Is StumbleUpon Going Down The Tubes?
May 11, 2008
This week, StumbleUpon emailed me to say I was banned. This doesn’t come as too much of a shock, as I’ve been getting quite a bit of hassle and vulgar reviews since I wrote this post about the StumbleUpon Freaks.
I don’t think it was the actually post that annoyed the folk who like to call themselves StumbleUpon’s anti-spam group. It had more to do with a commenter pointing out that many of the so called anti-spammers are black hat SEO’ers who deliberately thumb down several posts in a row, as this helps their own trashy sites to get Stumbled more often.
It seemed that he was right. Soon the post was given several thumbs up reviews, all at the same time, same pictures. Straight afterwards, a guy who goes by the name of The Bozz commented on here that I had stumbled my own posts using a bot. Now those of you who visit this blog regularly will have gathered that I don’t have the technical knowledge, or the need to vote my own posts using a bot.
I believe it was the blackhat SEO - so called anti-spammers who got me banned and they probably did other things aside from the above. And I think The Bozz is one of them. Here’s why:
1) The Bozz’s comment appeared on this blog straight after the bot votes appeared on my post. Could that really be a coincidence?
2) The avatars on most of the thumbs down votes were plain ugly. If you’ve ever Stumbled upon a black hat SEO forum before, you’ll know what I mean.
3) Most of the negative comments I received from these assholes not only used the same vile and offensive language, but it was obvious that some were written by the same person. It makes you wonder how many profiles some of these idiots have.
4) I checked through a few of their profiles and in between all their thumb down votes are votes for Adsense littered crap and articles of an offensive nature.
5) A couple of days later, the Bozz thanked the moderators from removing all the spam from his profile. Now, I never even responded to any of the crap left on my post or profile, so I’m guessing the same bot was used to generate the spam on his profile - probably by himself.
I doubt whether I’ll appeal against the StumbleUpon ban, although I may send them a copy of this post. Here’s why:
1) I flagged the bot votes and the offensive comments on my profile and post immediately. SU deleted the bot comments pretty quickly, but not so all the filth that was left on there. I am not R rated on StumbleUpon and these comments had the potential to offend a lot of people.
2) The Bozz claimed to have had spam deleted by moderators pretty quickly. Since when did moderators on SU react that fast to anything? So I’m guessing that one of the anti-spam black hat SEO’ers must be a moderator on StumbleUpon. If this is the case, it won’t be long before SU becomes littered with the crap that most of us want to see banished from the Internet.
Now, StumbleUpon didn’t give me a reason for the ban, so I can only guess as to what else The Bozz and his asshole friends, have been up to. This is what StumbleUpon said:
“The most common cause for account suspension is a contravention of the clauses which forbid the use of personal accounts for the promotion of a business, product or service, and also with regard to the sending of ’spam’ messages to other members.”
Well, I haven’t used StumbleUpon to promote a business product or service, nor have I sent spam messages to any other members. But if it’s possible for the StumbleUpon Freaks to use a bot to generate false votes, I’m guessing they can probably generate spam messages too.
They also said I can appeal but: “be aware that we will only have imposed the suspension if we believe it to be warranted.”
To be honest, I’m not sure whether I’m going to appeal. I wasn’t using StumbleUpon all that much before the ban, as I simply wasn’t getting time. Also, the quality of stumbles was deteriorating fast.
Do you use StumbleUpon, or do you use it less now than you used to? Do you believe the quality of Stumbles has deteriorated? What do you think will happen to StumbleUpon if it continues to be dominated by the so called anti-spam group?
*Comments from the assholes mentioned above will be put in the spam folder. You may have been able to litter my StumbleUpon profile with your filth but you’re not welcome on my blog.
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20 Responses to “Is StumbleUpon Going Down The Tubes?”
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I must admit the experiences of seeing idiots getting away with the stuff they do has lessened my stumble activity.
I did like Stumble until I saw those idiots getting away with what they did.
Ian Denny’s last blog post..Deliberately Displease People For Better Results
I can’t believe you got banned from StumbleUpon - WTF!
Is there anything fishy with your account? It’s scary to think you could be targeted and pushed right out of a social media service. I haven’t had any problems myself, though I think stumbles these days can be a bit hit and miss. Mostly I check out the stumbles of my friends and my RSS so it doesn’t bother me much.
I still can’t believe this. I’d fight it because that’s the kind of person I am. I don’t like to be f*cked over, but I can understand if you’re not fussed.
It still sux though.
Kelly@SHE-POWER’s last blog post..No, I’m Not Dead
I love how all of a sudden StumbleUpon thinks they’re the new “Google.” I’d probably just let it go as SU isn’t going to make or break my business. I dunno, maybe send them this article like you said though.
Why not?
Maybe it’ll actually reach someone who cares.
John Hoff - eVentureBiz’s last blog post..How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 4 - Getting Your Closing Costs Covered
WOW! Catherine,
That’s unbelievable as from what I saw, you always Stumbled high quality sites, and a lot of them.
Due to time constraints, I haven’t been Stumbling much. I had noticed more “commercial” sites on SU, and more sites that had a lot of ads, but if you can dig through all of that, you can still find great blog posts and beautiful pictures.
As with any social networking site, if people find and use loopholes to benefit themselves (and their traffic counts), the quality, reputation and popularity of them (social networks) will go down. That puts us right back to the beginning….building our blogs via search engines and referral traffic.
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Build A Pyramid - Increase Blog Traffic
Wow. I think it has gone down a bit lately…but I also haven’t been stumbling as much in the last month or so. I’ve seen some real jerks on SU, so I’m not really surprised.
Cath,
If I were you, I’d fight to the death not so much for the fondness of SU but for what’s righteous thing to do. We are all behind you and if you need some kind of group support, I will do all I can to get people united against this crazy, silly game.
Shilpan
Shilpan | successsoul.com’s last blog post..5 Axioms of Life: A Pathway to Happiness
Banned? That is nuts! I still spend some time on stumbleupon, but have recently found I spend more time on Digg. I like stumbleupon mostly because it’s the first social site I got hooked on. I stumble mostly just what friends send me so my stumbles are still ok, and the rest I just get through my reader, and they are all my favorite blogs to read, but I have heard A LOT lately about spammers and all the negative things happening that you have posted about today. I personally think you should fight because I for one looked forward to seeing what you stumbled as one of your friends and enjoy having friends like you through the network. So fight on Catherine and don’t give up!! Good Luck!
Hi Ian - me too. And the way they go on about anti-spam, when we all know what they’re really up to is just puke making.
Hi Kelly - Don’t think there’s anything dodgy on my account, aside from what they’ve done to it. I’ve copied and pasted my blogpost to them. If they genuinely care about the quality of SU, hopefully they’ll look into it.
Hi John - I know. But it would be the equivalent of Google stopping me from using their search engine wouldn’t it. And I think you’d have to do something v bad for them to do that.
Hi Barbara - I think it’s definitely important that nobody relies on one source of traffic alone. When Alexa changed the way they rank things, it became pretty obvious which people were only getting their traffic from one source.
Hi Mrs M - oh well, I suppose seeing them on SU is better than meeting them in the street.
Thanks Shilpan - Thank you. At one time I would have fought it but I have so much on my plate right now that it doesn’t seem worth the hassle.
Thanks Zach. I check out the sites of everyone who comments on here so I’m sure I’ll be seeing yours soon.
Thanks Topsurf - I will wait to see what they say. I’ve tried Digg and Twitter but I don’t really enjoy them as much.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Is StumbleUpon Going Down The Tubes?
Cath:
I am sorry to hear that. I have not used StumbleUpOn that much lately. I only use StumbleUpOn to find awesome photos.
There are few reasons that I don’t use StumbleUpOn that much.
1. My StumbleUpOn profile PR drop from PR5 to PR0, which means my profile will not be crawled by search engine by Google that often at all. So whatever I stumbled won’t be indexed either. In other words, StumbleUpOn will not play any important role from SEO stand points for me.
2. StumbleUpOn don’t generate good quality traffic. Most of my visitors just want to either thumb up to increase their score or just want to see some spicy stuff, which I don’t have.
3. StumbleUpOn send commercial web sites (Sponsors) to their members, while they don’t seem to like members promoting their own commercial web sites.
4. I have spent sometime on generating some great traffic from MOLI.com.
Anyway, I believe StumbleUpOn can only help you to get some short term traffic boost. For long term, quality link building is still the key.
Don’t feel too bad. I can see that you are doing good without StumbleUpOn.
Terence Chang’s last blog post..Weekend Confession 6 - Life is short! Just move on!
Cath, that’s too bad. Fortunately there are a ton of other options for social bookmarking. In a way, I would think it’s kind of nice not to have to put up with all of that spam, harassing, and B.S. you had to deal with on SU. On to greener pastures.
sterling | bizlift’s last blog post..Magento - Revolutionary eCommerce for Small Biz
If I had to name someone who I predicted would get banned from StumbleUpon, I never would have guessed you! I hope you do decide to appeal, even if just to satisfy everyone’s curiosity about why you were really banned, and see what they do in case it happens to us.
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..Washing Dishes Is A Waste Of Life?
Hi Terence - Thanks. That is bad that SU traffic caused your PR to drop. You are right - most traffic from SU does not return - well only a small fraction does. And really, the folks that benefit from it most do it through creating perceived popularlity. But I’m still not sure they’re getting the right traffic that way - probably mostly webmasters.
I will definitely be checking out moli.com
Hi Sterling - that is so true. There’s too many to keep up with. I don’t want to go back and drive more traffic to SU, when they could pull the plug at any time.
Hi Hunter - It would certainly be useful to know the reasons for the ban, so that others know what not to do. As Terence pointed out - SU don’t practise what they preach. On the one hand, they have rules to stop people from stumbling crap but they’ll quite happily let folks pay them to have crap stumbled.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Is StumbleUpon Going Down The Tubes?
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