I was clicking around today and I found this entry in Wikipedia – the music video for “Gentleman”, the latest single by PSY, has set a world record with over 38 million single-day page views? Really? Who is this guy?
Artist: Psy
Tune: Gentleman
Okay. If you’re going to tell me that this is really, really popular, I’ll believe you, but… We’ve heard that song, we’ve heard this beat, we’ve heard… This is nothing but disco. The late 1970s have returned.
I read about this the other day and got sick to my stomach. This is the kind of crap that some people think is funny? Or maybe it was a deliberate attempt to wipe out several liberal blogs all at once. If the heat is too hot, burn down the kitchen? That seems to the philosophy of some hackers. Let’s fight back.
From DailyKos (I just sent some money.):
You know how some politicians are fond of saying “you can’t solve a problem by just throwing money at it.” Well, here is a problem you can solve by throwing money at it. Send in a contribution to save Soapblox now!.
Why is Soapblox Important?
Soapblox is an inexpensive, community-building content management platform developed by Paul Preston and currently used by over 100 progressive blogs. For only $15 / month, Soapblox has offered most of the features available on sites like Daily Kos and MyDD: user diaries, recommended diaries, promoted diaries, interactive comments, comment ratings, tip jars, and even things like quick hits. It is a lot of functionality for not much price, making it ideal for independent, progressive, grassroots media. As such, it has been adopted by about 90% of the fifty-state blog network, and also by several national sites including Pam’s House Blend, My Left Wing, Swing State Project, and my own Open Left. Collectively, the blogs on Soapblox received over 50,000,000 page views in 2008, and provided a huge percentage of the state-level, local politics coverage in the progressive blogosphere.
Why Is Soapblox in Danger?
On Wednesday morning, Soapblox was hacked to within an inch of its life. A quarter of all Soapblox sites went completely offline, and their databases were gone. Most others were threatened, as My Left Wing and Open Left temporarily lost all of their diaries. The hackers were in so deep, that Paul temporarily threw in the towel and declared defeat. Dozens of bloggers that I knew were all frantically emailing each other. Desperate attempts were made to try and copy all of our data before The End. At one point I was, literally, running up and down the stairs in my apartment building freaking out, as there are few things I fear more than my website’s content being wiped out. It was an impending blog apocalypse, where the entire archive and operation of over 100 blogs were almost wiped off the Internet with no hope of return.
As the day went on, through a lot of effort Soapblox was able to fend off the attack, save all data, and restore full service. However, the threat remains. (more…)