If you look at TMV today, you won’t see photos and graphics. There is work being done on the site after The Moderate Voice faced two major, intensive denial of service (DOS) attacks yesterday, which basically froze the site: writers got white screens on their dashboards, some got question marks inserted in their posts, and photos and graphics could not be inserted.
This is NOT the first time TMV has been attacked with some folks trying to bring the site down and co-bloggers and some other in the blogging community may remember the other instances. Each instance ended in TMV working to shore up security. One attack was so major that we had a fundraiser and totally redesigned the whole site.
In a way, it’s kind of flattering:
The Moderate Voice is NOT a big blog or website.
It has no big corporate sponsor.
It has no political group backing it.
It has not received a huge donation from anyone, foundation or group, but has received generous donations from individuals over the years. And very helpful smaller ones. One reader even set up a $10 a month recurring PayPal donation.
It is not swamped with tons of lucrative ads.
It runs a variety of opinions and cartoons, so much so that some readers on the left and right (and middle) say they’ll never visit it again because such and such’s post or column or cartoon was run. I always tell them: a differing view doesn’t cause brain cancer and if you don’t like a post or cartoon, stop reading it.
And the site does not endorse candidates, although each writer has the freedom to express their views and preferences.
We know the country of origin of this latest attack, but not the precise motive or instigator.
But the fact is that coincidentally or not all the hacking and DOS problems have always come the year before or during a Presidential election. That’s all we know. The timing has become predictable.
So we don’t know exactly why some folks want to shut the site down or who they are, but some folks apparently consider TMV some kind of threat.
But we’ll keep posting despite the frustrations and the expense to a site that recently had to do a fundraiser to cover costs for a different issue.
Because at least we now know another fact:
We know we are being read.
UPDATE: 9/09/15: TMV still is unable to post photos, graphics and political cartoons through the actual site. Several other functions are damaged due to the attacks. If we’ve been temporarily halted from posting the photos, graphics and biting political cartoons, then that only means we redouble our effort to provide post and news story content. Major work has begun on tackling the fixes.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.