Probably some automated spam detector got it banned.
Here's the ban message for posterity: https://i.imgur.com/0lFapQ1.png
Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
11–20 of 199 posts
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#12Why?
If I had to guess at a moment's notice, I'd say some kind of spam/malicious content tripped some kind of automated trigger. Hopefully it can be fixed soon. Usenet unfortunately harkens back to the era before there were bad actors at all and thus has the same vulnerability to spam and other issues as email does. I bet it's something along those lines.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#13The same thing happened last July to comp.lang.forth and comp.lang.lisp. https://support.google.com/groups/thread/61391913
Good thing the precedent here is that they were reinstated.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#14If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.
comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#15People should get used to be deplatformed. I see this as a good thing. Maybe the cloud lock-in madness will stop.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#16If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.
They don't. It's a Usenet group.
Google bought Dejanews and was an acceptable Usenet archive, for a time.
Then Google put the Usenet groups under the same umbrella as their proprietary groups.
Then their index became spotty (and you could retrieve some posts under groups.google.com, but not groups.google.de, or vice versa).
Today, Google Groups is near useless for Usenet.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#17Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#18Outside of Hacker News, Google's moderation gets a lot less attention, whether it be regarding spam or politics or the complexities of managing communities.
I waver between Google's aggressive algo moderation being just because they don't see it as a priority to fix or because overzealous moderation might actually be a better strategy when dealing with a relatively casual userbase. Overmoderate and get a few wrong, but make sure that those errors have a path to resolution if they are popular enough (basically Hacker News). Otherwise when in doubt, ban.
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#19Why?
Undefined behavior ;)
Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned
#20Outside of Hacker News, Google's moderation gets a lot less attention, whether it be regarding spam or politics or the complexities of managing communities. I waver between Google's aggressive algo moderation being just because they don't see it as a priority to fix or because overzealous moderation might actually be a better strategy when dealing with a relatively casual userbase. Overmoderate and get a few wrong, b…
If they get it wrong with under moderation then they get people complaining they're allowing nazis, spam, baby eaters, etc. This affects ads.
If they get it wrong with over moderation people just think they're stupid. This does not affect ads.