Google has locked my account for sharing a historical archive they labeled as "terrorist Activity"

5 years of research locked by a bot.

p.s the account blocked is edfrancis001@gmail.com - as I can't use that account to post any messages as it's blocked.

 

Good morning, my name is Ed Francis, the owner, and editor of armored archives. We are a small but growing channel covering the development of Armoured vehicles over the last century.

 

Until recently I have had no problems with Google Drive which I used to back up all of my data, which has been gathered from archives over the last 7 years or so, this is primarily documents ranging from engineering to mechanical reports 1916-2020. One of these files I suspect has been picked up by the bots which had a wide selection of vehicles from the Middle East. That is its been flagged up in a False Positive by Google's online bots.

 

This file was a collection of vehicles and at some point, was to be used to make a video showing the adaption and changes to vehicles used in these conflicts and how the requirements for urban fighting and asymmetrical warfare have shifted the design parameters of vehicles. These files contained no graphic images, no promotion of terrorism, no glorification or recruitment or anything else of the sort. There is the possibility that ISIS and so on painted slogans or daubed their letters on vehicles as this is common practice in that conflict.

 

There has been no picking of sides, ideological posts, or discussion thereof, and the file contains aspects from all sides in those conflicts and is focused on the vehicles in question, dates they were recorded, locations, and categories. The rest of the google file is similar in supporting context with files from cold war developments, WW2 developments, and of course our videos and research, which has taken over 7 years to collect from British archives.

 

This file has been shared with very few people, all of who are experts in their field, from a former military designer from British cold war concepts to a few authors looking at tank development. I am posting this here as this is not the first time that sites or pages that study the subject matter have come to grief with google and although there is a two-day wait for a response it has always been upheld that somehow its promoting terrorism. Luckily those sites have also been investigated and found not to be in breach of terms once a human element has been involved.

 

The added grievance to this is that my drive also included my own personal family photos and my current book on the subject I have been writing which is in jeopardy of being lost as well.

Hopefully, I can speak to a human, who can review both the drive and the context as well as our channel and assess the information given and hopefully like other sites focusing on historical content remove the block or ban on this page as it is in no way promoting or glorifying terrorist activity..

 

Yours Sincerely

 

Ed Francis

Armored Archives.