We just got home from a wonderful trip to Prague, Budapest, and Krakow. All three cities have a rich history of Jewish communities, and one can visit synagogues, musea, and Jewish cemeteries. We visited a number of them, including the very impressive Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest, which was once the largest synagogue in the world (now still the largest in Europe).

To my surprise, Google maps blocks the online posting of reviews of several of those places. My reviews of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest and of the Spanish Synagogue in Prague were published immediately (and there have been many other reviews of those two places published in the last week, including some negative). But my reviews of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, and of the 5th District Restaurant nearby, have not been put online.

When I submitted my reviews and they instantly got rejected, the explanation that Google (automatically) provides was the following: “This place is currently more likely to receive content that violates Google’s policies. To prevent this, Google has turned off posting.”

This explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that a few other reviews of those two places did get published over the last week; they were all five stars-reviews, which is the top rating on Google Map reviews. So clearly posting hasn’t been turned off for everyone, as some positive reviews got through. The second reason this stated policy is problematic is that I was troubled by both places, and was prevented from sharing with potential future visitors the reasons I was troubled. [click to continue…]