There is a lot of disinformation when it comes to politics—and now you know why it was important for me to get rid of the disinformation about me. No, it’s not because anything written about me could have affected an election. But it is about a medium that takes effort to stay clean and usable, […]
Tag: disinformation
How to deal with the shrinking, independent, human web
I alluded to this earlier this year when we redid JY&A’s links’ directory, but Joan Westenberg confirms it with some real stats. Once upon a time, the web seemed limitless, but now ‘we’re trapped in digital zoos built by tech giants. Google. Facebook. Amazon. Apple. Microsoft. They’ve carved up the web into their private empires, […]
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The new disinformation posts may have stopped, but there’s tidying to do
In the businesses I’m actually involved in, there aren’t that many unsavoury people. Maybe in the early to mid-2000s I came across some hangers-on in the fashion world. But SEO, wow, there’s a great deal of unscrupulousness. I’ve seen their con-merchant emails since the late 1990s—all the more reason that being grouped as one of […]
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Continuing the disinformation removal and bot blocks
Call me an idealist, but I think people should stop using those search engine copy massaging programs, write like real humans, and expect the technology to bend to us, rather than the other way round. That’s how we still conduct business. There are still disinformation pages about me out there, but no new ones since […]
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Forty-eight hours without new disinformation—dare we hope for seventy-two?
Now isn’t that interesting? After posting about Semrush on their Reddit, where their error is laid bare for all to see, I have now had a blissful 48 hours where there were no new disinformation posts about yours truly pop up on Google searches. So much for Semrush claiming that it could not remove a […]
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The trials of removing disinformation from Bluehost
Here’s a company that seems to protect sploggers and disinformation spreaders: Bluehost. One of the disinformation splogs had a Cloudflare account, which hid their real host. I filed a DMCA report, as this splogger was stupid enough to use my photo. These seem to get through the Cloudflare system better than things classified as ‘other’. […]
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Semrush finally explains how my (unspaced) name wound up in their system
Posting on Reddit has elicited something from Semrush, with Vic on their team writing this in response to me. Hi Jack, sorry for any confusion—I’ve been discussing the case with my team internally to make sure we’re all on the same page. Our system aims to predict trends using various signals, but sometimes […]
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Semrush doesn’t care about potentially botched data, or resulting disinformation; offers useless advice
PS., September 18, 1000 UTC: Semrush has reached out to me privately and seems willing to look into things. I won’t divulge private messages but this could be the breakthrough I had hoped for. P.PS., September 20: This is the follow-up. Semrush has responded on Reddit to what I posted yesterday: it helps […]
On the Semrush subreddit: ‘How the Keyword Magic Tool made my year hell’
Since emailing Semrush got nowhere, and sending a release to the search engine press got nowhere, maybe posting to their subreddit might work. Of course, it might get deleted. It might even make things worse and spark copycats. Who knows? But what choice do I have after nine months? How the Keyword Magic Tool made […]
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More disinformation sploggers point to Semrush
More disinformation sploggers have owned up and blamed Semrush, not that they are taking their posts down. The latest: Hope you are doing well. First of all we are extremely sorry for using the keyword related to your name. We only use this as a keyword. According to the semrush this keyword has potential of […]
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