Hopefully OLO stays free, which I think is its major strength against other sites which charge, and an alternative advertising option can be found

It's a toss up for who is the most dangerous: the government or the corporates. You can't get rid of governments because they are all the same these days. You can hit back at many corporates by not buying their products and services. But Google? Impossible to deal with I would think. I really cannot see how a discussion on the appalling treatment of a woman by Victorian rozzers can have anything to do with Google at all. Would they allow us to to say anything about the VicPig who stamped on a man's head a couple of days ago, after he had been mowed down by another VicPig using a patrol car?

Chris Lewis,

What is the alternative to advertising? Are you going to find it? It seems to me that a paywall is the only way to freedom from interference. It might get rid of some of the childish and boring back and forth between two or three posters who think the site is just for them to win arguments. They never win, but they keep on trying. Not to mention the irrelevant topics some of them put up to goad anyone silly enough to comment.

And irony of ironies, when I look at this thread, the ad they serve up to me is a scam for cryptocurrencies peddling fake news about Dick Smith. Seems to me they need to worry much more about their advertisers than the vehicles on which their ads are served!!

Hi Graham,

As I wrote to you on the Trump discussion - Google does
have community guidelines. A code of conduct.

1) Respect the user.
2) Respect the opportunity.
3) Respect each other.

"Discussions that make other Googlers feel like they don't
belong have no place here".

And -

"You are responsible for your words and your reach".

So perhaps some of our "Aussie" lingo that we're used to,
may come across as "abuse" to Americans. Especially with
all their problems regarding law enforcement that are
happening there currently. Hence the notices and warnings
and withdrawals of their adds to you.

Maybe all we have to do is improve our postings?
I'm not suggesting that we censor our posts - just perhaps
put things in a less "abusive " way?

It wouldn't hurt to at least try?

With respect to hosting costs.

My understanding is there are several new costing models available for hosting blog sites that could lower OLO's costs from $1800 or so per year to something significantly lower.

I'm not an expert but...

Options include-

Cloud based- Azure/ AWS/ other - SAAS throttling

"Deep web" options.

Bulletin Boards

Some of these options are still exposed to cancel culture "marks" but perhaps less than Web 2.0 based service companies such as the big ten IT companies