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Google Reacts to Splogs
labnol writes "Recently, Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs. Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam and another feature called Flag As Objectionable where users can report blogs with questionable content. Google appears to be listening."
I've been writing to Blogger/Google about a lot of fake blogs for a while and I'm glad to see Flag as Objectionable come into play. After a while I just got tired of doing it and stopped.
Up until now there was nothing they or the surfer could do - good work Google.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Please neologize without sounding like you're spitting on the floor.
It doesn't get much more spammish or objectionable than that!
No, this is not about reducing spam in the comments on blogs. This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam. The number of such blogs is enormous -- most counts put it between half and 2/3.
Lock the barn. Hide you farm animals. The pigs are nervous.
This could lead to more cases like this one.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
and again today. Verification does make it a tab bit difficult when people are quickly wanting to comment and leave but it has it's benefits as well. I'm for it. Go Google Go!
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Wikipedia has an article about it here.
Mark Cuban of Icerocket made the accusation that Blogger is by far the worst offender when it comes to Spam Blogs.
Mark Cuban of Icerocket, allow me to introduce you to Roland Piquepaille of Slashdot...
I was going to make a wisecrack about the letting Steve Nash go.
.. Blogger getting bombarded by all sorts of "Questionable Content" flags from all sorts of extremely left / right / PC people ... soon they won't be able to keep up w/ the flags and will just turn off the feature.. :-/
_Vishal www.squad9.com
The number of such blogs is enormous -- most counts put it between half and 2/3.
I'm not sure I'd call any number less than one "enormous".
This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam. The number of such blogs is enormous -- most counts put it between half and 2/3.
Good thing it is being done too - I'd hate to be excluded from the other search engines because I've got a few blogs with Blogspot/Blogger. Gets rid of that whole "guilt by association" thing.
BTW: The 'flag as objectional' button hasn't shown up yet on any blogs I post to.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I once spoke with the VP of a company that was merging with the company I was doing contract work for (both companies were very small, so we had a lunchroom chat).
He revealed that there were a number of "email blast" (ie email spam outsourcers) that were happy to have dozens of Indian employees on staff ready to do the image-word verification and reply-to-this-email-to-be-whitelisted emails many think-they're-super-smart people had set up.
Why does anyone think the "illegitimate" spammers don't do exactly the same thing? Especially when, at $5/hr (about what US min wage is, I think) 5 seconds of effort (an overestimate, most likely, after you've been doing it for an hour) works out to about 2/3rds of a CENT...and that has the potential to reach hundreds of people before someone flags it? ONE worker could do 720 an hour...
Please help metamoderate.
Google appears to be listening.
Well, Google IS what those blogs are targeting...
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While I commend them on their fight against comment spam, I do have to question the second 'addition' to the list: Flag as objectionable.
I thought that a blog was to post anything you wanted to post about. It's a personal entry that allows you to add your voice to the other thousands/millions of voices out there - without having to hire your own hosting or mooch off friends.
What is the use for 'flag as objectionable'? If you object to something, here's a hint: Don't read it. This reeks of censoirship.
I for one fully support anything people want to write: It just makes the internet the internet, and the press the press.
Like it or not, there IS still a (fading) difference.
peace,
bny
Distorted google rankings (and accordingly worsened search results), that's why. -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
-1, objectionable.
Would you prefer the numbers 50% and 66% ?
Schwartz........
:ducks:
Um, it's not blogs getting spammed, it's blogs being used to spam links and bump other blogs up in ratings to increase pageviews. Besides, you're reading a blog right now, because that's what Slashdot is in a sense.
Derive Politics
Off the above link "We've just introduced the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to prevent the automatic creation of comments by nefarious ne'er-do-wells (e.g. spammers). Features like comment captcha and flag as objectionable are not complete solutions to the problem of spam. But they are additional tools that can help address it." I may just be missing something but what is word verification about then if not to stop spammer (bots) from leaving unwanted comments?
If you use the 'next blog' randomizing feature on blogs you'll see that roughly one out of five 'blogs' are nothing but link farms, worm repositories and bullshit like that.
And this has been going on for quite a while. We all know that Google has a fondness for indexing Blogger content rather quickly, and so do the spammers. It's about time the company did something about it.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
That's like saying convenience stores are the worst offenders in armed robbery. Surely the offender is the perpetrator, not the victim.
"No slashdot is not a blog. You just seem to be retarded like people who don't understand the difference between engineering and technology either."
I'm sorry, the last time I checked, people posting interesting news stories and or questions from other websites and then having others comment on them was the very epitome of blogging.
Derive Politics
Does anyone remember that? Does Google remembers that? Why not 'nofollow' instead of annyoing distorted text confirmation procedures?
I can't really see a good reason to why Google has that new word verification feature off by default, and like an option...
Why would a blogger not want to know it's a human behind a keyboard... by default?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
yes
Does this mean Angry Harry or Bob's Truth can be filtered if enough people find the sites objectionable?
...when it comes to google groups...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Ahhh, but will Google solve the problem that LiveJournal has? The problem I'm talking about is the LiveJournal_Abuse team, which has always been made up of volunteers and will ban anyone on any whim for any reason, reasonable or not. I made a community called "DIERIAA" and the purpose of the community was to point people to cool free music. Within twenty minutes of having the community made it was shut down for "promoting the illegal piracy of music." And not one single post had even been made in the community. Will Google be able to solve a problem like that?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I hope this isn't part of their Chinese firewall partnership, so they can remove dissenting blogs - one of the last bastions of effective political change.
What happens when (I didn't say if) affiliates of _________ political party start "flagging as objectionable" blogs written by those they disagree with? What happens when religious wackos flag sex blogs as objectionable? TFA says Blogger tracks the number of times a blog is flagged objectionable and base their action on that, not that they review whether something is actually bad. This could be trouble.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Because a splog = spam blog. Splog != comment spam. So while this helps reduce comment spam (a *separate* problem), it is the flag option that will help reduce splogs
"I may just be missing something but what is word verification about then if not to stop spammer (bots) from leaving unwanted comments?" You're right. The ability to turn on captchas in Blogger comments is to fight the spammers/spam bots leaving comments. The "flag?" feature is to flag (among other things) splogs. Two different tools, but with the same goal of reducing spammers of some sort.
No, it isn't.
Blogging is a personal "web log" of some person or some group. Slashdot is a news aggregator.
How many splogs are there and how many posts do they carry ? Its difficult to quantify, but I wouldnt be shocked if we have excluded more than 1mm of them at IceRocket.
1mm? 1 millimeter of bloggers? Doesn't seem like much to me.
Or is he using a multiplicative expression with Roman Numerals? MM is M*M = 1000*1000 = 1000000.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Upon reading some of his comments verbatim it is shocking how inarticulate and rambling he is. Seems reasonable to me to label him as radio SPAM - he certainly has the figure for it.
It was only a few years ago, if people were asked to name a "weblog" /. would be the number one pick. It was called that by many folks before "blogger" became a common word.
Blogging is a personal "web log" of some person or some group. Slashdot is a news aggregator.
So Slashdot isn't the personal web log of CmdrTaco and his friends? And since when could a news aggregator not be a blog?
Derive Politics
Oh, in that case: 50% and 66%
Is it really that difficult for Google? In addition to the website caches, they have the complete Deja archive at their disposal to train any kind of learning software. Plus, this problem is already solved in Gmail. I agree it hurts when you just spent a few hours writing a blog and the first message you get is "Wow that is really nice! I will read it again. Please see my mortgate site here ..."
Explore your creative side
(typetypetype) [Ctrl+L] http://www.technorati.com/ [Enter]
(typetypetype) "luxuriousity"
(clickety) "Hypnosis Smoking Stop"
(clickety) "Flag!"
In case you weren't aware, there's this Really Ethical (NOT) open source CD distributor out there called Luxuriousity. I'm not linking to them here. Google for them. See their web page then, their atrocious use of business clip art, and their love of rebranding open source programs and trying to make some easy pennies while trying to hide the fact that they're, in fact, selling CDs of stuff that can be downloaded for free from the net. (and if you're wondering what that has to do with hypnosis, well, they're also selling hypnosis MP3s.)
I also noted that lately that they're actually engaging in Blogger spamming. Really nice folks we're dealing with here. There were tons and tons of these Luxuriousity spamblogs last I checked, now all of them had disappeared (one still appears in Technorati but is 404'd).
I definitely welcome the flagging thing; there's tons and tons of spam blogs in blogger. Spam blogs *suck*.
I posted a few articles related to this topic last week:
t ml
t ml
http://www.feedblog.org/2005/08/blog_and_ping_b.h
http://www.feedblog.org/2005/08/splogs_ruining_.h
Actually is both. Even the ./ intro tells that.
no sig
Did anyone else read that as "sploog"? *shudders*
No, this is not about reducing spam in the comments on blogs. This is about reducing the number of blogs whose authors post only spam.
Sheesh, I know it's de rigeur here to not read the article, but at least read the freakin' summary.
Now Google Blogger is introducing Word Verification for user comments to prevent comment spam
What part of that don't you understand?
And I say it's about time too. I have a (very unpopular, sporadically updated) blog on Blogger/Blogspot - linked above - and every single time I post an update I get at least 3 or 4 nearly instantenous spam comments. I have to check the next day and go through and delete them manually as it is now.
Of course, the really annoying thing is these are the only comments I ever get! But I guess that's to be expected with a blog that's updated approximately once every three months...
That's not a far cry from some of the moderation I've seen here on Slashdot. Disagree with someone's opinion? Mod them down! In general human beings do not like to face things that make them uncomfortable, and coming face to face with opinions that are diametrically opposed to your own really freaks people out.
When I have mod points, I try to take care to only mod people down when I feel that they are engaging in personal attacks or other socially disagreeable behavior. I admit that it is difficult for me to mod up comments that are in opposition to my opinions, but if someone has argued a point well and isn't resorting to ad hominem attacks or perversions of fact, I can sometimes get past my biases and up-mod a post. The less important the issue being discussed, of course, the easier it is for me to up-mod an opinion with which I disagree.
I strongly believe that maintenance of a community that values diversity of opinion is important, both here on Slashdot and in the "real world." Unfortunately it requires effort to maintain community, and much of the communications technology we use today is making it easier and easier for us all to filter out that which we do not want to hear. Perhaps it's not an accident that political discourse in the United States has sunk to such a morass, devoid of any real substance.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
By who's definition?
.. bla bla bla bla. Just because its legal doesnt make it the right thing to do.
One persons 'objectional material' is another persons religion.. ( for example )
Yes, i know that its Googles' servers and they get to control content
Now, controlling spam.. more power to them...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Perhaps not creating an entry on Puffy AmiYumi would help the popularity. :-P
It seems a new troll has developed, where someone can create a Wiki forward link to another Wiki topic.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Word Verification can be enabled or disabled by the blog author.
But anybody who turns it on is likely to run afoul of the Rehabilitation Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and/or foreign counterparts.
I can't really see a good reason to why Google has that new word verification feature off by default
Probably something to do with laws requiring companies to make their products accessible to people whose disabilities prevent them from seeing images. (Read More...) Turning on accessibility (that is, turning off word verification) by default means that liability for inaccessible blogs lies with the blog administrator, not with Google.
This should have been posted by Roland Piquepaille.
The reason why spam is such a problem is because it is free (after the fixed costs for your Internet connection, etc.) If we could make email spam cost something, it would be a problem more along the lines of telemarketers or junk mail. Not a solved problem, but it would be much better than the situation today. So if they can do the same for blogs, good on them!
Even at a half cent per spam it would probably deter the vast majority of spammers who would use the many other avenues of free spam.
it only shows up once blogs are republished
OK. So now people are going to write bots that will flag other people's stuff as objectionable. Or, in order to flag something as objectionable, you're going to have to type some distorted letters into the form.
This is not a troll whatsoever. It was the exact first thought I had in fact. I use LiveJournal. I would not care in the slightest if every other journal on there was spam -- how would that affect me? Granted the technologies are not the same, but I would think it would stand to reaosn that spam blogs are of questionable importance to anyone beyond the hosts of the blogs.
Haven't you seen any of those blogs that look like something interesting and then just turn out to be a single junk entry with a bunch of keywords which have a ton of ads and/or spyware all over? That's the entire point of this addition, is to eliminate those.
now the spamers just have to use 'bots' to flag every blog. the noise ration will be so high it will be the same as monitoring every one as it was before the flag feature.
yep, i'm that optmistic
Slashdot is very much not a blog. It's a badly written corporate news site for geeks.
I don't respond to AC's.
Word verification works great. I've been using it for comments on my blog for some time now and I get virtually no comment spam.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
WTF - I believe the wrong post was modded down. The Wiki link goes to the following, with no re-direct:
Splog
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Spam blogs, or splogs, are blog sites in which the author posts only spam messages.
Splogs have recently become a major problem on free blog hosts such as Google's Blogger service. These sites waste valuable disk space and bandwidth, only to display a bunch of links - often to disreputable or otherwise useless Web sites.
Now, the link in saskboys sig goes to a ebay page with this:
Many male humans silently wish they had a larger sexual organ. The anxiety they feel about their genital length is completely unnecessary, now that PEMS(TM) is available.
Exactly who is full of shit is now left as an execise for the reader.
Both of those words you mentioned apply to phenomena that never existed before. You could call them "serial public editorial" and "prerecorded automatically downloadable digital radio" but your jaw would get tired. In fact, the best circumlocution would still miss corner cases which are definitely "blogs" and "podcasts". That's what I take as proof positive that a new word was necessary.
On the other hand, a lot of neologizing, particularly around "spam", seems to delight in sounding scatological. I wish people would think first - the last thing modern english needs is more deliberate ugliness.
Blogger has addressed the "Flag" abuse issue. From their own internal "Blogger Buzz" blog (http://buzz.blogger.com/), it says: "From a technical standpoint, we are able to detect when multiple votes come from the same source. We prevent against ballot box stuffing. But most importantly, we're not automatically removing content based on the flags. We're using the feedback from Blog*Spot readers to help assess what the community has noted as potentially objectionable. In the cases where objectionable content has been identified, the most common action is for the support team to 'delist' the blog. This simply means that the blog is not promoted in areas of blogger.com like Recently Updated - but it's still viewable on the web. The content is not blocked or removed in anyway when the blog is delisted."
So for those who are concerned that their "enemies" might use the "Flag" feature to attack their blogs, relax!
Sun and Fun
This may be bit off topic; they got Blogger for MS-Word so that you can use Blogger from within Microsoft Word!!! They have same stuff with Google toolbar.
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splog
on our google blog so they too can delete spam comments.
Think a bit further. These are spam blogs. No one in their right mind is actually going to read them, so there must be another reason for their existence - and there is.
Search engines will take the links and rank them up. Not good.
Imagine a scenario where you and some of your friends sit down and write a really cool app. It works pretty well, so it gets posted online for others to enjoy, which many do. You don't charge money for it, but you and your friends maintain and update the app for whatever reasons you so desire, be they fun, recognition, etc.
:P
Then I download your app, throw up a website, strike all references that refer back to you, your friends, or even your app's name, and then charge people ten bucks a pop to download your software.
That company is doing just that with GIMP (example), among others. I'm no lawyer, but even if that is legal, it certainly is still morally wrong. Don't present other peoples' work as your own.
Now, if I were a spammer, instead of trying to randomly generate content with scripts, I would have the script copy entries from other blogs, and insert links throughout. I would also use CSS to make the links look like normal text. Finally, I'd get one of those "makepovertyhistory.org" banners on the top right hand corner of the screen, because they seem to disable clicks to the button that flags inappropriate content.
Also, check out this nifty trick. Way to get all the benefits of a spamful blog, but make people skittish about reporting it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...what happens when sex wackos flag religious blogs as objectionable?
True. But at some point, the operator of an easily- and widely-abused resource must bear some responsibility for the abuse initiated by others but through his system. Much like how various "affiliate" programs are widely abused on the Web.
Also, it is in Google's own best interests to minimize this kind of abuse. It dilutes their Blogger brand, and poisons their own search index.
spam blogs, on the other hand, are maintained by motivated spammers. they require a feedback system to report the blogger to the site administrator.
Who decides when, if someone includes a link to site related to a given blog post, that said link constitutes "splogging"?
Does it matter whether the author may profit from that link being clicked, the resulting page being viewed?
What about the small businessman, trying to bootstrap his way out of his humdrum job by offering "Bob's widget x" on his one-page, written-in-FrontPage site? Should he be penalized for blogging about his learning experiences? Or is the consensus that links have no place in blogs and businesspeople, when they go into business, may not bring their business into their blogs?
Free as in speech indeed.
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That's like saying convenience stores are the worst offenders in armed robbery. Surely the offender is the perpetrator, not the victim.
Yes, but Google isn't the victim. Google is just a mechanism. The people who are immediately hurt by this are normal internet users -- people who read blogs for content and who depend on pagerank to sift through the crud.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.