It is now apparent that IMC UK (www.indymedia.org.uk) is currently being attacked by elements that are attempting to degrade the authority of IMC UK on the World Wide Web.

Earlier today, a message was posted to the long running comments section of a middle feature on the attempted fork of Indymedia UK into two distinct projects.


The 1st May 2011 UK Indymedia Network Fork
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/05/478721.html?c=on


One of these projects, bethemedia, has been revealed to have been designed to harm Indymedia UK's global ranking in international search engines, most especially Google who have now rolled out their "Panda" update in the UK.

The Google "Panda" update was rolled out in the US market on February 2011 and is designed to seriously penalise the rank of any website that aggregates content from other websites. This measure has been described by Google as an attempt to remove "low quality" sites from its search pages and to promote sites that offer "original content". The Panda update has, within the last two weeks, been rolled out successfully within the UK.


Google 'Panda' update downgrades UK tech sites - and Microsoft's Ciao
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/apr/13/google-panda-uk-update-winners-losers

High-quality sites algorithm goes global, incorporates user feedback
 http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html


At precisely the same time, there has been an attempt by a group calling itself "bethemedia" to attach a low quality aggregating site to the main UK landing page of UK Indymedia via a redirecting "splash" page. Had this page have been detected by Google, The entire UK Indymedia sites rankings would have been penalised by Google and every single page attached to it would have fallen by as many as ten or twenty pages in search engine placements, severely reducing Indymedia UK's visibility internationally.

It is now clear that "bethemedia" have attempted to seriously harm the ranking of Indymedia UK by designing a low quality aggregating website and then "attaching" this website to the main landing page of the UK national Indymedia site, at exactly the same moment Google release an update to its search engine software designed to penalise this type of low quality aggregating website.

There are also a number of anonymous posts after the middle feature article claiming to be objective comments that have called for prominent links to be placed on the home page of Indymedia UK pointing to "bethemedia" which will certainly result in the same damage being done to its visibility.

It does now appear to be the case that Indymedia UK is experiencing a serious, coordinated and persistent attack designed to seriously degrade its prominence in search engine placements.

Earlier in the year, a group of people involved with voluntarily moderating the UK national site had accelerated a long running minor disagreement between the moderating community over the content of the UK newswire. Much of the disagreement centred around what appeared to be organised disruption of the newswire and the appearance of "tactical ant-semitism".

The disagreement accelerated and reached boiling point when the two sides agreed to split or fork the UK indymedia site into two separate projects. Mayday and bethemedia.

On May 1st 2011 the UK Indymedia main landing page, or home page, was replaced with a splash page pointing to the two separate projects. Later that day, the page was removed and the main UK national Indymedia site was removed to a server in Iceland. The main domain name (www.indymedia.org.uk) was also taken into custody and members of bethemedia had their access privileges to the domain name closed.

Bethemedia had been expelled from the UK Indymedia site.

From that moment on, tactically anti-semitic comments have again flooded the UK newswire along with a wave of comments degrading users who post comments to the site.

The current disruption of Indymedia UK denotes a very serious assault on the principle of freedom of speech and illustrates once again that Indymedia UK constitutes a serious problem for those who clearly are fundamentally opposed to that principle of freedom.