State of the Blog: Takedowns and the Future as It Stands
Hey there, Frank fans. This is Curb, blonded.blog’s founder and, until now, it’s sole author.
As many followers of this website have noticed, blonded.blog has been inaccessible for the last 7 months.
Today, we’re back—even if in a more limited capacity than before. I’d like to explain what happened, what was done while the blog was “down,” and what the future of this project looks like. I’ll try to keep it brief.
How It Started
In October of 2025, Frank fans began noticing that videos, tweets, and links to Frank-related content started disappearing. This wasn’t immediately newsworthy; DMCA takedowns happen often. Different this time was the frequency, duration, and range of targeted content—including 15 years’ worth of music and video uploads that Frank had previously released online for free via Tumblr. Included also was a wealth of older content that remains inaccessible on streaming services and has never been available for purchase. The takedowns were widespread, affecting websites such as the Internet Archive, Reddit, YouTube, and Vimeo.
I started noticing more content removal notices from Mega in November. This was for non-copyrighted content and material that could only be considered archival. Scans of publications and the like. Audiomack-hosted clips from Blonded Radio shows were next. All of these complaints were from the same entity—Web Sheriff.
Then, this site was hit directly. I received an email from Squarespace support on November 13th at 4:35 PM. I was on my way into a movie with some friends. Predator: Badlands was great. The pit in my stomach during its runtime—not so much.
As soon as I got home, I assessed the damage. Two pages specifically were hit: the Undocumented Rare information page and the Archive. The latter is what I would consider the heart and soul of the website. The Archive was the first page created on its previous host. It featured an extensive history of Frank’s music, features, songwriting credits, videos, radio episodes, media appearances, interviews, and more. This was the core of blonded.blog and Squarespace deleted it outright when Web Sheriff, on behalf of Blonded (Frank’s company), issued a takedown request. No specifics were included in the notification regarding what content was found to be infringing.
I went into self-preservation mode. I locked the site and began archiving what I could. At this point in time, almost everything outside of the 365 blog was written by me. So, chances were good that I had a backup somewhere for most of the site’s content—but content is where that ends. The site layout, written material, and general organization do not exist outside this blog. After sharing what happened with the community on Reddit, I stayed up into the early hours of the morning, writing scripts to pull all images and embedded content from my own website just in case more strikes were inbound.
This is what I wrote on Reddit:
After years of a cordial and productive relationship with Frank’s team, they’ve ordered takedowns of the entire blonded.blog archive and undocumented rare info page.
We host very little actual material on the site, mostly outbound links to any media that could copyrighted. We’ve acquiesced to requests from Blonded for years and would continue to do so if asked.
With the archive being the main attraction, I’m not sure how the blog can really recover from this. Is it worth continuing to host the news archive? I’m not sure.
I’d appreciate any input, but the options are few. This feels like as good a time as any to shut things down.
Looking back, this post reads as defeatist. At risk of sharing more than I should about my personal life, this happened two weeks after a family member’s home burned down. With it, the entirety of my childhood photographs and home movies. Anyone who has followed my archival work in this space or elsewhere can appreciate how gutting this might be to someone like me—but I digress.
I maintain my frustration with the Blonded organization. We’ve had a longstanding relationship that has been mutually beneficial—often more in their favor than this blog’s. They have my contact information, both personal and “professional” in the context of Frank-related things. In the past, if there was something questionable, I could expect a friendly text. I’ve pushed back on a few small things, but routinely complied with any reasonable request. We’re entitled to very little in life, but any good will or mutual respect I thought had been built was bypassed by unilaterally taking down more than a decade’s worth of work.
The Aftermath
After the Reddit thread took off, I received another email from Squarespace notifying me that the complaints had been withdrawn. Again, no details. This did not restore any content. That I still had to do on my own.
Here’s my reckoning as to what happened up to this point: Blonded employed Web Sheriff to scan the Internet for content. Likely using a broad list of keywords paired with web content searches for file extensions like .mp3, .mp4, etc., or outbound links to sites that host content such as Mega or Google Drive. They’ve got comprehensive web-crawling scripts that make this a mostly automated task. DMCA requests are sent to hosts (not webmasters), and the hosts comply because it’s easier to remove content than to get involved in mediation. After realising the impact to our site, someone still friendly to our cause had the complaint rescinded. My thanks to that person.
A month after the site was hit, someone connected to Frank did reach out to ask if we were planning to reopen. My reservations at that time were:
Is this going to happen again?
The decades-old fan-made mixtapes of unreleased material, are they fair game?
I asked if they’d relay these questions. A reply was promised but never came. So my reservations remain the same. That leads into the present state.
I mentioned earlier that every word on the blog up to the November lockdown was written by me. It’s no secret that as Frank’s output has slowed, so has mine in this space. I’m a working guy with a family and a hundred side-projects. blonded.blog is just one of them and, over time, it’s taken less of a priority.
I knew that moving the site would be a lot of work. I did spin up a self-hosted version and started migrating content, but that proved too time-consuming. Even after automating most of the migration, too much re-work on page layout and article editing remained. That didn’t help with that defeated feeling.
I decided then to re-up my Squarespace subscription for at least one more year. In that time, I would remove anything that could be remotely considered infringing and reopen the blog in a more limited context—if only for posterity’s sake. Still, that meant dedicating a lot of time I didn’t have.
Enter Odysseus
Frank Redditors know Ody (u/ody-sss-eus), aka ody§eus. He’s been one of the most active and helpful members of our community for years. In fact, he was one of the first and few to earn the “Good Guy” user flair on r/FrankOcean, marking him as an exemplary community member before I later made him a moderator. Ody’s first post on blonded.blog was a wonderful essay and interview titled “The Blonde Who Inspired Blonde,” which revealed the whole backstory of the photograph that gave name to Frank’s 2016 album. If there were ever a successor to the lineage of Frank Ocean historians—which I believe began with Mayday—it would be Odysseus.
After onboarding them to the site’s admin, Ody set to work going through hundreds of pages, removing embeds, links, and anything else we thought might cause additional problems. I think we erred on the side of caution here.
We added a lot to the site while it was closed to the public. Most importantly, Ody wrote dozens of new articles, filling gaps large and small in our news archive, which goes back many, many years. He also reviewed existing pages to improve their written content, visual media, links, metadata, and quality-of-life features, such as footers linking to related articles. I also reorganized and fleshed out new and old sections of the site, including archives of Frank’s merch, Homer drops, and radio programming.
That brings us to today. The site is open for your perusal. Notably missing are the mixtapes. This is a real shame as I was preparing to release a deluxe compilation containing The Lonny Breaux Collection, our own Undocumented Rare, and more in the new year. Until I have at least some assurance that our site won’t receive complaints for even linking to other sites containing downloads, these will not be available here.
I’ve focused mainly on the blog, but the impact of the 2025 Frankopolypse can’t be understated. A majority of videos on YouTube and Vimeo documenting Frank Ocean’s career were wiped away in a few weeks. It’s a major loss for dedicated fans, old and new. We’ll continue to do our best to retain that history as long as we can. If you’d like to support that, you can find information about our costs and how to donate here.
LATEST NEWS
