This may not seem like a big deal, but it is.
Every website can have a file associated with it, called robots.txt, that tells web search engine robots which directories to ignore. This is generally only useful if you have something you don’t want to appear in search engines or get cached anywhere.
So what does it tell you when the White House has hacked together a robots file that excludes every single possible subdirectory that ends in a folder named Iraq?
This lazily hacked together document (it really is just a complete listing of all the directories plus the subdirectories “iraq” and “text”) blocks a bunch of non-existent directories (/kids/eggroll/iraq/ – because, you know, Iraq is involved in the Easter Egg Roll ever year.), but also blocks 75 valid directories containing information about the Iraqi war and subsequent reconstruction.
This is huge, folks. There will be no search engine archives made of any of the information about Iraq – and there hasn’t been since some time after April through today. There’s an excellent example of this on the original analysis page about this (which has a cached, where google can’t find something but the White House search engine can.
How much more totalitarian can this administration get? How is this NOT a frightening example of where this country is heading? I hate conspiracy theories, but this is right out in the open and there’s no justifiable explanation for blocking any Iraq-related subdirectory.
Please spread the word and link to the original analysis page. This can’t be ignored.
(link is originally from Atrios, who is surprisingly subdued about this)
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