Oh, you guys think OUR 1-bombers are a problem...

[MrPixel]

One-bombing is now monetized: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/...e_code=1.lk8.P9h1.FqzHejHCjV-Z&smid=url-share

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I ain't clickin' dat.

 

[MrPixel]

 

[iwatchus]

One-bombing is now monetized: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/...e_code=1.lk8.P9h1.FqzHejHCjV-Z&smid=url-share

For people who don't want to follow the link, the headline is

Small Businesses Face a New Threat: Pay Up or Be Flooded With Bad Reviews​

 

[AchtungNight]

Disappointed but not surprised.

 

[iwatchus]

@EmilyMiller was talking in another thread about some people knowing how to avoid the sweeps, but the have mostly worked to recover my scores. I guess I have not run afoul of that particular terrorist organization. And I thought I had managed to offend most everyone here at some point in the last 5 months.

Where the trolls do win is your medium term engagement. (I have not been around long enough to understand long term engagement.)

One of my more recent stories caught the ire of someone. It is a predictable romance about an accountant and a photographer. It got multiple ones the first day and for the first week, it would slowly recover during the evening hours only to take another arrow overnight. After the sweeps, it has almost the same rating as the previous romance I had written, but about half the views that one had after the same number of days available. I have seen this trend with other stories. Getting effectively bombed early destroys the crucial first week views.

I have no idea why someone object so much to that story. It was pretty innocuous. If you hate romances that much, my others haven't been hit like that and there is a certain sameness to all the romance stories. Maybe their ex was an accountant or something.

 

[Duleigh]

I have no idea why someone object so much to that story.

I had a story that hovered around 4.93 for years, then one day it started attracting low votes. One noticeable vote a day, day after day, it was chapter 3 of an 8 chapter story in Sci-fi. The troll drove it down to 4.45. I reported it over and over and TPTB did NOTHING until I showed Laurel my stats (I save my stats EVERY day and have been doing that for years) After a few sweeps it's back up but nowhere near where it sat for years. The troll then moved his/her/its view to 3 other stories, each one is chapter 3 of its series. I'm back to communicating with TPTB who seem to enjoy this game

 

[AwkwardMD]

One-bombing is now monetized: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/...e_code=1.lk8.P9h1.FqzHejHCjV-Z&smid=url-share

I hate it

 

[lovecraft68]

This doesn't even touch the political side of things "So and so's ad was left/right wing" we're going to boycott and review bomb them!

Blessed be the internet for creating an entire society that needs a slap in the mouth.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Guess score-based algorithms and things like that were a mistake all along. Who knew?

 

[iwatchus]

I have always objected to KPI's (Key Performance Indicators). Invariably, people end up working to improving the KPI rather than the actual thing that the KPI is a surrogate for. And now it encourages a secondary market in KPI manipulation.

Taylor never understood the ramifications of his Scientific Management theories, and managers still make the same mistake a century later.

 

[ChloeTzang]

For people who don't want to follow the link, the headline is

Small Businesses Face a New Threat: Pay Up or Be Flooded With Bad Reviews​

This has been around for years. Started with websites dedicated to giving assholes an avenue to slander businesses - they used SEO to make sure when you searched their website was high in the search enhgine visobility and you had to pay them to remove the shit reviews. It was a scam then and its a scam now. The review sites are basically meaningless at this point. My husband had this with his business website - copped a few one star reviews from some customer who was a nutcase - nothing much yu could do about it but I did find the customer and guess what, he had a small business and lol - he now has a shitload of appalingly bad reviews himself that just won't go away so I know about that one rotflmao and every time the dude manages to get the bad reviews of the 1st page of SEO results I go in and bump things up again.

It's like Google Ads - so manipulated its not even worth bothering with. I did all the google ads for my husbands business and it went really well for a few months until google changed their algorythms or something and that fucked it up - I spent hours with googles account reps or whatever the fuck the useless tits are but they couldn't improve the results - and at that point the expenditure on ads was a losing proposition so we just binned Goole Ads as not worth it - for a small business you cant afford the real Google Ad professionals who might be able to do something, Google's consultants are in my personal experience worthless and it's just not worth the money. So we saved $1500 a month on Ads and it hasn't impacted his new business in the slightest - most of it is referrals from existing customers or other professionals now, which is impervious to shit reviews.....

Anyhow, this one has been around forever, just new techniques and really, there's not a lot you can do except get good reviews from genuine customers. I think most people are aware of the one star game now anyhow and just discount those - they're usually pretty obvious - and look for genuine reviews

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I'm in favor of only allowing "signed" ratings from logged-in accounts, personally. And the "sweeps" could eliminate accounts that one-bomb repeatedly.

Not that Laurel cares what I think, or really should.

--Annie

 

[iwatchus]

I'm in favor of only allowing "signed" ratings from logged-in accounts, personally. And the "sweeps" could eliminate accounts that one-bomb repeatedly.

Not that Laurel cares what I think, or really should.

--Annie

I think the very reasonable counter argument is many people do not want to create an account at an erotica site and giving these anonymous souls a chance to vote keeps them more engaged with the site, and pays to keep the lights on. And I like having this site stay live.

 

[nice90sguy]

I'm perfectly happy to accept bribes from any authors here, but note, I charge $0.01 per star, so it will cost you a nickel for a 5-bomb.

 

[Comshaw]

This doesn't even touch the political side of things "So and so's ad was left/right wing" we're going to boycott and review bomb them!

Blessed be the internet for creating an entire society that needs a slap in the mouth.

"Social media made y'all way to[o] comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." Mike Tyson

I agree. My policy is if you wouldn't stand eyeball to eyeball with someone and say a thing, don't say it on the 'net either.

But there always were and will always be those who delight in biting people in the ass, then running away before they get caught. Grifters and conmen intent on nothing but making a buck at the expense of everyone else.

That said it doesn't burn my ass so much that these people do it or try it. I expect it of certain parts of the population. The part that riles me is that Google, who is making bucket loads of money from these small businesses can't be bothered to try to put a stop (or at a minimum reduce the instances) to it. They keep taking from the little guy with one hand while passing out platitudes (we have a tool on the way! Trust me!) about helping. Meanwhile people lose their livelihood, go broke and close their doors.

We are now back in the preunion 1890-1920 era when working people were used up like disposable products for profit and then tossed aside. The only difference is this time the world of the internet is the place where it's happening.

Comshaw

 

[lovecraft68]

"Social media made y'all way to[o] comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it." Mike Tyson

I agree. My policy is if you wouldn't stand eyeball to eyeball with someone and say a thing, don't say it on the 'net either.

But there always were and will always be those who delight in biting people in the ass, then running away before they get caught. Grifters and conmen intent on nothing but making a buck at the expense of everyone else.

That said it doesn't burn my ass so much that these people do it or try it. I expect it of certain parts of the population. The part that riles me is that Google, who is making bucket loads of money from these small businesses can't be bothered to try to put a stop (or at a minimum reduce the instances) to it. They keep taking from the little guy with one hand while passing out platitudes (we have a tool on the way! Trust me!) about helping. Meanwhile people lose their livelihood, go broke and close their doors.

We are now back in the preunion 1890-1920 era when working people were used up like disposable products for profit and then tossed aside. The only difference is this time the world of the internet is the place where it's happening.

Comshaw

There was the long standing thing about how drinking gave people liquid courage.

But you still had to be physically present.

Now we have keyboard warriors who's toughest real life fight was when they had to cut through a tough piece of steak.

Back when you ran your mouth and then found people waiting outside for you, people were much more careful with what they said.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Back when you ran your mouth and then found people waiting outside for you, people were much more careful with what they said.

Back in the days of the Plague when they came by with wooden carts every day, you could just throw your dead out in the street.

 

[lovecraft68]

Back in the days of the Plague when they came by with wooden carts every day, you could just throw your dead out in the street.

I think today's equivalent would be Darwinism.

All it takes is the "Put a bag over your head and tie it around your neck' Tiktok challenge and we'll be sweeping the lemmings off the street.

 

[Trionyx]

I had a story that hovered around 4.93 for years, then one day it started attracting low votes. One noticeable vote a day, day after day, it was chapter 3 of an 8 chapter story in Sci-fi. The troll drove it down to 4.45. I reported it over and over and TPTB did NOTHING until I showed Laurel my stats (I save my stats EVERY day and have been doing that for years) After a few sweeps it's back up but nowhere near where it sat for years. The troll then moved his/her/its view to 3 other stories, each one is chapter 3 of its series. I'm back to communicating with TPTB who seem to enjoy this game

Similar story. After over two years of relatively stable scores and nearly a thousand votes, one of my stories had an uptick in numbers of votes per day and lo and behold, the score dropped precipitously. Doing the math confirmed that over twenty days the average score had to have been a full two points below the prior average in order to drop it so much. I had noticed a similar trend in several of my other better scores but this was the first time I had documented it. The sweep for the Summer stories didn’t touch the score or the number of votes on any of my older stories as it has done in the past.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

There was the long standing thing about how drinking gave people liquid courage.

But you still had to be physically present.

Now we have keyboard warriors who's toughest real life fight was when they had to cut through a tough piece of steak.

Back when you ran your mouth and then found people waiting outside for you, people were much more careful with what they said.

An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. - Robert Heinlein.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm in favor of only allowing "signed" ratings from logged-in accounts, personally. And the "sweeps" could eliminate accounts that one-bomb repeatedly.

Not that Laurel cares what I think, or really should.

--Annie

The vote rate at best is one in a hundred views. If you allowed account names only to vote, that would drop to one in two or three hundred and be utterly meaningless. Less than noise on any kind of measurement scale.

We all get vote bombs, we all get votes swept, no-one gets advantaged or disadvantaged in the long run. Paranoia about anons voting or commenting is ridiculous, really, just means people haven't thought it through. Or haven't been around long enough not to care.

Or... folk are getting low votes for a reason, but they don't want to think about that. Ooo, you're not allowed to say that, EB.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

We all get vote bombs, we all get votes swept, no-one gets advantaged or disadvantaged in the long run. Paranoia about anons voting or commenting is ridiculous, really, just means people haven't thought it through. Or haven't been around long enough not to care.

Unless you're secretly Manu, you don't know that.

--Annie

 

[ElectricBlue]

Unless you're secretly Manu, you don't know that.

--Annie

I've been here eleven years, and my oldest stories still get the occasional score adjustment. So sweeps go back into the data set at least that far back. I haven't entered a contest for years, but my most recent stories always get an adjustment when contest sweeps go through. It's therefore a logical conclusion that all stories get swept, regardless whether it's in a contest or not. Why would the site set different parameters for different authors? It makes no sense, to think that.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Yeah, but I was thinking of the assertion that everyone gets the same number of 1-bombs.

no-one gets advantaged or disadvantaged in the long run