Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Is Google Coming for the Gun Bloggers?

I learned from Gun Free Zone this morning that John Richardson at No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money had his blog shut down.  He's the only one I'm aware of, but I can't tell from my reading list how far that might be going.  I've linked to John's blog for as long as I can remember.


I suppose that Wayne LaPierre, or one of his minions, might have complained to Google because of things he posted that are critical of Wayne, but we don't know that.  I've certainly never seen anything I'd consider out of line for a blog. 

I don't have John's contact info, and I'm not on Twatter, so I can't ask him what the story is.  When I go there, I get a Blog Gone message:



Meanwhile, I keep talking about moving off Google, dropping the blog and GMail, and signing up for a more "Do It Yourself" service, but when it gets down to it that sounds like work and I've put it off.  

I'd think they'd get me first.  After all, I tell people how to cast an AR lower - an untraceable gun! - from aluminum cans.  I have a whole series on making another untraceable AR from an 80% lower, and a whole series on making a GB-22 from plain steel bar stock

What did John do?  Tell the truth about the NRA?

I haven't said where I stand on the NRA "coup" stuff, but the more that goes on and the more I see, the more I agree with calls for an independent audit.  Maybe Wayne's holding off because he figures the New York attorney general will have them audited and have the New York taxpayers pay for it, instead of the NRA paying for the audit, but I'm convinced that the old adage from the business world applies here: "the appearance of impropriety is the same as impropriety."  If the NRA were a functioning commercial enterprise, Wayne LaPierre would be out.  At some point, and maybe we're already there, Wayne is already costing the NRA too much money in lost donations and lost opportunities. 

I really need to get off my butt and get moving to a new system.  Today, the news crossed my path that it's not just gun blogs they're after.  They driving traffic away from "alternative health" sites.  How long until users aren't allowed to talk about anything that isn't approved? 



8 comments:

  1. I went over to twatter for you.

    Sig, keep an eye here:

    https://onlygunsandmoney.wordpress.com/

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Irish.

      One of my guides in what I'm thinking of doing is that I've seen rumblings around about WordPress not being beyond shutting bloggers down, too.

      I'm leaning toward maybe an independent host and just using WordPress as the blogging software.


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  2. As I have said many times in many places. The NRA is, and always was the mortal enemy of all gun owners. America is over with trump in the white house. That was his job,and he's doing it very well indeed. Red Flag laws, National registration and national "universal background checks" will all be on the books before Christmass . The next rigged election is decided. All that is left is the political theater to keep flyover from open rebellion. I would not be even a little stunned to find martial law and universal confiscation in the news before 2020. "If we want to keep our guns", Was for years the rallying cry of the right. Well If we don't USE those guns, and soon. The cry will be the noise from the human filled box cars going past in the night. It. IS. TIME. If we intend to keep our civil rights there is only one way left. If anyone still has the guts.

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  3. Mtntopforge.wordpress.com is also gone. This is apparently the 4th or 5th one in the last few months.

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  4. Getting your blog running with an independent host is fairly easy. There are many ISPs that install wordpress software on your account if you request it. A big problem is comment spam. You must run into it but the wordpress filter is not good and probably lets through more than the google filter. I ended up just blocking all comments and telling readers to email questions to me (to a gmail address :-).

    You might just set up a contingency plan and put up a message on your blog title on the alternate location if your blog is disappeared. Like Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see ten troubles coming down the road, nine of them will fall by the roadside before they get to you."

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  5. Much sooner than most anyone thinks. 2020 is coming.

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  6. Don't Use Google as a search. It has been years since they gave you the unvarnished truth. Now they give you what they think you should know. (They don't even give you the answers they think you want anymore.)

    WordPress.com is also free, and slightly less stupid than Blogger. When I migrated all these many years ago, the liberator wasn't working quite right. Which is why the old blog is still in place as the archives.

    I really should pay for a host, but as several high-profile examples have shown recently, even that isn't a guarantee that the free-speech-hating-Left won't kill your site.

    But the interface is actually better. (You can edit comments to fix spelling errors, something that comes up quite a bit due to the way my typing skills intercept with my spelling.

    And yes, I still have a couple of Gmail accounts. But I am moving everything real away from them because they snoop on all of your email. (I should have purchased The Helm email server before the price skyrocketed.)

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  7. I've been thinking about how to make myself less vulnerable to being disappeared by the left wing corporate Internet. Perhaps this scheme will work for you? I intend to implement it on my website so I can enable comments on my blog.

    Set up your own web site. I checked and silicongraybeard dot com is available. It will cost you 10 to 50 dollars to register it and other variants like .net and .info. Then you own them as long as you pay the annual fees.

    To avoid having to field as many spam comments, you can still use a service like blogspot but get your readers used to accessing it from a link on your website. If you get disappeared then all you have to do is change the link on your website. You still have to migrate your stuff to a new provider but your readers can still access you as they always have. Of course you can use your web site for other things like hosting documents, archives of your web posts, selling ebooks, and other useful stuff. And, if you have to, install blog software and administer it yourself.

    By the way, I would not suggest using your personal ISP for e-mail. I did that but is too hard to maintain security on email. Instead I would look around for a secure provider like protonmail but there are others.

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