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No Press Is Bad Press Even Online
otter42 writes "The NYTimes has an 8-page exposé on how an online business is thriving because of giant amounts of negative reviews. It seems that if you directly google the company you have no problem discerning the true nature; but if you instead only google the brand names it sells, the company is at the top of the rankings. Turns out that all the negative advertisement he generates from reputable sites gives him countless links that inflate his pagerank."
Or maybe not use hyperlinks? I mean, if I want to warn people about www.crazyscammer.com, why would I need to make it into a clickable link? I don't. Now he gets linked from NYTimes. Well done.
No, how about the regulatory agencies responsible for handling business licensing, fraud, and criminal prosecutions actually get off their ass and do something about this guy?
It should be easy enough to set up a sting on him. Buy a pair of glasses, check if they're fakes, attempt to return them, see what he does in return and record any messages he leaves along with any other interactions with a "honeypot" credit card account.
The problem is that law enforcement agencies in the US aren't interested in doing their jobs when it comes to criminals like Borker.
This shows the failure of how hyperlinks works and how the page rank algorithm works.
In fact what this shows is the failure of the current idea that people don't need to be educated about computers. In this case, the question the person has asked is "which is the most 'interesting' link related to Lafont eyglasses". And "interesting" is defined as something like "most discussed". The person thinks they have asked "magically tell me where is the most interesting Lafont link for me".
Page rank is doing exactly what it's meant to do. Now people have to understand what that is. Once they do that, they have to work out how to get what they want (e.g. look for "Lafont shopping comparison" then track through different comparison sites).
Google can add tools which help people understand results. A direct link to shopping ratings for example, but people still need to be willing to do the work to understand what the computer is doing for them.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
How about combining the worst with the worst? Add "nofollow" to any links in negative reviews, and copy negative reviews to a shadow site that's filled with links to sites known for porn, pedophilia, viruses and malware.
John
It may be that the guy is raking in cash today, but he's not just being a jackass: he's committing crimes. It's fiendishly difficult to prosecute some kinds of online crimes, especially when routed through overseas sites, but this guy does not seem to be protecting himself.
It's always wise to be suspicious of "trend" stories, since newspapers love to spot a single instance, call it a "trend", and get everybody yapping. But even if there is a "trend" here, it'll get cut right short if this guy gets arrested.
Which may be the real purpose behind the piece: take an injustice that is too small for authorities to take notice, raise its profile, and take some satisfaction when the police step in.
There may well be a marketing tactic to be had in providing rotten customer service and benefiting from the links provided by sites too dumb to use "nofollow". But there's a line between "rotten service" and "outright fraud", and this guy is well over it.
Unfortunately, TFA makes this guy sound like someone 4chan would worship, actually: a man who's made internet trolling into a successful business model! If anything, 4chan users are more likely to emulate than emasculate.
This guy's got Russian Mafia written all over him.
If you do decide to fuck with him, I suggest you make VERY sure whatever you do
cannot be traced back to you. I've known a few of these characters, and they
make anything you saw in "The Godfather" look like Sesame Street.