The world would be better off without them, but that’s too much to ask. If only they could be banned from ShoutWire, I’d be happy.
I’m sure social news sites looked like a great idea on paper. Users submit and vote on content submitted from around the web! It’s the ultimate form of democracy, no? Well, like nitroglycerin, a concept created for the purpose of good has been hijacked by those who would use it for terrible evils.
Social news sites are in a never-ending war with spammers. Just when you thought it was safe to go to bed at 2:30am, they strike. It’s almost like they have the psychic ability to know when site administrators call it a night. You wake up the next day to find that the site has been gang-raped by spammers and SEO faggots. You desperately delete as much crap as possible before REAL users see it, but you know it’s futile. This scenario unfolds in exactly the same manner every day, even on Christmas fucking morning.
If the sites detailed below were permanently blocked from submitting to ShoutWire, I would be one happy content manager.
1. SquidooRight on! A site where anyone can devote a page to a topic they love, and ad revenue is divided between the submitters and charity! What a great idea! Oh, wait a second. It turns out that 95% of all Squidoo pages are either straight-up advertisements for products or services, or “splogs” designed to direct traffic to a retail site or shite blog. No doubt businesses use the power of Squidoo to up their ranking with search engines.
I’ve seen over 100 Squidoo submissions on ShoutWire in the past year. Not a single one lead to anything that could be considered ShoutWire material.
2. EzinearticlesThey’re almost as bad as Squidoo, but not quite. Billed as “expert authors sharing their best articles”, it is possible to find good content there. Too bad the guys who submit the good content never submit it to ShoutWire. Conversely,
this guy LOVES to submit to ShoutWire. In a textbook example of splogging, he’s littered his “article” with links to the site that he no doubt operates. He’ll submit this to social networks knowing that if he submitted a link to the actual site he was trying to promote, it would be deleted as spam.
3. HubpagesCheck this out. This is a featured hubber, rated 100. Note the horse avatar, appropriate because she’s a horse’s ass. She runs the 10 most uninteresting blogs on the entire internet and uses Hubpages to whore them out to the world. Check one of them out. Note that not a single “article” is over 500 words, but there are dozens of ads. If she’s a top hubber, I’d hate to see a bottom one.
Conclusion – hubpages is useless, unless you’re trying to whore out your ad revenue blog.
4. Bored-space.com, Fun-braniac.com, etcThese are merely two of the plethora of sites run by the notorious Romanian Mafia. They’re probably not Romanian, but many of their supporters have Romanian IPs, which is why I coined the term.
The reasons that I want them tossed into the lake of fire? Blatant content theft (which many sites are guilty of), but also the fact that they and a few other sites have their own personal army. This army tirelessly submits their content to every social news site out there, no matter how obscure.
If that wasn’t bad enough, they have a massive network of like-minded fuck heads who team up to promote each others’ content to the top pages of every site that they submit content to. The result? The complete undermining of user voting systems. These guys must make a fortune off of social news sites, generating millions of hits (and ad revenue, of course). The fact that they steal content from other sites (sites which get 0 credit) and then make money off of someone else’s work makes them the biggest fucking douche bags ever. I could go on and on and on, but I’ll leave it at that.
5. Write2ankit.blogspot.com (formerly rite2ankit.com)If I were ever to break down and go Jay and Silent Bob on someone, this guy would be the one. I once had a dream about beating the shit out of this guy and was very disappointed when I awoke to find out that it didn’t happen.
Yeah, he’s a Romanian Mafia member. I could have grouped him in with the above, but this asshole deserves special mention. Why? For going the extra mile with fake comments, multiple accounts, re-registering under different IPs, content theft and forming (and participating in) shout rings.
Of all of the sites listed here, this is the only one that I take direct action on. As soon as I see a link that leads there, it’s “delete with extreme prejudice.” Not fair? Good. Complain to the owners of ShoutWire? Fine. Do it. I’d eat fucking glass before I’d obey orders to let this guy post.
I’m sure some of you are already thinking “quit bitching and ban them then.” Nah. That’s no fun. The strategy that I’ve come up with to deal with them IS fun. In some militaries there is a cool form of punishment that I have always found effective. When a group member fucks up, it is not HIM who is punished - it’s everyone else. The offender can have a beer and sit in a comfy chair while the rest of the group do 1000 push-ups. I’ll elaborate on that shortly.
Let’s wrap this up with some point-form warnings to any of these fuck nuts who might be reading this:
- If you’re planning on submitting a link to Hubpages, Squidoo or Ezinearticles, don’t even waste your time. I swear to God I won’t even look at the article – instant deletion. You’ll get one email warning and then you’re banned.
- If I even
mildly suspect that you are recruiting shouters, paying shouters, or participating in a reciprocal shout/digg/stumble network, your article will be deleted, but I won’t ban you. I will, however, ban every user who is a member of your shouting network. It’s really easy to tell if you’re a participating ShoutWire member or a recruited shouter.
- We’re not retarded. Fake comments don’t fool anyone. Opting out of the Shout Map isn’t fooling anyone. I’ve been here a while now, and I’m pretty good at the “one of these things just doesn’t belong here” game. I have a good feel for what ShoutWire users promote, so if I suddenly see “ 25 Acne Remedies” with 14 shouts, it’s obvious what’s going on.
I know it will never happen, but I’d love to see the above sites permanently blocked. It would save me the hassle of deleting them, and save our readers the hassle of having to scroll past them looking for REAL content.
End of irate rant.