time for me to begin looking for hosting elsewhere. Please suggest non-U.S.-based hosting in a free-speech-friendly country (Iceland??). It's been great that Blogger/Google charged no fees and there may be no free alternative that's "safe," but I will have to still try to look for something as inexpensive as possible that meets the other criteria. Please let me know your ideas.
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Update [10:15 p.m.]::
It has been over 24 hours since Activist Post was taken down and I cannot find a hint of an explanation anywhere. Hopefully that will soon be forthcoming. In the meanwhile, however, while the web site is down it has not been completely silenced. The Activist Post Twitter feed is still alive and posting links to the same kind of great stories with which they have always dealt. I am hoping that the first hard news about what happened to the site will be communicated there, though so far they have not written about it directly (instead they have posted links to several stories others have written about it).
Read their Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/#!/ActivistPost
It has been over 24 hours since Activist Post was taken down and I cannot find a hint of an explanation anywhere. Hopefully that will soon be forthcoming. In the meanwhile, however, while the web site is down it has not been completely silenced. The Activist Post Twitter feed is still alive and posting links to the same kind of great stories with which they have always dealt. I am hoping that the first hard news about what happened to the site will be communicated there, though so far they have not written about it directly (instead they have posted links to several stories others have written about it).
Read their Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/#!/ActivistPost
2 comments:
Middle East hosting, Im not so sure you are in trouble anytime soon, i didnt recognize you ever uploading anything with legality questions.
hippie
I do not think Activist Post published anything with legality questions, and I was a regular reader.
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