Spam fighter releases splog plugin
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Tagged with: A while ago this plugin called WP-Autoblog came to my attention. It struck me as 'funny' because it's a plugin that will definitely be used by people who steal content routinely to place this content on their splogs. I must admit that Elliott Back is honest about this.
This plugin is potentially dangerous: it converts xml into Wordpress posts. It could be used to run an aggregator site, or it might be used by spammers to push high-profit keywords into their blogs.
Elliott Back
Nevertheless, a plugin like this being released by the author of WP HashCash does strike me as weird. Especially since Elliott's been sending DMCY's occasionally himself after finding out people had stolen his content!
Being an (ex) blog spam fighter myself I don't really like plugins like WP-Autoblog being released. Last year I already wrote about content theft with the help of RSS. In this article I already expressed my concerns about what people might or might not do with the full RSS feeds of our carefully crafted publications. With WP-Autoblog, stealing content has never been easier. You don't even have to do anything. Everything is working fully automatized.
While I can perfectly understand Elliott's motivation for writing this plugin (learning more about RSS) I think releasing it was a bad, bad, bad idea. I'm sure a plugin like this can have it's legitimate merit's but I personally feel it's blatantly obvious that it's number one use will be the thing we've all learned to hate: splogs on which we're going to find OUR content with ads placed all around it.
So what do you think?
At 03 July '06 - 09:25 Michel wrote:
Maybe the plug-in shouldn’t be released in it’s current form, but with some adaptions it really should be released. If we’re holding back on ideas just because they can use it for their actions, then they’ve won!
At 03 July '06 - 18:40 Elliott Back wrote:
At 03 July '06 - 18:59 Jonathan Bailey wrote:
Yes, this is a dangerous tool and yes, almost certainly, it will be used almost exclusively for stealing content and creating splogs. Sad, but true.
Many people have very strong misconceptions about the intentions of RSS and feel that anything in a feed is “fair game” for lifting. I sharply disagree, and so do the courts from what I’ve read.
Still, this is probably the least scary of the tools out there. I can’t imagine any professional splogger using this. There are so many more powerful tools available that can do so many more things, this program, for the purpose of pure splogging, seems like a waste.
Frankly, it’s painfully slow to install WP, set up plugin, find feeds, and set up blog when you’re trying to create thousands of sites.
There are other scraper and content generator packages out there doing far more damage.
So yes, it does worry me, but there are much more “evil” apps out there.
At 04 July '06 - 04:50 Marco wrote:
This whole ‘reblogging’ thing is never 100% ‘white hat’ in my opinion. It’s a scale with various shades of grey and black. One could do it to build splogs or at best to duplicate one’s own content to several sites for ‘SEO purposes’. Both aren’t exactly 100% ‘kosher’ now are they?
I also agree there are more evil tools than this one.
At 05 July '06 - 01:41 Max wrote:
If you want to throw stuff into the “shady SEO”-corner, you can firmly plant Taggerati there as well — it’s a great tool for building a more dense internal link structure. Heck, toss in WordPress too, as it allows you to use SE-friendly URLs out of the box.
Furthermore, just “not releasing” a piece of software because it might be (or even “very likely will be”) used by The Dark Side is a bit surprising, coming from a developer. There’s such an incredible pile of software that can be (and is) used in evil ways, but in “white hat” ways as well. If the author hadn’t released it, that would mean that EITHER the good guys would be suffering from the bad guys, OR that someone else came up with the same idea and DID release it.
I think Elliot did the right thing by releasing. Like he said, he’s not the only one, and like Jonathan said, there are even better “spamming solutions”, too.
I’ll be sure to check out Elliot’s plugin for the next version of my site.
At 05 July '06 - 10:02 Marco wrote:
I firmly disagree. I have Flickr stuff integrated on my site as well. Many people have their del.icio.us links on it. This is an entirely different ballpark than duplicating entire blog articles and republishing them. Same thing goes for Taggerati. Nothing wrong with enhancing internal link structure. No content is copied or recreated. In fact I don’t think more internal links add much to search engine rankings.
I agree the tool CAN be used legitimately but I still fear 99% of it’s users will use it for grey-to-black hat purposes.
At 12 July '06 - 21:25 dennis wrote:
At 11 February '07 - 02:08 paulz wrote:
But most of them are from Splogs stealing content with elliott’s plugin.
So elliot’s various disclaimers fly in the face of the immediate commercial benefit he derives from making the plugin available.
Evil. Very evil.
At 11 February '07 - 18:48 Elliott C. Back wrote:
At 11 February '07 - 20:04 paulz wrote:
I’d just like to point out that I don’t derive any benefit from it
9,000 Google backlinks, 20,000 Yahoo and every single stolen post has a backlink to your site. Technorati ranked 1,403th by links with every splog linking back to your site. That’s how I found it.
That is the major benefit Elliott, without the splogs you wouldn’t have the traffic.
How can you claim not to derive any benefit?
That’s why this is so evil. It is dishonest to say there is no benefit.
It is disingenuous to say “if I don’t do it someone else will”. That’s what the Nazi jailers at Auschwitz and Birkenau said.
If you don’t understand the words “dishonest” and “disingenuous” try “hypocrite” and “traitor”.
At 08 March '07 - 23:46 Elliott Back wrote:
See, before WP Autoblog came out, I already had the traffic. If you check out