Computer-generated image of people at the Museum of the Future, photographed by the author. The people appear on a screen but in broken form, appearing as a collection of blue, lit pixels against a black background.

Forgetting humanity: the desperation of tech

Computer-generated image of people at the Museum of the Future, photographed by the author. The people appear on a screen but in broken form, appearing as a collection of blue, lit pixels against a black background.

How very interesting to see that the disinformation posts about me have stopped going up since I called out Semrush on their own subreddit. For four days I’ve not found any new ones on Google. The timing tells me that Semrush can, contrary to its response, adjust keywords, especially after learning the sheer hell their […]

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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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If you’re still writing disinformation after all this, then tech is your master, and you are the slave

  If you peel away the technobabble of what Semrush said to me on Reddit, basically their algorithm messed up when it included an unspaced version of my name. It wasn’t trending. It was just an extrapolation made by an algorithm that, unfortunately, had a very negative consequence for me. But it also didn’t help […]

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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 […]

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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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Semrush, according to a customer: ‘Their data made no sense’

From a user on Reddit, _cth_. Need I say more? Semrush doesn’t care about how bad their product is, or the effect it has on the public.     Here’s someone paying US$14,000 per month for junk, so imagine how bad the data must be for the free or lower-paying users. I would be surprised […]

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The logical consequence of Semrush and its users’ misinformation: personal attacks

  This is the natural consequence of all the misinformation that Semrush encouraged its users to post through the crap generated by its Keyword Magic Tool: people attacking me on Reddit. And who can blame them? It could well look like I was behind this spam campaign, instead of being the victim. The deleted comment […]

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A rejected PSA for the de-Googling community on Reddit

Pity, this was just removed from the De-Google subreddit. Oh well, you try to do a public duty as a netizen … Here it is, as I’m not about to let it go to waste—I was hoping to share the love a bit more so legitimate websites had the full story. We all probably know […]

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The state of play of the internet

From Zero Janitor on Tumblr (and found as an image on Mastodon):     Sums up the state of play on the internet nicely. I can’t believe how badly the Reddit situation has been handled, but will leave that to others. A lot has already been written about it, and here’s a good piece in […]

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