Saturday, March 17, 2012

Blogger now redirects all blogs to state adresses and half the gadgets don't work

You may have noticed that all Blogger blogs you're visiting have now the local state address of the jurisdiction you are under, so if for example you're in Sweden, this blog should show up as:

forwhatwearetheywillbe.blogspot.com.se 

instead of the proper address which is

forwhatwearetheywillbe.blogspot.com

This is a big problem for links and stuff and it is already showing up in many gadgets that do not work properly anymore, for example the followers' window on the right or even something as simple as the quick edit button under each post because, even if I am the author, I can only watch my blog and you blog and every Blogger blog as:

<name>.blogspot.com.es 

and not anymore under the universal

<name>.blogspot.com

Besides of the technical issues, which I imagine that they will work out eventually, the fact of having an adress ending with the locator of the state that is invading my country doesn't please me at all. 

But most worrisome is why is Blogger changing this:

Q: Why is this happening?
A: We are doing this to provide more support for managing content locally. If we receive a removal request that violates local law, that content may no longer be available to readers on local domains where those laws apply. This update is in line with our approach to free expression and controversial content, which hasn’t changed.

In other words: bending to the possible censorship demands from the states.

I just discovered this tonight so I will have to sleep over it but I think this means that I will be migrating to Wordpress or some other resource. 

After an arbitrary, never explained total closure of my Google account not long ago, which was eventually solved by ringing up from a borrowed mobile phone (can't Google understand that I do not have a damn cell phone?) but with extremely bad robotic attention in any case, I became concerned about my dependency on a single source, Google, for much of my Internet life (mostly mail and blogging but that's a lot). 

It's always bad when you are too dependent on a single resource: that's why species go extinct and civilizations collapse: lack of diversity, lack of options. So when Google+ came I decided to stay away less that all my Google account could be scrapped overnight without any explanation. 

So right now I'm considering seriously a migration before I have to repent of my laziness. 

Anyhow, in the meanwhile, please take notice of this trick:

Q. Can users outside of the United States still access the service’s .com domains?
A. Yes, we allow anyone to view the .com version of a Blogger blog by typing: http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr – which always goes to the .com version of the blog. The “no country redirect” (ncr) will temporarily prevent Blogger from redirecting readers to the local version of the blog.

Whatever they say, you may want to do it as user as well, specially if you love your quick edit buttons.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please, be reasonably respectful when making comments. I do not tolerate in particular sexism, racism nor homophobia. The author reserves the right to delete any abusive comment.

Comment moderation before publishing is... ON