We're a bit damn ticked off here at SocialMediaToday because we were mistakenly accused by Google of distributing malware. We distribute tons of good content and information, sure, but not malware. In fact, it was simply our used of a popular ad server that Google detected and threw up a blocking page saying Danger: Malware Ahead and including this lovely graphic. Users of Chrome and Firefox only, for some reason, were targeted.
No, there would be no malware ahead and Google should not be making such assumptions when there's the possibility that a perfectly legitimate suite of websites has fallen victim to software discrimination.
We're not the only site injured by this: in fact there are many other victims who, like us, use the same ad server.
Because we have little recourse, this is our earnest effort to make things right with the thousands of visitors who may now be convinced that we are carriers of some awful digital plague.
Hopefully this reaches some conscious person at Google who would at least tone down the scary rhetoric in their blockage page and provide for the possibility that the sites accused may simply be having technical problems.
Maybe that burgler is actually Google sneaking away with our pageviews.
This is far from saying that Google is evil, at least in this context. But maybe they need to be more considerate of their minions while trying to be the big cop.
All we can hope at this point is that our service is available again and we can win back the trust lost by way of this blacklisting action. This story is not over, not by a long shot. This is about proper governance on the Web.