I have been running an investigative forum for the past 15 years and have noticed that Google has slowly been removing all mention of the case on the internet.

I am concerned that Google may request that my forum is taken down. Google has already removed some of my blogs without any warning.

Can Forumotion reassure me that my forum will remain intact? Or is the future of my forum also in the hands of Google?

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/

No, forumotion cannot guarantee that your content will not be deleted. Furthermore, if forumotion receives a duly substantiated complaint about the content of your forum, it is obliged to eliminate the content requested, for example copyrighted content, texts, images, videos, etc. ...It is more normal that content has been removed from your forum because it has violated some of the community rules https://www.forumotion.com/terms-of-service.
What Google does is remove the reported content from search engines, but not from your forum.

Hello,

I'm not sure if Google is intentionally removing content from your forum. Generally when Google does this, it is a specific request from a person (disclosure of personal data for example).

In your case, many pages are referenced in Google. Perhaps the content in question is old and not updated and Google no longer references it as well as before.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fjillhavern.forumotion.net

Having read my opening post, I don't know what I was thinking of with the thread title because that's not what I meant at all. Google in NOT censorsing the work on my forum - it is cleansing the Google search engine of the people we discuss on my forum. For instance, old photos and news articles are no longer available on Google. That's not the case with other search engines, only Google.

The Godfather wrote:I'm not sure if Google is intentionally removing content from your forum. Generally when Google does this, it is a specific request from a person (disclosure of personal data for example).

Yes, I believe this ^^^ to be the case.

But, as I said, in my opening post...a couple of my Blogger blogs were deleted without any warning to me - one day they were there, the next they weren't. Blogger is obviously owned by Google, so they possibly received a complaint under Data Protection - but instead of telling me about it, and asking me to remove something, they just deleted the whole thing in its entirety.

I'm not too bothered about that, in itself, as they're only blogs but I am concerned that the same fate could happen to my forum because that contains the work of more than 11,000 members over the course of 15 years.

This is why I came here to ask if Google could just take it upon themselves to delete my forum in the same way as it deleted my blogs? I wouldn't have thought so as the forum is owned by Forumotion and that Google would have to put in a complaint in the first instance.

But I would like clarification nonetheless.



eta: actually the opening was ok, just the thread title was misleading. 

Unless it is a major violation of the Terms of Service, the Forumotion ligation team will give you time to remove anything that needs to be removed.  If you do not then yes, your forum could be ban.

Google only really index your forum.  They are not looking for complaints.  They only respond to complaints that they receive.

If Blogger is owned by Google they can remove anything without warning if they want.   Similar to any site on the Internet.

SLGray wrote:Unless it is a major violation of the Terms of Service, the Forumotion ligation team will give you time to remove anything that needs to be removed.  If you do not then yes, your forum could be ban.

Yes, that's the answer I was hoping for - advanced warning, rather than sudden removal without notice.

We have only ever published info that was already on the internet...but now that Google is cleansing the internet of (mainly old) information (Data Protection?), I was concerned that it may now leave me open to litigation, even though that same information is still available on other search engines for the time being...if you see what I mean.

There was nothing on my now deleted blogs that wasn't already on the internet, which is why it alarmed me for the fate of my forum.

It seems unfair that info can be published on the internet, then removed, then legal action can be taken against you for something that was already online for many years.

We always provide links for the info we post, but once that info is removed then, obviously, the links no longer work...although could still be available on something like the Wayback Machine.

Something on the Internet does not mean it legal or correct.

Indeed...that's exactly right.  
My forum is an investigative forum with members that include retired police officers, lawyers, private investigators, etc as can be seen by the forum banner that Skouliki kindly makes, and regularly updates, for me. Our aim is to get a 'politically archived' controversial case reopened...and we believe we're getting very close to making that happen.


The 'Official story' is that Madeleine McCann was abducted. 
It has been proven that she wasn't, and that her parents know that she died and they hid her body, and that there is a cover-up in progress.
It is the 'incriminating info' that search engines are removing, Google in particular, presumably on orders from the authorities.
And this is why I'm concerned that all our research over the past 15 years could be 'whooshed' into oblivion at the press of a button by someone (British government) who doesn't want the case solved unless it's with a fake conviction of an innocent German 'patsy' who has already been lined up to take the fall.
If the forum were to be deleted, would it be possible for forumotion to retrieve it from their database? Or would it be lost forever?

Forumotion will not delete the information from your forum, unless you receive a complaint for violating the platform's agreements. So don't worry, if you receive a notice you will see it in your administration panel when you enter it, also in red so that you You see it well, indicating if you have something to delete from the forum and it gives you a clock of days for you to do it, if you do it there is no problem. When the days of the clock end, the bot goes through your forum again. If you You have solved it, the message is removed from your panel and if you don't, then they can delete the forum.
You should also be aware of this reported abuse section of your forum:


Ali is where people send their complaints about your content, some are just to annoy, and others you should see what it is about, because it could be for real legal reasons, and you should try to resolve them as soon as possible. If a Forum It receives a lot of abuse, so Forumotion does try to see what is happening

Thank you all for your help