[UPDATE! Block on Bradblog.com links to AOL users finally lifted! At least for now. See UPDATE at bottom of story for more details! And thank you to those who contacted them with your complaints! – BF]
If you use an AOL email address, AOL is doing you the favor of making sure you do not receive email containing any links to BradBlog.com in it.
Not email from a BradBlog.com address, mind you, as if I were a spammer or something (which, obviously, I’m not), but any email from anybody that has a link to this site, or to one of our news stories.
I learned this swell news early this week when someone was kind enough to let me know that their attempts at sending a link to this site to a friend bounced back to them with an error message. That error message was “HVU:B2“. What is that error?:
- 421 HVU:B2
- There is at least one URL or domain in your e-mail that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members. Resolution will require opening a support request.
That’s right, “substantial complaints” from someone, whatever that means, will result in no links to stories at The BRAD BLOG getting through to any of AOL’s millions of members. And they will never know about it.
Again, these are not even emails from BradBlog.com. They are simply emails from anybody to any AOL email address which has my domain linked in the body of the email.
Neat, huh? I wonder what would happen if there were “substantial complaints from AOL members” about, say, FoxNews.com? Or MSNBC.com? Or NYTimes.com? Would that result in millions of members not being able to receive any email that links to anything at those sites? Sounds like a great way to ratfuck someone you don’t care for politically, doesn’t it?
So what did I do about this? What level of hell have I had to descend to over this past week in trying to solve this problem?…
So far, I’ve spoken to at least 10 different AOL support people on the phone, since clicking the “support request” URL they offer in the error message seen above actually takes you to someplace on the “AOL Postmaster” that doesn’t actually give you the form you supposedly are to fill out to deal with this issue.
It took a day or two, and several more calls to more very nice AOL tech support people who told me they couldn’t help me in the slightest, but a friend did some digging and finally figured out that this form is the one to fill out to deal with this particular problem. Or, at least, it’s supposed to be.
After filling out that form, I was given a webpage with a message to the effect of: “Thank you for filling out the form. We will send a confirmation email to you with instructions on how to proceed.”
That confirmation email never came, despite my having tried about 4 different times, from several different email addresses throughout the week. My friend tried as well. He also never received the promised “confirmation email.”
Each time afterward I would call AOHell tech support again and was told by the still almost-always very nice tech support person that they couldn’t help at all, that they couldn’t escalate the call, that they couldn’t allow me to speak to a supervisor, that the one and only way to deal with this problem was to fill out the form at the “AOL Postmaster” webpage — the one that I told them each and every time I called that I had already filled out, received a promise of a “confirmation email,” and then never received it.
They were very very sorry, but all that they could advise was that I fill out that form again and wait for a confirmation email that would never come.
In the meantime, today I received dozens of automated emails from my own mailing list program — the one that I use to send out news alerts to media folks — informing me that dozens of AOL members on that list had been automatically unsubscribed today because notes to them had bounced more than 3 times (that’s one of the settings in my maillist program.)
After a few more calls to tech support today, asking nicely, then begging, then pleading for a solution, begging to speak to a supervisor, someone, anyone, who could help, I was again told there was nobody I could speak to, the call could not be escalated, I could not speak to a supervisor, that I should go fill out that form to solve this problem.
I asked for a corporate AOL phone number where there might be someone who could help, and was — finally, after much begging — given one. It turned out to be the 800# to the AOL billing department instead. You’ll be shocked to learn they couldn’t help either — but they did recommend that I fill out that form at the “AOL Postmaster” page!
I finally looked up the AOL corporate website online, found the numbers for the “Corporate Media Inquiries” department, figuring I’d either get help or get an on the record comment about this mess and about the fact that AOL is censoring members emails for them, and spoke to another very nice person whom I told about the situation, explained that I was a journalist, not a spammer (and besides the notes being rejected didn’t even need to come from my address to get rejected), mentioned the irony that I even write news for Huffington Post from time to time, and explained that I’m at wits’ end, and will probably need to write a story on this at this point to let people know that AOL is censoring their users emails!
He promised to report the situation to tech support for me, he promised to elevate the matter, he promised to have someone who could fix the situation call me back hopefully today (though it was late in the afternoon on Good Friday, so he couldn’t promise promise, but he promised to try.)
It’s several hours later, and I’ve received no call. But it is Good Friday, when, as everyone knows, the Internet shuts down.
But I did receive a note from an AOL user I know, who I’d explained the situation too (when they contacted me wondering why they had received a notice that they were being automatically unsubscribed from my mailing list). They said they’d asked a friend to send a note with BradBlog.com in it to them and, though “it took a while,” they said it made it through!
Great! The call to the “Corporate Media Inquiries” department did the trick, I guess! Right? Not right.
I replied to my AOL friend (from a non-BradBlog.com) address, with the text of their email quoted — the one that contained www.bradblog.com in it — and the message immediately bounced. Same error. Same hell.
In my second-to-last ditch effort today, nearly a full week into this nightmare, nearly a full week since colleagues on my email alert list have not been receiving my emails, I once again filled out the same “AOL Postmaster” form for, perhaps, the 5th or 6th time. You know, the one that tells me after I’ve completed it that I’ll get a “confirmation email” that never comes? This time, I got a different response after filling out the form:
Yes. A blank page. A blank page with nothing but their sidebar on it. No message. No nothing. At least its more honest.
At that point, I figured I’d better write this article if, for no other reason, some folks with AOL addresses may be wondering why they’re not getting their usual email news alerts from me. This is why.
But also because the world should know how easy it apparently is to keep AOL users from getting links to “objectionable” websites if enough “substantial complaints from AOL members” are made. Neat trick, huh? Let’s keep that one in our back-pocket, shall we?
Oh, and also I thought the world should know that AOL is censoring its members’ email and they know nothing about it! And if your own website gets caught in that censorship there is almost nothing you can do about it!
I’m reminded of a similar incident that occurred with Comcast back in the summer of 2005 — which we covered exclusively here — as they, the nation’s largest email provider, were not allowing emails to go to users if they contained “AfterDowningStreet.org” in the body of the email.
We eventually were able to learn from Comcast that the problem was due to some automated anti-spam program that triggered a filter to block emails that had URLs which had suddenly become very very popular on the Internet, under the presumption that they must be spam. Or so Comcast claimed anyway. It was a very politically charged summer, and the AfterDowningStreet.org site was reporting on information which argued that Bush had determined to go to war in Iraq whether there were WMD there or not.
The problem was eventually corrected and AfterDowningStreet.org was removed from the filter. But a month or so later — as Cindy Sheehan took up her famous stand in Crawford, TX, urging Bush to meet with her to explain the “noble cause” for which her son had been killed in Iraq — emails containing “meetwithcindy.org” were similarly filtered out by Comcast and never reached their intended destination. We reported on that incident here.
In many ways, the Comcast incident was arguably even worse than AOL’s shame, in that their system didn’t even bounce an error message back to the sender. The email was sent off, and nobody ever even knew that it didn’t arrive.
Well. Sorry for the long explanation, but I feel better having gotten it out of my system — even though, as of now, it is likely that AOL members cannot get emails which contain links to this news site in them.
If my contact at AOL cares to offer a response from the “Corporate Media Inquiry” department, I will, of course, be happy to run it (as I offered him originally — but he chose to try and solve the problem, rather than give an on-the-record comment for now, which I actually appreciate.)
But, sorry. This is all bullshit, and folks need to know.
AOL members who wish to complain, request they be allowed to receive emails with BradBlog.com in them, or would prefer to switch to an email provider that doesn’t censor their mail without telling them first, can call: 800-827-6364, or they can be ignored via the AOL feedback page here.
UPDATE: Another AOL user tells me via Twitter: “I just sent from AOL to AOL with your domain and it works; only from outside AOL in fails.”
That would explain why my AOL friend was able to receive an email with my domain it from another AOL user, and why my reply to her, quoting the same email, failed. Fail. Fail. AOL. Fail.
UPDATE 4/23/11, 5:11pm PT: Just a quick update for those who’ve asked. Yes, emails containing links to any page at BradBlog.com are still blocked when sent from any non-AOL address to an AOL user. This is more than 24 hours after I directly notified and spoke to their Corporate Media Inquiries division, who promised they’d escalate the issue. And just about a full week since I was initially notified about the problem in the first place, and began my full week of of endless tech support calls and written complaints via the form mentioned above at the “AOL Postmaster” site. Still censored.
Interestingly, someone pointed me towards an article posted in 2004 with the exact same problem with AOL. The article sounds almost identical to mine, in both the description of the problem, and the serious issues it presents about how this AOL “feature” could be used nefariously. The article is no longer available at its original address, but the cached version is at Archive.org is right here.
UPDATE 4/25/11, 2:46pm PT: Free at last!!! After a full week of being censored by AOL, I’m just now finally heard from a member of the “AOL Executive Escalations” team that the block on BradBlog.com has now been removed! They had no explanation for the reasons that we were blocked in the first place, but have promised to get back to me with that information. In the meantime, at least we are once again free at last from this latest nightmare! Thanks to all of you who contacted AOL with your complaints!
I have an AOHell address because I have friends that use AIM(still!). Anyway, I just tried to send an email from the AOHell address with the link for this story and had no problems. So who knows what the hell they are doing.
The new owners of Huffingtonpost.com …peas in a pod.
Okay. That was weird. My first attempt was from an AOHell address to an outside(Google, Yahoo) email. I just tried to send it back(ie reply .. with the original email included) from the outside(Google, Yahoo) to the AOHell and it was blocked. So yeah, something fishy is going on.
Phil – As you’ve figured out. It’s not sending FROM AOL addresses. The prob is when sending TO AOL addresses. And, apparently, only from non-AOL addresses. See my update above, as it makes sense, based on my friend who was able to receive the email from another AOL user, but not from me (from a non-AOL, non-BradBlog address).
Yep, same thing just now.
Oh, screw this shit. I’m tempted to say that anyone dumb enough to use AO-effen-L deserves what they get.
But g’dammit, Brad. Your site is the BOMB when it comes to covering electronic voter fraud. The mainstream media isn’t going to do it. It’s BORING! It makes people unsure that they are being well-cared-for by their masters.
Can’t have that.
This might boil down to typical corporate dumb fuckery. But we can’t assume that. I assume evil intentions when corporate assholes are involved, and demand they prove otherwise.
I would send out emails using tinyurls. See if they get banned, too.
Relevant attack? A reddit member, saintbargabar, marked your recent “New Details…” story as: “Blogspam. Downvote and report.”
I feel like I am living in communist Russia. I’ll pass along this article and see how it goes.
Brad, you hit the nail on the head. Many of my forwarded emails are rejected by aol. If I go back and look, they are probably from your site or other “suspects”. It’s irritating and un-American. My server is Charter.com, and the seem to have the same filters as aol.
It will be interesting to see what you turn up on this.
Chris Jonsson
Dallas, TX
AOL comes from the bad side of town. Stay away from there!
Magginkat you would be lucky if you where “living in communist Russia ” ,watch this video and add it when you “pass along this article and see how it goes. ”
“Please forward this to everyone you know. This is the second video produced by Blaise Ingoglia.”
http://visiontoamerica.org/99/brother-can-you-spare-a-trillion-government-gone-wild/
Brad writes: After filling out that form, I was given a webpage with a message to the effect of: “Thank you for filling out the form. We will send a confirmation email to you with instructions on how to proceed.” [p] That confirmation email never came…
Brad, did you submit your BradBlog.com email address via that form? If you did, maybe it bounced. That is, maybe you didn’t get the confirmation email because it bounced back on itself before it got through the AOL server.
If that’s what really happened, it’s kinda hilarious, no offense.
Billy
If I remember right, AOL hit the scene offering WAY more services then they could provide. It must have been a nightmare for their employees, but the top brass didn’t seem to care. They had one thing in mind, and that was a commercial blitz based on lies.
When I bought my first Sony VAIO computer, (an excellent product), I didn’t like the fact that I had to delete about 15 to 20 AOL ads every time I wanted to start from scratch. Windows was very unstable at the time and I kept reloading the operating system to try and resolve my problems.
I could never understand why anybody would even pay AOL which, to me, seemed to be attaching itself to the internet and charging for services nobody really needed.
AOL is a very sleazy operation IMHO.
421 HVU:B2
There is at least one URL or domain in your e-mail that is generating substantial complaints from AOL members. Resolution will require opening a support request.
Brad: “That’s right, “substantial complaints” from someone, whatever that means . . . ”
Let’s assume for a minute that the complaints bit is actually the case here. Whose suckpuppets might be bombing AOL with complaints?
Chamber of Commerce?
HB Gary?
Any other Team Themis douchebag?
Just a thought.
AOL is infested with petty little conservative trolls who are constantly sending TOS reports in to AOL trying to get non-conservatives booted from the AOL domain. It’s just how they roll. Cowards, and chickenshits, the lot of them.
Brad wrote:
Not strong enough, Brad!
We need a campaign to get people to abandon AOL in droves in favor of providers who do not censor their email.
Boycott AOL!
Oh, hope you cover this next week on KPFK, Brad.
As to the intentionally targeted of BRAD BLOG at AOL, Michael G. and others have alluded to above, remember, we were one of the folks targeted by the Rightwing “DIGG Patriots” back in the day (the day being about a year or two ago):
https://bradblog.com/?p=7977
Ya know, for a crazy, conspiracy theory site with no credibility, that nobody at all reads, we sure do get targeted a lot, eh?
Sigh…
This may be a stupid question, but: what if you try to obfuscate the link? For example, put something like random but recognizable between the characters in the link so that it’s obvious to a human but not a computer?
w!w*w.b*r*a*d*b*l*o*g.c#o%m
Or strip of the “http”?
A little more work, but it might bypass the filter.
Billy @ 12 asked:
Believe me, it’s one of the first things I thought of. So was sure to use different addresses as well as my BradBlog.com address in subsequent form submissions. As well, I had a friend fill one out as well, completely different email servers, etc. and he didn’t get his confirmation email either.
Please, feel free to fill one out! It’s a very short form!
BTW, folks. Please do me the favor of REDDITing (& DIGGing) this story specifically. Obviously, all of our stories need more Reddits and Diggs to overcome the folks who enjoy targeting us. But this story, in particular, needs eyeballs. Cuz it’s not just about The BRAD BLOG at all as I see it. I’m just the one who found out about it. Who else is being similarly filtered out at AOL?
Lummox @ 18 asked:
Apparently, one can get around the filter by using an URL shortner like Bit.ly or Tinyurl etc. But that’s hardly the point. Most folks who share a link from BRAD BLOG are not going to know (or care to take the time) to go shorten it before sending one of our stories.
I truly hope folks will raise holy (but polite) hell with AOL.
And it’s all especially disturbing in the midst of the WI contest, I should add.
Sorry, WI, folks on AOL! I’m doing my best here. AOL is not working in anyone’s favor here!
“Your site is the BOMB when it comes to covering electronic voter fraud. The mainstream media isn’t going to do it. It’s BORING! It makes people unsure that they are being well-cared-for by their masters. ectronic voter fraud. The mainstream media isn’t going to do it. It’s BORING! It makes people unsure that they are being well-cared-for by their masters”…
Yes…and that’s why Ed Schultz rudely let me know (after I waited an hour to get on his effing radio show) that he was NOT going to discuss problems with the voting machines…”After all Obama won on the voting machines”..WHAT A FOOL!!
I shouldn’t be surprised after he told another caller (about a year ago) he wouldn’t discuss a certain topic because it was…and I quote…”A CAREER KILLER”.
I found that putting the phrase “BradBlog” in the subject and body didn’t make an email to an AOL address bounce.
However, putting a link such as “www.bradblog.com” did make the email to an AOL address bounce.
Disgusting. I’m disgusted. BRADBLOG is CONSTANTLY getting fucked with, downvoted, scammed, targeted by trolls and the effin’ Chamber of Comerce.
I am so *sick* of this for you, Brad.
Meanwhile there are about 15 comments in this thread, and only 2 digs at this time, even after you specifically asked us to help UP VOTE you in light of this hooey.
WTF, my peeps!? Don’t have a DIGG ACCOUNT? It takes three, maybe four SECONDS. HELP US FIGHT, THIS SHIT, DAMNIT!~!
…and btw, FB has been acting strange with WI posts, too. Karenfromillinois mentioned a thread she kept trying to post…how it kept disappearing.
I’ve been experiencing that same problem…
not to say it isn’t posting, some people see it, some don’t. But it isn’t VISIBLE on my FB feed.
I just tried to post this via Brad’s FB button, AND separately as a link…isn’t visible on my FB Wall.
This. Sucks.
Brad, I sent complaints/questions to AOL requesting Freedom of Information! You’d think in “America,” you wouldn’t have to ask. The possible scenarios are 1) A glitch. 2) AOL/Huffington post blocking you, or 3) An outsider hacked AOL to block your Internet address just to occupy your time, energy and focus — a ratfuck as you say. AOL users unite and demand AOL stop the censoring!
“I would send out emails using tinyurls. See if they get banned, too.”
Try this: http://tiny.cc/BBlog
“I feel like I am living in communist Russia. I’ll pass along this article and see how it goes.”
No, you’re living in Corporate U.S.
I sent friend Paul (above) who uses AOL an email with http://www.bradblog.com contained in the body of the email. I don’t use AOL, so AOL looked at my email as coming from outside AOL and sure enough, bounced it back to me with a couple of pages of gobblygook that meant nothing to me, except the clear phrase “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
Sorry it didn’t work out! Really, and it seems they are doing this to anyone who has the misfortune to have an AOL address. A massive exitus from AOL would be very meaningful.
An even more important activity would be a massive investigation by the Justice Department to determine the extent of this secretive and (likely) illegal action (and apparently their POLICY)on the part of AOL. I thought someone else on this thread mentioned a similar problem and they were with some other IP than AOL. An investigation needs to focus on at LEAST the top ten IPs in the country. If AOL is doing it, who’s to say any of the others in the top 10 (or however many) aren’t doing it or something similar or even something worse.
This electronic frontier is getting to be far too heavily weighted towards the IPs (Corporations) and NOT the people. Gee, where else in our great country would we ever see a favorable weighting of the corporations vs the “people”?
I just hope the Obama administration will take this with the level of importance it deserves and immediately launch the investigation.
I don’t do Reddit or Digg but I will take the suggestion and sign up for both JUST because of the importance of this issue.
Best to you Brad and Desi – you are such a powerful team and neat people to boot! 🙂
By the way, try a search on “AOL censorship.” They’ve been engaged in this nonsense for years. As for spam, I get virtually none. Why? I don’t receive or forward joke emails, and I don’t post my address online in open form. The address on my website makes use of [at] and [dot] replacements. The former of these two requires that you let your friends know you don’t want to receive joke emails from them. They may be upset at first, but they’ll get over it. The rationale behind this is that the more computers have your address stored, the more likely it will show up on an infected computer. If spam were a venereal disease, most of these idiots would be dead by now.
It’s not electronic VOTER fraud – it’s electronic ELECTION fraud. A couple of folks used the “voter fraud” phrase which is easy to do, especially in the heat of our battle with denial of basic freedom of speech.
I believe you (Brad) have suffered from a violation of the 4th amendment that provides “The right of the people …against unreasonable … seizures…” They (AOL) have seized email unreasonably and are potentially depriving you of income you would otherwise realize if all the emails had not been bounced. I know the concept of the 4th amendment was likely to keep the government in check, but it doesn’t say it DOESN’T apply to corporations as well.
You have a major issue here – be the bulldog as ferocious as you ever are – this is very frightening – especially the story about one person not even being notified her emails with http://www.bradblog.com in them were blocked. When you don’t know that your email bounced, you assume it went through. Then you might be bummed (or worse) that you never heard back from the person you sent the email to – never knowing he/she never GOT the email you sent. That is complete opacity, making this very Orwellian.
AOL must be exposed in the MSM – how likely do you think THAT is?!
After AOL bought huffpo, I read that their HQ used to be Langley, Va.They have moved now. In the past , it was very difficult to unsuscribe to AOL. I had this experience myself. A lot of people did.
Have also had the experience when writing about corporate fraud in a particular industry, to have my emails messed with. Like receiving an email from a neighbor a day after she sent it. Same with another email from a friend in another state.
Glenn Greenwald has contacted WikiLeaks. Maybe you should talk to Glenn.Don’t see the Justice Dept. as a recourse anymore, but some people get lucky. If it is true that AOL’s HQ used to be in Langley, Va. , good luck with that.Since you have more of a national voice now, this will help spread the word on US censorship .
Brad, et al: This is about lazy (and maybe compliant) security and enemies. Any controversial site can get this treatment. Do it to someone by arranging for a few of your friends using the target domain to “complain” about someone else offending or spamming, and they too will be banned. It’s easy. I ran a politically active list of several hundred and encountered if often -more especially a few years ago.
Someone of Brad Friedman’s stature, especially with friends like the well connected Arianna Huffington, should have no trouble clearing it up with a phone call. I wouldn’t use an email, however ;^)
AND I would hope this sort of lazy and politically squeamish security, based on early fears of spam and smut would be an artifact of the past. In any case, certainly Huffington can clear this up with a wave of her wand.
Brad,
The support folks at AOL are not looking into the correct area. I just used MXToolkit and the people who are hosting or acting as filter service for your domain are blacklisted with one of the largest blacklisting databases.
I may have a quick fix for you, as only their first IP address for their mail servers is listed.
Follow me on twitter, and then DM me for help.
@neoblaque on Twitter
AOL – Amurka On Lies
it seems to be an addiction …
They ended my ability to reply to AOL emails sent to me about a month ago, although (so far) AOL users can still send TO me. I briefly scratched around looking for ways to get it revoked, and then saw how much personal information they wanted. Nope.
I haven’t had problems passing on your excellent articles so far. But,Brad to say the Huff Post is worth writing for like a badge of honor I don’t agree with. They allow absolute garbage up criticizing the Central Park horses who are totally healthy (it’s a real estate deal with piranhas looking for the stable properties) and they censor anything about the real health issues of First Responders. Fukashima is similarly censored on that stupidly popular site.
Have you tried submitting an article about this to Huff Post? “Just for Fun?”
Bradblog has been my homepage for many years. This past week, when I log on, I get the error message “can’t be found on this server.” In order to get to bradblog, I have to go through google. I use Firefox as my browser, but my internet provider is Time Warner. I thought it must be some kind of innocent glitch, but having read this string, I will investigate.
Brad – You can tell AOL that as a national award winning journalist and editor of http://www.EastCountyMagazine.org I am outraged at their censorship. We are the 3rd most widely read news site in San Diego County. I have occasionally sent emails to our readers with links to your fine reporting on issues such as the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan and election integrity issues. If they do not resolve this I will publish a story on the censorship, which could easily affect other organizations — seems to me anyone who writes anything controversial could wind up blocked if it’s merely done based on complaints, not the legitimacy of said complaints.
Another thought — you should complain to the FCC and to whatever Congressional committee regulates something like this; a threat of legislation to fix this problem might bring AOL into line, or perhaps the FCC itself could pass a regulation to ban blocking emails based on political content. Seems like a clear first amendment violation to me – as a journalist if I can’t send a link to a legitimate news source to my readers, that is unconstitutional. That said I have a suggestion on another note; I wish there were direct links to articles that didn’t have articles on unrelated topics on the same page, so I could send readers directly to the topic of interest.
Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck fans had decided they don’t like free speech if anyone who disagrees with them is enjoying that particular liberty. Unfortunately in that idiotology (as opposed to ideology), free speech means shouting down your opposition.
i just sent an email with your url in it from aol to yahoo and back, from aol to earthlink and back and from aol to msn and back with no problems whatsoever. i like aol, they don’t mess with my mail, it is easier to use than others and they have a fine radio service as well.
So, I did a broad search at Reddit with the term “bradblog”. Seems the latest story is from 29 days ago. Then I found this… http://www.reddit.com/user/cann4ing?2
Seems that some Redditors are reporting every Bradblog article as spam.
Let’s take note of WHO the AOL corporate persons are who are censoring this site:
Tim Armstrong, President and CEO
also:
Alberto Ibarguen
James R. Stengel
Fredric G. Reynolds
Michael K. Powell
Patricia E. Mitchell
Susan M. Lyne
Karen E. Dykstra
Richard L. Dalzell
Tim, you’re a real chump. How about fixing this fascist, Unamerican shit?
Likewise to Al, Jimmy, Fred, Mike, Patsy, Sue, Karen, and Dick(wad).
At about 1:10edt Saturday afternoon the problem still exists. I sent an email from my ISP’s email account to my AOL account. It contained this link:
https://bradblog.com/?p=8487#more-8487
That email has not been received in my AOL account as of 9 minutes later.
I also went to Google’s url shortener and took the Brad Blog link above and shortened it to http://goo.gl/uRFeW
I emailed that just like I did the first one and it arrived in my AOL account in less than one minute.
Clearly something is going on here.
Perhaps AOL is just putting it in spam.
Jack Lohman
http://moneyedpoliticians.net
Interesting. How in the hell do I sign up for email alerts to new articles?
Brad,
May I suggest that you capitalize on the current interest/concern re: Iphone and Android surreptitious collection of tracking data to get one or more of the tech blogs currently covering those stories to take a look at your issue. As a very long term AOL user, I was unaware of this as a problem and don’t know any other way to help, but I have to wonder what other url links might likewise be triggering such blocks.
This is all about limiting Free Speech. After all, censorship is everywhere. The gov’t (and their big business cronies) censor free speech, shut down dissent and ban the book “America Deceived IIâ€. Free speech for all.
Last link (before Google Books bans it also]:
http://www.iuniverse.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000190526
I can confirm what Brad and others report: A message containing a BradBlog link FROM a non-AOL domain (in my case, cox.net) TO an AOL member was bounced. My advice to AOL members: Get yourselves a different ISP. For heaven’s sake, we do have some choices left.
Brad,
Send me a private e-mail from your mail server so I can analyze the routing.
Find out who are the Equity Analysts that cover the shitty stock and write a letter with this page printed out to the AOL Co President and copy all the Equity Analysts. Fax it out. Then email a copy to the media and the FCC or whoever is “in charge” of the internet. They deserve the hell that breaks loose.
I sent myself a bradblog link from my yahoo to aol. Seems to be coming by slow boat to china. Been at least an hour now…taps foot, drums fingers and asks why.
I have been having the facebook problem specifically with the WI posts and posts directed here. I found that if I enclose a phrase with quotes, it will not post, but if I go back and remove the quotes, it posts… but that was just one anomaly…
Also frequently no headline nor thumbnail posts with a link here, just the link. I’m not so much into conspiracy theory which is why I post or try to post your facts.
Jack Lohman wrote: “Perhaps AOL is just putting it in spam.” –No, that’s where AOL usually puts “blocked” email and I often find email my Bradblog newsletter there. At least I used to? How does anybody know when they are not receiving email sen to them?! The AOL Spam folder lets one weed through and delete, read or click “This is not spam” to send it to your in-box. I used a gmail account to my AOL account to suggest I go to http://www.bradblog.com again today and it was totally bounced — not even to the spam folder to give me a chance to decide. This is seriously F’d up!
Miriam Raftery @41 wrote:
I see no need to wait around, hoping AOL corrects what they have done.
The fact is that AOL made a deliberate, political decision to censor what their subscribers can see and read. AOL did so without the knowledge or consent of their subscribers.
I know from reading your past work that you, like Brad, have published some outstanding articles pertaining to e-voting systems.
Irrespective of whether public pressure ultimately leads to AOL correcting this, the fact that a corporation like AOL acts as a gatekeeper of public discourse is “news.” Your readers have a right to know about it, so please, write it.
Jeannie Dean @ 24 said:
Yup. Me too. To review the last year or so. The BRAD BLOG…
+ Targeted for burial by Rightwing “Digg Patriots” on Digg.
+ Targeted for $12m smear, discrediting, spy campaign by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
+ And now completely censored by AOL.
Fun! Guess we must have done something someone objected to, or something?
Can’t speak to Digg issue here, but apparently we’ve also now been marked as “Blogspam. Downvote and report” on Reddit. Including both this story and our previous detailed story on the WI revote/investigation.
So that may explain the lack of Reddits lately. Sigh…
In listing the AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong, and the AOL Board of Directors, I believe Lora @46 has touched upon the reason why AOL would seek to silence an internet site, like The BRAD BLOG, which speaks truth to power.
I’ll cover this by separate posts for each individual.
Per Wikipedia, in addition to AOL, “Armstrong sits on the boards of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Advertising Council, and the Advertising Research Foundation.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (or IAB) is an advertising business organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for the online advertising industry.
The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) is an…industry association for creating, aggregating, synthesizing and sharing the knowledge in the fields of advertising and media…Its stated mission is to improve the practice of advertising, marketing and media research in pursuit of more effective marketing and advertising communications.”
As Noam Chomsky observes, the central focus of “marketing” is deception, which is precisely what the PR industry employs in political campaigns.
Armstrong, as a devotee in corporate PR, has a vested interest in blocking a site which would expose the deception.
Next we have AOL Director Fredric G. Reynolds, who has also served as an executive VP & CFO at CBS, Viacom and as an independent director of Kraft Foods, Inc.
Then there is Alberto Ibargüen, who, in addition to serving on the AOL board, has served on the boards of Pepsico, Council on Foreign Relations, AMR Corp. (American Airlines) and Snag Films.
Wikipedia reports: “The Council has been the subject of debate, as shown in the 1969 film The Capitalist Conspiracy by G. Edward Griffin, the 2006 film by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism and a 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie.”
In addition to serving on the AOL board, Richard L. Dalzell served as the senior VP and Chief Info. Officer of Amazon.com and, before that, as the VP of the Information Systems Division of Wal-Mart.
AOL board member Michael K. Powell (R) is the son of former Bush admin. Sec. of State Colin Powell. Wikipedia reports that as the former chairman of the FCC, Powell’s ““libertarian deregulatory policy coincided with a period of significant consolidation in the communications market…â€
I could continue with the additional names, but I think readers get the idea.
Marzi @ 38:
Thank you. Though you will now — at least if you’re sending them from a non-AOL address to an AOL address.
FWIW, I didn’t mention it as a “badge of honor”. I mentioned it, to the person at AOL corporate (and in the article above), to point out the irony (and/or outrage).
Sheila Bernard said @ 40:
That problem is likely due to the fact that we moved to a different server IP this week. If you hit Shift-Refresh in Firefox, you’ll probably get BradBlog.com just fine. I suspect it was keeping the old IP cached (where the blog won’t be found), instead of going out to look for the new one.
Let me know, of course, if that’s not the case.
Miriam Raftery @ 41 said:
Thanks for the kind words, Miriam. And, of course, I share your concern about how this could be used as a nefarious political tool.
AOL Corporate contacts are at: http://corp.aol.com/about-aol/contact-information
I’ll drop you another note with more details via email.
Miriam Raftery @ 42 said:
I’m a little confused. There are direct permalinks to articles without other unrelated articles on the same page. Example, the specific URL for this article is: https://bradblog.com/?p=8487
If you’re referring to the right sidebar, with links to other featured articles and such, those are on all pages. But just the links to the articles, not the actual articles.
James Ha @ 44 said:
You’ve got it backwards. The prob is sending a link to BradBlog.com in an email mail TO users at AOL from any non-AOL address. Not the other way around as you described it above.
Try it the other way, and then let us kow if you “like aol” because “they don’t mess with [your] mail”.
Louise @ 50 said:
Yup. And that’s the problem. (Among others related to it, like how easy it is to general “substantial complaints from members” against someone or some site you don’t like for any reason.)
Jim @ 53 said:
I don’t mind sending you a private e-mail, Jim. But it’s not a matter of my routing. The problem occurs for anyone who sends an email from outside of AOL to an AOL user, if a link to BradBlog.com is contained in the body of the email.
They are cooperating hand-in-glove with the CIA. Emails that are not going through are actually being read by people who are not AOL employees, but by those in the CIA and Homeland Security. Your beef is with the national security apparatus that owns/controls AOL. You are barking up the wrong tree at AOL. They are merely the front company for the REAL company. You think it’s a coincidence they acquired HuffPo – which made it its mission to ban all discussion of 9/11 or criticism of Israel?
THINK MUCH BIGGER. This is globalist fascism @ work.
Hi Brad!
I don’t know anything helpful re: AOL.
But, I trust your investigative nose. Totally sucks. Oh, and totally sucked that you got targeted a while back.
I’ve been thinking about kicking in some $$ to support your great work…. you know I do that from time to time. So, I just did. Long overdue.
xxoo
MEL
Seems like things changed after hillary clinton said “We are losing the information wars.”
Wonder what they decided to do to win the information wars?
looks like plunger is right. it looks like the tsunami is rolling in and the disaster capitalists are using the wave. if it is any comfort, the teapartiers will get their information ratfudged too. oh wait that happened a long time ago. this is probably the biggest story bradblog has touched.
looks like the think to do is what was suggested earlier. since we all count on you and you repeatedly prove worthy, geuss we are about to find out who has and has not been gelded by the Rockefeller and Rothschild fascists. Russia looks to be a milder version of what we are about to see. They did not have as much resources at their disposal.
Thank you again Brad. We will keep at it with you.
ps please everyone do send more funds into bradblog while we still can. anyone remember the banks refusing to handle checks sent to defense funds for wikileaks and all?
Thanks so much for flagging this crap from AOHell Brad. They really suck and always have, and for sure they work hand-in-glove with NSA and any other police-state agency that rattles their cage.
I enjoy your appearances on The Malloy Program–keep up the good work. This one inspired me to make a contribution as well.
Hay Brad, When are ya gonna shop censoring me here?
The balls in your court now, Chief !
seriously, why would anyone use aol? it takes control of your browser and invades your PC like one of the embryos in Alien.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
… Michael G. said on 4/22/2011 @ 7:33 pm PT…
“Relevant attack? A reddit member, saintbargabar, marked your recent “New Details…” story as: “Blogspam. Downvote and report.”
—-
Update on Michael G’s fine detective work:
S/he has also “Blogspam. Downvote and report.”
THIS ARTICLE of yours! S/he sure has a grudge against you.
Since the whole point of Digg, Reddit etc. is to have people use them to further spread a story it’s obviously personal or politically motivated. S/He’s done that to 3 postings of yours, two about Wisconsin and this one. Srsly, how can a valid, non-sales website get too many Reddit hits or Digg’s? It doesn’t make objective sense.
The ongoing (planned and actual) sabotage of your efforts does suck but one is known by ones enemies, you’re obviously doing a hell of a job to attract the enemies you have. Great job, keep it up!
Meanwhile, in ignored news of epic significance:
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2011/04/23/japan-nuclear-watch-april-23-how-do-you-rebuild-a-cooling-system-inside-a-no-go-zone/
Ernest @ #60 and #61
Thanks for exposing who these corporate thugs are. When we hear news of a small handful of people who basically are part of attempting to control EVERYTHING – that is, all aspects of government and regulation: media, food, healthcare, education, transportation, and on and on….these are those people.
And now they own Huffington Post. Who’s next for a buyout?
Having worked in the POPSTMASTER department at a very large ISP serving 20 million email users, I have some direct experience with this particular form of harrassment.
This is not AOL specifically choosing to censor your fine site Brad.
This is a content filter sitting IN FRONT of AOL’s public facing incoming mail servers. The Content filtering occurs based upon complaints submitted to or through one or more of their recipients email clients or webmail submit button.
Content filtering similar (if not actually) to Cloudmark. About Cloudmark: http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/209856-what-is-cloudmark
Cloudmark assembles a database of content oriented character strings. They then distribute this database to ISP’s and corporate clients. If incoming email contains any content that matches any entry in that database, filtering of that message occurs based upon a set of preconfigured actions.
ISP options for flagged mail are Accept and deliver flagged as SPAM, reject and notify, or discard and do not notify.
Individual users also have the opportunity to make additional choices. But that is beside the point. AOL is choosing to discard and notify any sender who is flagged by their content filter.
What happened here is likely this:
A hostile to BradBlog AOL user got on your mailing list and began hitting the “Report SPAM” button on all message they received from you. It’s possible this person did this on purpose, it’s possible this person enlisted fellow BradBlog hostiles to help do this. It’s also possible someone got on your mailing list by mistake and just started reporting you.
One thing this is NOT….This is NOT INTENTIONAL CENSORSHIP. The system is AUTOMATED.
My experience with this system also says that, If no further violations are received, your mail’s content will age out of the content database and begin delivering, that time frame is usually 3 months.
You need to work (somehow) with AOL postmaster security team as well as try to have AOL user’s that post here work AOL Postmaster from the inside.
I would also recommend going thru your mailing list to locate recent AOL signups and try to match one or more users who signed up a week or so prior to the beginning of the rejection notices.
This is a pain in the ass, but it isn’t censorship in the traditional sense. It’s just the face of a large bureaucracy using automated systems that are subject to external bias from hostile complainers.
Good luck Brad
As pointed out upthread, the AOL Board is comprised of individuals who represent powerful interests – ALL OF WHOM profit by the billions of dollars spent each political cycle. The incestuous relationship between business and politics begins and ends with campaign finance. The greatest threat to the “Fascist Quo” is the elimination of money from the cesspool of politics.
We the people at one time owned the spectrum, that being the airwaves over which we are now brainwashed, at our own expense. Michael Powell was directly in charge of placing your airwaves into private hands, for their control. He is now reaping the payoff from his corporate masters.
Web sites such as this, which make it their mission to reveal the total hijacking of the political process, and the utter fantasy of one-man-one-vote – are to be destroyed.
The solution is the total elimination of money from politics. It is not a requirement that the process of voting come with a price tag attributed to marketing. Setting aside a few public stations to telecast debates among local and national candidates, free of charge, 24/7, solves the problem.
The media companies have the greatest interest in ensuring that the cost of running for political office skyrockets year-over-year. They also control the message – in a medium formerly known as “news.”
FOLLOW THE MONEY. They are reigning in control over the Internet. They did so at Firedog Lake, Huffpo and countless other sites where free speech on certain topics is no longer welcome.
If you are using AOL over AT&T lines, you might as well be emailing the CIA directly – because you ARE.
Plunger, read what I wrote. This was NOT AOL corporate that did this.
I guarantee that. I stake my 30 years of IT experience on it.
Dan-In-PA:
“Nothing to see here, move along?”
Your very thorough explanation leaves out the very obvious opportunity for abuse of such a system, whether by an individual, a group with opposing views, a corporation, or even a government, who can employ those very tools to accomplish this outcome.
Your explanation, while detailed, explains little. If it is possible that such a system can be abused by the fascist oligarchs to silence Brad, why not say so?
You have no way of guaranteeing anything.
Positioning yourself as THE expert, and discounting every other possibility is precisely what the CIA would be here doing in this thread right about now.
My first post does address the opportunity systems like this leave open for an individual or group of hostile individuals to abuse it.
I state what I state from direct professional experience in using Cloudmark and 30 years of direct IT and network security experience.
I’m not mad that you might try to conflate me as some kind of CIA or corporate plant. After all, you know nothing about me.
But Brad does. And I’ll leave it at that.
You did not leave open the possibility that AOL itself could be the culprit, abusing the very system that you so eloquently described. You virtually guaranteed that it was not AOL’s doing. In so doing, you invite precisely the response I wrote – when you make blanket-guarantees without any basis whatsoever. Who does that?
To ignore their buyout of a primary liberal web site, combined with the political/corporate slant of their Board, disqualifies you as a guarantor of anything.
You may be a fine fellow, but don’t pretend to guarantee what has actually occurred. You don’t know. I’m not a coincidence theorist where media is concerned.
http://www.plungerspeaks.blogspot.com/
When you look for conspiracies everywhere, you miss the reality in front of your nose.
You are free to rail against the corporate ownership of AOL all you like. But I’m pretty damned certain the Alphabet Leadership of AOL doesn’t know how to spell Cloudmark, let alone how it works or that it even exists. And while your evil corporate conspiracy theory satisfies the innate need for a well defined boogieman, there is no historical basis for this in the real world.
But if you really want this corrected then you must work with the Postmaster.
Even if the CEO called all his conservative buddies and told them to complain about email from Bradblog, you still need to work with the Postmaster.
Dan in Pa has answered nothing. How aol or any other corporation chooses to block things in order to cloud things as much as possible, is not the issue. i.e. Aol, of course, can have one of their employees hit the complaint button multiple times and keep it “in house.” I don’t care if “Dan” has 30 years of experience. I consider Dan in Pa a troll or someone that is missing the forest for the trees…….. and a distraction from this very serious issue. I think, Brad, that the time is ripe for investigating what right wing think tanks, Citizens United…etc., have in their game plan under the heading of: Disruption of information flow in the enemies cyber space. This is a war after all. Do you think the right wing corporations haven’t explored every avenue with which to weaken the Democratic or liberal vision for this country? EVERYTHING. I submit that their computer people are very likely researching how to hack, setting up systems to paying trolls to enter discussions online and attempt to keep a momentum/consensus from building on the left. Fiddling with links etc.? In addition to buying up the main stream media and as the New York Times opinion page said today, “Put a for sale sign on everything they can nail one to” ( Ala Benton Harbor) they have enough money to hire enough people to find out how best to win their war against the left and the middle class. It’s time to get organized folks. It’s time to investigage the right wing’s war plan…which in this case of aol blocking Brad.
PS. Regarding my comments above, I am not saying that I know the right is doing any of what I am writing about. However, to call it a conspiracy theory is to ignore the possibility that there really is something going on. My point is that we need to know, definitively, one way or the other. I hope Brad encourages other blogs and news outlets to do a story on his aol debacle. Why? Because I think we might find out that aol is not the only one….and more.
When you hit the “report spam” button on your email client or in webamil, that report goes to Cloudmark.
AOL pays Cloudmark to do this, as do thousands of other ISP’s.
http://www.cloudmark.com/en/article/cloudmark-emerges-as-leading-force-in-anti-spam-market-industry-first-technologies-produce-record-growth-and-major-milestones-in-2003
I’m not a troll, I’m not a corporate shill, I have actually donated to BradBlog and support his work emphatically.
Just because you don’t like or don’t understand what an individual who has dealt with this exact situation professionally in the past has to say, it doesn’t justify labelling them as a troll.
I am positive that AOL is not the only one. The reason that I say this is..
I live in very rural upper state ME, close to the Canadian border. We were chosen to have a huge wind farm sited practically in my back yard. Because the wind farm folks and state govt lied so much..I researched the particular wind farm sited near me. ..and all of them.
Would write comments in online newspapers all over the country through windaction.org. They put up newspaper articles. Eventually I could not even register on any of them. It would take several hours for me to receive emails from people I talked to and could verify that they were sending them.
This company , First Wind, had backing from D E Shaw Group. They owned 42%. (Greg Palast has reported on their nastiness) Larry Summers was a manager. The wind farm near me stated in their SEC report that they did not have to produce power to make money…that if they sold to a foreign country, Canada in this case, their power purchasing agreements did not require them to produce power.Matt Taiibi says that cap and trade is the next bubble..only the middle man would be eliminated…the money would go straight to Wall Street. New England has Cap and Trade.It is the selling of renewable credits that makes the money.
So, because of the unusual circumstances with me, I know for a fact that all emails are messed with. Got to thinking, just a hypothesis, there is some way to fiddle with emails from a central location. All newspapers couldn’t have my email address blocked.There were a lot of other odd things, but I have hijacked this thread enough. Sorry.
I think AOL is particularly suspicious because they ripped off so many people who tried to stop their accounts and were not allowed to. This happened all over the country and with me also.
When I read that AOL had their HQ in Langley , Va. , I believed it. Because they are so nasty in their business dealings. Greedy and break the law with impunity. That is a big “tell”.
Just like the wind farm corporation , First Wind, breaks the law with impunity. First Wind was investigated by Andrew Cuomo when he was the NY AG. They are a subsidiary of the company trying to build off shore wind farms in Nantucket Sound and RI. Break the law all the time and nobody does anything to them. Just like the banksters.
brad @66 said:
“You’ve got it backwards. The prob is sending a link to BradBlog.com in an email mail TO users at AOL from any non-AOL address. Not the other way around as you described it above.
Try it the other way, and then let us kow if you “like aol” because “they don’t mess with [your] mail”.”
i just said @44 that i sent a link to bradblog.com from yahoo, earthlink & msn to aol, and they all worked just fine.
yes i still like aol and no, they have not been censoring my email. i don’t know why you and all these others are having this problem.
Actually, when I look for conspiracies, I typically find them. The threshold to qualify as an actual “conspiracy” is simply not that high. It is only due to the continuous brainwashing by actual conspirators that the public has come to ridicule anyone who has a theory about a conspiracy – as a nut job.
That’s the way brainwashing actually works – compelling society at large to shun the truth tellers as “the problem.”
Assuming A-Ho-el isn’t actively in league with the plutes to stifle dissent, you gotta wonder how many brainwashed breitbart/o’queef tools are out there manipulating “complaint”-type mechanisms on various web sites in a campaign to stifle opposing viewpoints (I.E. facts and truth).
As of the time of the message, AOL is still rejecting emails with a link to bradblog.com.
Whether this blocking is deliberate or not, AOL must be faulted for not having a mechanism in place to address this kind of issue immediately. This shows how easily any “objectionable” website can be silenced by any ISP.
I have alerted both my Senators to this issue, as well as filed a complaint with the FCC. Is there a PR or legal professional out there that could help Brad apply pressure and get to the bottom of this?
I searched at Digg for BradBlog stories, and it seems some spammer is using “Bradblogging” as a website.
I’m not defending AOL, just saying someone may have put a lot of effort into causing you problems besides downgrading your posts.
Mine was blocked. Tried sending bradblog.com from gmail account to aol account. Here’s the message I got:
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 554 554 5.2.1 : (HVU:B2) http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/421hvub2.html (state 18).
Start with the CIA as primary – then work your way backward to AOL, and then on to hacks like Breitbart.
Always assume the CIA and/or Airforce Cybersecurity are having their way. The truthtellers are the enemy of THE AGENDA.
When agencies operate above the law – on behalf of the Rothschild/Rockefeller NWO, what lengths won’t they go to? Who would stop them? Virtually nothing they can do is punishable under the law.
It seems easy for the thugs behind the US Chambers of Commerce attacks on you to get you blocked. Pay one of their phony user fronts to file multiple complaints – instant censorship.
I would file a legal complaint and demand copies of the users emails that censored you – if there is crime there, a file of coverup will start and the smoke will be seen.
For what it’s worth, I just created an aol e-mail site and was able to send e-mail to it from my gmail account containing a link to bradblog.com .
I sent several such e-mails and all of them went through.
The first e-mail was initially identified as spam but, after I added my gmail addr to the contacts in my aol e-mail, e-mail containing bradblog.com landed in my inbox and I could follow the link to bradblog.com
brad @66
i just sent a link to your site from a hotmail & a gmail account to my aol account with no problem. this is in addition to sending a link to your site from yahoo, earthlink & msn to aol, also with no problem. again, i don’t understand why many others including yourself are having a problem, but i am not.
i still like aol and they still have an excellent radio service.
Dan-in-PA @79 wrote:
Say what?
If the system is designed to automatically block emails based on “external bias from hostile complainers,” the system is designed to permit “hostile complainers” to censor whatever it is they do not want you to see.
If the “hostile complainers” are billionaire-financed and organized, right-wing trolls, then the end result is the “automated system,”be it Cloudmark, or any other, provides a tool for censorship.
Ya dig?
Wonder if Hillary Clinton still thinks we are losing the information wars.
Where is Anonymous when you need them?
dan in pa says,this is simplely an unintended result of an innnocent action….ernest correctly points out it is the probably the exact result that was intended from a planned system(kinda like a red shift when u count votes with an invisible signal)
brad points out there is a good chance it is OUR tax dollars “they” are using to censure our news
dan in pa’s suggestion to look at ur new email alert subscribers seems like a good one,it is at least a place to start
congrats at being singled out brad,it means you are being effective
This is how corpo-fascism rolls. The revolving door between corporate America – government – media – lobby groups and how the walls between them are obfuscated; coupled with their control of the security forces of the USA makes for a corporate coup d’état. The day that the USA allowed the FED to control their money supply was the day that this process began. It happened slowly but surely. Now that they have us under control they are going to steal all of our wealth and turn us into slaves. Even with everything that goes on, on a daily basis, the majority of people still believe that the system is benign and there for them.
btw as this house of cards collapses and the global economy continues to disintegrate into madness people need to take care of their wealth, health, safety, food, and shelter. Get out of fiat paper and get into metals, stock up on non-perishable food, get equipment to live off the grid, and prepare a plan to escape the madness. Collapse is at hand.
Typical AOL bullshit, but seriously though, who the F still uses AOL emails? It’s 2011, it’s time to actually join the internet now.
Dan-in-PA @ 79:
One distinction between what is going on, and the scenario you describe, is that it’s not a particular sender who is being blocked. I am well used to that being triggered by AOL’s stupid automated over-reaction to a few members use of the “Mark as Spam” button in reply to emails that they are too lazy to get of correctly, or that they may use for nefarious purposes.
You could be correct in your assertion that you don’t believe there is some sort of political conspiracy here. We do not have evidence enough to know either way, though we know, as Ernie alludes above, that if we take AOL at their word that the block to ALL email SENT BY ANYBODY which includes a link to BradBlog.com is caused by “substantial complaints from AOL members”, that the function could easily be triggered nefariously, whether it was done in this case or not.
That makes it stupid and dangerous. Especially as users have no way to know about it (as they do with mail that ends up in their Spam Folder).
That AOL makes it, literally, impossible to work with their Postmaster (they will give no phone numbers to them, and complaints via their Postmaster web form does not work as its promised to), makes it all the more maddening, obnoxious, and dangerous in it’s potential use as a political weapon.
TO EVERYONE ELSE
Dan-in-Pa is a long-time BRAD BLOG reader and commenter and is NOT a “troll” nor working for the CIA, or anything of the kind.
Please mind our few simple rules for posting comments here in regard to personal attacks on others. If you dispute Dan’s theories, feel free to do so respectfully, but without unsubstantiated personal attacks.
Thank you!
James Ha said @ 92:
And then repeated the claim @ 101:
James, I appreciate that you believe AOL is not blocking links to you. I can’t speak for the message that you sent to yourself, and if you included a LINK to BradBlog.com in it or not (perhaps you used only Text email, rather than HTML and, for some reason that doesn’t trigger the block?), but I can assure you, AOL IS “MESSING WITH [YOUR] EMAIL”.
That is, unless you can let me know what was in the text of the email I just sent (from a non-AOL and non-BradBlog.com) address to the address you use with your comments here.
That email, as expected, immediately bounced back to me. But feel free to let me know what it said, since you are convinced that “AOL doesn’t mess with” your email. It should be in your AOL Inbox now. (But it won’t be.)
I have no way of evaluating the comment that I link below, as I know nada about the ins and outs of AOL.
I offer it simply FWIW.
I’ll try to get the linky right: not sure it will be clickable, cause I’ve forgotten most of the HTML I learned when I had an out of body experience as a kitty blogger.
http://correntewire.com/aol_censors_bradblog#comment-193263
Brad, I once discovered that AOL was censoring a link to a provision in the US Constitution at the Cornell Law site. I tested this systematically by several times sending e-mail with the link and with a link that was substantially the same, but missing one character.
I raised this issue at very high levels in the organization, actually receiving a letter from an executive assistant to the head of AOL Time Warner. For a while, I didn’t experience the problem. And then it came back.
So, yes. AOL is undoubtedly scanning or even reading e-mail, and not for the purpose of excluding spam.
You leads a blog with an extremely high level of integrity and ethics in reporting important living stories affecting Americans. Your reporting always posts updates and corrections. It is well documented that Bradblog stories often contain information that is curiously overlooked or missing from those that are written in the US corporate mass media machine if such stories are reported at all. Misleading propaganda is the meat and potatoes of serving up the corporate version of reality.
The people who have written for Bradblog in addition to yourself on the subject of the gaming US elections is intellectual, comprehensive, and often sourced by expert opinion. Bradblog has often gone go to great lengths to show no allegiance to any political party. The Green news is a breath of fresh air.
Like few other information blogs found in cyberspace, you all are a living, breathing wrench in the corporate takeover of America AND their propaganda machine of control of the masses. Stay true to yourself and mighty forces will come to your aid.
@Ernest A. Canning
” AOL is infested with petty little conservative trolls who are constantly sending TOS reports in to AOL trying to get non-conservatives booted from the AOL domain. It’s just how they roll. Cowards, and chickenshits, the lot of them.”
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
… Ernest A. Canning said on 4/22/2011 @ 9:59 pm PT…
AOL is the O.G. Trollsville. That’s why reading the comments section from any AOL article is such a sick experience that it makes any reasonable reader feeling the need for a brain shower.
Done w/ that.
In fact, I’m gonna forward all my AOL mail to Gmail & close my AOL account once & for all. Rarely use it anyway…e-mails strangely take a suspiciously long time to show up there, if at all.
There’s a difference between content filtering and anti-spam blocking.
This is content filtering. And yes Ernest, I firmly ascribe to the probability that an individual or group of individuals hostile to election integrity would and could influence these filters artificially.
But that would be different from AOL specifically setting out, as policy, to censor email from Bradblog.
And that’s an important distinction.
While it is a distinction, it is a distinction without a difference. You are the only one who virtually guaranteed that AOL was not using its own systems to create the problems Brad is experiencing, staking your entire reputation on it – with virtually no basis.
This is not a personal attack, merely an observation, and a fact. Any “expert” making such a sweeping and unprovable declaration in any message thread anywhere is setting himself up to be challenged.
Jus sayin’
AOL is a group (whose corporate self-interest makes it likely to be) hostile to election integrity reporting AND truthful reporting on the safety of nuclear energy, among other topics. It only takes one individual employee inside AOL with the means, motive and opportunity to accomplish this result.
No “policy” is required. That’s a red herring.
OK Here’s a few comments:
* EVERYONE should use a URL shortener. For the most part, we’ve already lost the privacy battle (but not the war) for now. We gladly post the most intimate details of our lives on places like Facebook.
* We all -should- be using encryption instead. That’s the only way to keep any sort of privacy. Otherwise, your emails are easily readable and easily manipulated by corporate interests.
* I never (well, almost) click on any link in an email and neither should you. Number one way to get infected. You should be using a program like sandboxie as well.
* AOL??! Really? They still have customers?
#112
Wow. You said it all. Offering corrections is an important aspect of this blog. Along with requiring and maintaining civil discourse. High standards.
Kudos to Brad.
Hear from a friend that the entire website is blocked for aol users
You just joined the club, Brad. AOL = CFR
http://www.ronpaulwarroom.com/?p=6853
The truth is their greatest enemy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB_dD2BsZro
Hotmail is doing the same thing with anything that is affiliated with Democracy or President Obama or Organizing for America …
I called and lodged a complaint, for whatever that is worth. I objected to AOL presuming to filter/block messages to me without notifying me.
It appears that complaints like that made by Paula Stahmer @122 do have an impact, for, as Brad reports in his update, a “member of AOL’s ‘Executive Help’ team” informed him “the block on BradBlog.com has now been removed.”
One suspects that AOL’s one-week delayed change in its blocking of this site came because Brad took the time to compose this article and the word spread until AOL users received knowledge that their sources of information were being censored.
But how many other sites have been blocked without users’ knowledge or consent?
As James Madison so aptly observed:
This is corporately systemic – and the executives know it.
http://www.christianmediadaily.com/index.php?page=/aolcensor
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2005/051005timewarnercensors.htm
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200604/msg00083.html
http://www.freepress.net/news/14960
messing with the information system gets easier every minute. the distinction we are all coming to terms with now is that messing with our information on an individual basis is getting easier too. and that gets personal fast.
this is what was possible years ago. we know it was possible because is was routinely done. and still is. albeit faster and more comprehensively now.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1118-10.htm
rendon group has been at it awhile with much less technical means at their disposal than they have now. as the tools improve, so does their cashflow, as well as the cash flow of their sugardaddy – cia.
it is ironic that conspiracy theorizing has been propagandized into a negative connotation. especially in light of so many conspiracies turning out to be spot on accurate. anyone else old enough to remember the days when doubting the single bullet theory brought public ridicule?
a more useful angle to pursue might be along the lines of right wing plutocrats paying rooms full of 40 to 100 geeks fresh out of college to purge the net in real time faster than we can write. they have done it on palin’s facebook and twitter page many times this year already. they are already setting to purge wiki. i think tom hartmann touched on it a few times. will try to dig related articles on it asap. anyone else got any help?
probably as important as any voter integrity issues. it goes to our ability to have any information beyond the lies spread so thick.
thank you again plunger, brad, ernest and all. level heads hit targets (and acquire them) much more effectively.
What I claimed, Plunger #115, was that AOL, the Corporation, did not specifically set out to Censor BRADBLOG.
I claimed that 1 or more hostile AOL USERS set out to take advantage of a well known and very popular email content filtering system in order to get BRADBLOG placed in the filtered list by submitting complaints about the BRADBLOG email they signed up to receive.
Having worked several years in the email postmaster department at a very large ISP that uses Cloudmark content filtering, I have seen this exact scenario play out.
Therefor, yes, I will stake my professional 3 decades long IT employment reputation on this being the actual scenario and I state with full confidence that the AOL Executive committee likely had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Step away from the conspiracy theories. This is simple demographics.
Who uses AOL today? Techno-dinosaurs, people who didn’t know much about computers, used AOL to get online, and still are so unfamiliar with the technology that they feel safe sticking with AOL.
And guess what: they tend to be old.
And guess what: those old people, who aren’t good with computers, they tend to be conservative. When they get a link to one of those durn librel sites (probably from that dope smoking nephew of theirs) they don’t just delete it, they click on spam. Hee hee, that’ll show those hippies.
And lo and behold, enough of those clicks, the ISP’s automated systems says, “Gee, guess its spam, block it”
Really, is it so hard to put that together? Corporations only engage in conspiracies when they’re profitable, not to harass some moderately popular little left wing blog.
El Ronbo –
Thank you for your entertaining speculation. However, if facts are your thing, you’ll be disappointed to know the scenario you present above is based on none.
The “spam” button you refer to in AOL email (used, as you aver, by “conservatives”) marks a SENDER as “spam”, not the CONTENT of the email.
It was the CONTENT, not the sender of these emails, which was being censored by AOL. Hitting the “spam” button had nothing to do with it.
So why was any content that included any link to BradBlog.com censored from reaching any AOL user? I’m still trying to find out. But it has nothing to do with the scenario you creatively imagined above. Whatever caused this nefarious and outrageous censorship could as easily have been directed at a so-called “conservative”, like, say, El Rushbo’s RushLimbaugh.com or any of your other favorite rightwing websites.
If your not outraged and/or concerned about this, you’re not paying attention…or simply don’t care about authoritarian censorship and the fight to ensure Constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
Brad, sorry to trouble you again with my homepage problem. I tried as you suggested to hit shift refresh, but I still get this message when I log on:
Not Found
The requested URL /ap_index was not found on this server.
Apache/2.2.14 (Fedora) Server at bradblog.com Port 80
and when I hit shift refresh I get “404 not found.”
Just in case others are having this problem too… I miss my Bradblog homepage and want to restore it. In the meantime, I can still get to bradblog through google.
I just both sent an email with said link to an aol account and back from the same aol account and everything went fine. This is what passes for Internet “journalism” these days and it’s sad. It isn’t that I don’t agree with the general intent of this website. It’s that it’s done in a way that simply stirs up “controversy” without really getting down to solid nitty gritty facts. Count how many times this blog uses unnamed sources. It’s just horrible.
John @ 130 said:
Know what’s even sadder? You are what passes for an “Internet reader” these days. Did you miss the UPDATES at both top and bottom of the story explaining that after a full week, dozens of calls and emails I was finally able to get the “Executive Escalation Team” to remove BradBlog.com from their censor filter?
I guess so.
Nice try. But go ahead and count. It shouldn’t take long, since we almost NEVER use unnamed sources.
Keep up the bad work, “John”!
It isn’t that I don’t agree with the general intent of this website. It’s that it’s done in a way that simply stirs up “controversy” without really getting down to solid nitty gritty facts. Count how many times this blog uses unnamed sources. It’s just horrible.
I wonder if the “problem” would have been fixed had there been a republican administration. Brad, you should let some congress people or even the white house know about this.