document updated 16 years ago, on Dec 10, 2007
effektz's multi-user multi-site stolen-image spam campaign on Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and others
effektz's multi-user multi-site stolen-image spam campaign on Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and others
- central site: zen2design.com
- reddit accounts (watch all)
- digg accounts
- spam accounts elsewhere
- domains
(»» = sites that, on their face, are dedicated to something other than single image posts, but nonetheless host contextless images that are spammed to other sites, in an apparent attempt to raise the domain's PageRank)
(report generated by this script)
- problems:
- They're made-for-AdSense sites that just copy their content from elsewhere (evidence)
- All text descriptions (except for the title) are removed from the images, making it much harder to educate oneself more if one is interested in the photos. For example, this photo set probably came from here. One of the images contains a small red arrow in one of the pictures, but the picsdown.com copy is missing the explanation for what the red arrow is pointing to.
- The fact that they're trying to maintain 15 parallel blogs seems to indicate that they're less interested in consistently high quality or attracting a sustained reader base.
- what can users do? (unless/until an admin bans them)
- stop upvoting contextless images!
- if you do like tumblelogs like this, there are better, less spammy alternatives:
linkinn.com,
mixx.com,
incredimazing.com,
...
- if these type of sites really bug you... well, it'd be nice to locate a community that didn't value insubstantial tumblelogs so much, but in lieu of that... the Reddit Content Filter can be installed, which allows you to block stories based on website or submitter
- discussions
Compiled by interiot. Last major update: 2007-12-12.