Cyfswatch, a blog in New Zealand that gave voice to people who had difficult experiences with Children Youth and Family Services has been taken down by Google.
The name and shame blog gained notoriety quickly when media was told not to link to it last month by the head of the department, and the story about the blog went international. Almost immediately social workers issued a press release and the blog couldn’t keep up with entries (emailed in and then posted anonymously).
When Ministry of Social Development CEO Peter Hughes Peter Hughes promised his department would go after cyfswatch 24/7 to get it offline, Google (which hosted the blog) was contacted. Their response at that time was more measured. The Age:
In January the ministry called in police amid fears the site was putting some of its staff at risk and a complaint was made to Google.
Following the complaint the internet company censored postings on the site, but allowed the blog, which was created on Google’s blogging platform, to continue operating.
The situation changed last week when a death threat toward Green MP Sue Bradford was put up.
One posting said Bradford was a “worthy candidate for NZ’s first political assassination” and another post called on her home address to be published on the site.
Google spokeswoman Victoria Grand said the weblog was taken down after a complaint from the Ministry of Social Development.
She said it was not just the death threat that prompted the site shutdown, but that Google believed it was repeat violation of site rules.
“In our terms of service we reserve the right to shut down blogs that have repeat violations, and here we had a repeat violation issue,” Grand said.
“We really try to remove as little content as possible. We don’t want to be a mediator of content and we believe blogs are a platform for free expression and we do everything we can to work with bloggers to keep the content up,” she said.
Grand said Google would be happy to have the authors of the site post a new blog, as long as it did not again break the site’s terms of service.
Bradford told AAP she was glad Google had removed the site.
“I think it would be fantastic if Google have taken it down,” she said.
She said social workers who feared for their lives had contacted her after the blog named them.
Bob McCoskrie from the conservative Family First pressure group said he was uncomfortable the blog had named individual workers, but stopped short of saying the site should be censored.
“I think there is a major problem if Google are going to start making moral judgments about what should be on websites. There is plenty of more objectionable stuff, like child pornography they should be targeting,” he said.
The owners of the blog had been clear they were aware they would be taken offline, and had to know posting a death threat was self-defeating. cyfswatch is now hosted on another platform and the death threat has been removed. There are other online avenues for people to vent such as PANIC - Parents Against Negative Intervention by CYFS.
via: The Malaysian
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I was sympathetic until I read the term “death threat.”
What were they thinking? Or is that the problem — they weren’t?
what were they thinking? … that’s not an easy question for the rest of us to answer from the comfort of our cushy lives, warm in our rooms, a fridge full of food and loved ones all around us. What were they thinking? I think the painter Paul Gauguin put it most clearly with his famous statement, “Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
I may have more background in all this than most people reading about the Google action, and I do endorse the Google action because they did not ban the authors, they only removed the site and after repeated warnings. The authors are still free to cool-down and try again. Nonetheless I can sympathize and I can easily imagine how they never meant any real harm to the object of their frustration, they were simply savouring the feeling of a wholey imagined victory.
Because it is frustrating. Most people live their lives thinking government is benign, that it is their friend, and largely, it is. But that does not preclude how, when you do happen to find yourself in the path of your own government, you will see how it shows no mercy, how it unflinchingly tramples and destroys without the least sign of humanity, and that is just as true in the Family Services departments as it is in the Military or the Tax Collector’s Office. Get in their way, and you will understand how that image of Tiennaman is only just more blantant and direct than what you have at home.
And may you never live to experience that feeling.
I think Google responded appropriately - the blog was not banned, they are welcome to return when they don’t break the law.
And I have empathy for the politican who received the threat - having been there myself it is profoundly frightening.
I also have great sympathy for those writing into cyfswatch, they have come up against forces that are beyond them and are at their wit’s end. These are not lives with happy endings.
A death threat is not acceptable, and I don’t know why the blog owners weren’t on top of it, or made the decisions they did. At least now it is out in the open and if law enforcement needs to deal with those involved, they can.
While the blog owner is anonymous to us, he/she/they aren’t to the hosts and ISP. While threats are wrong, the overall premise of the blog isn’t. If writing in gives people an opportunity to warn others, vent, find ways to cope (beyond revenge) then it serves it’s purpose.
Government isn’t benign, any one of us can be caught in the endless loop, where a department rises to the height of it’s incompetency. It is not an either/or situation, but when your children are involved, even caring people can be perceived as being part of an impossible situation.