
Maddox on Link-Baiting Aggregation Sites - asianexpress
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ranker_sucks
======
snowwrestler
This is the state of the Internet under the DMCA--anyone can post or repost
anything, even if they don't own it, and it is the burden of the original
content owner to find each instance of unauthorized use and request it be
taken down.

Part of Maddox's post addresses the frustration this can cause among people
who create original content for a living. It seems to me that this frustration
drives a lot of the worst impulses of groups like the RIAA and MPAA.

It also seems likely to me that there could be good technological solutions to
the problem, that don't require lawsuits and crazy new laws. However, there is
no incentive for people to develop these technological solutions. Instead the
financial incentives (in this case, ad revenue) drive tech folks to build
stupid sites like Ranker.com.

Acknowledged: I'm only addressing part of the story here...the friendly "you
might like this!" emails are ridiculous. It's probably some 20 year old making
8 dollars an hour sending them...the 21st century equivalent of the
telemarketer.

~~~
asianexpress
I definitely agree with you -- but I do think it's a double-edged sword. On
one hand a lot of unauthorized content gets posted and people get frustrated
because their original content is ripped/duplicated (with other people
sometimes taking credit!), but on the other hand, the ease with which people
can post stuff also leads to greater exposure.

Any extra steps to post content can mean the difference between something
going viral and something remaining unseen in the dark corners of the
Internet. I don't know if this is a good comparison, but this reminds me of
the piracy study[1] that said piracy was beneficial for sales. These lists are
a way of "pirating"/distributing content, though it seems without any real
gain to the original creator due to lack of attribution (that's where the
comparison definitely breaks down). I suppose the two would be more similar if
you could somehow watermark the content to somehow point it back at the
creator

Obviously, this method is really annoying for a lot of us, but the fact that
it works so well and is generating all that traffic, likens it to all that
Viagra spam we get -- people keep clicking! I don't know if there's any amount
of technology that will help people gain common sense

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-
sales...](http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-piracy-boosts-music-sales-study-
finds-120517/)

------
trimbo
I just signed up for Ranker to figure out the email situation for Maddox.

\- They send through mailgun.net.

\- Mailgun.net doesn't include list-unsubscribe header, which means that spam
reports from Google apps/gmail won't back to the sender.

\- If no unsubscribe link is included, then CAN-SPAM is not being followed
either.

So if you wanted to unsubscribe from this, the only way to do it is mail the
list owner directly (in this case, Nicole).

Suggestions:

\- Mailgun needs to implement list-unsubscribe if they want to get back spam
reports from ISPs that don't support ARF/JMRP.

\- Mailgun should ensure their customers adhere to CAN-SPAM laws, which
requires a working "opt-out" link.

------
digitalsushi
It was satisfying to have this pattern defined by someone. If there is a
content akin to peanut butter cups and dollar menu meals, these aggregation
sites are the best fit. And, like a peanut butter cup left at my keyboard,
when I happen upon one, I will digest each, and the consequences are mentally
similar- indigestion of the mind, malaise, unease. And the uneasy insight I'll
just do it again and again.

------
rmATinnovafy
I thought Maddox had "retired". After reading his book, like five hundred
years ago, I sort of forgot him. I'm glad he is still the same old in-your-
face writer that he is.

He does make a good point. Cheap content is a big problem these days. Cheap
content that can be easily copied by scrappers, that is. Maybe this will force
content providers to change the medium?

~~~
jasonlotito
This pretty much sums up what's going on with "Chance."

<http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=second_chance_af>

~~~
mbell
That was an April fools joke.

------
maybird
Not to defend ranker.com, but maybe maddox@xmission.com really isn't in their
database.

It's possible that someone is automatically forwarding a different address to
maddox's inbox.

It'd be worth examining the SMTP header of one of these messages and tracing
back the ownership of each relay.

~~~
biot
The text of the personal reply makes this possibility unlikely:

    
    
      I'd really hate to lose the "Best Page In The Universe",
      maybe we can find something a bit more suited to your liking.
    

Obviously it's not just a random email address that someone forwarded on to
Maddox if the site name is specifically mentioned.

~~~
ovi256
Biot, meet formmail. Formmail, mmet biot. So it goes.

------
AgentConundrum
> _It's similar to the copout line included in email marketing when companies
> know their contact lists are spurious, but they want to err on the side of
> self-interest by emailing you anyway: "if you received this email by
> accident, please unsubscribe by using the unsubscribe button."_

That's not a cop out line. For some websites, yes, it very well could be, but
there is a legitimate purpose to it as well. _Anybody_ can go on a website and
enter "maddox@xmission.com" in the email input box for a subscription to
SpamMePlease.com, even people who aren't Maddox. Putting that line in the
email is a way of saying "you might not have done this, so here's a quick link
you can use to tell us to fuck off."

You can argue that they should use a "confirm this subscription" email
instead, but the two options aren't _that_ dissimilar when you think about it.

~~~
colkassad
Sure they are. I have a common name for a gmail address (early adopter). I get
emails for every Steve, Shirley, Shane, Stephanie, Sam, etc in the world who
have my last name and a gmail account. I also get emails from every mailing
list these people have signed up for that do not use confirmation emails. The
email address has become unusable because of that alone.

~~~
jwallaceparker
>> I have a common name for a gmail address (early adopter). I get emails for
every Steve, Shirley, Shane, Stephanie, Sam, etc in the world who have my last
name

I do, too.

Have fun with it?

I get emails for every "J" name with my same last name. At times I respond and
get into a whole lot of mischief.

~~~
colkassad
Yes, it can be tempting, especially the chain mail senders who ignore my "you
have the wrong email address" pleas.

------
laconian
Oh god, I love seeing Maddox beat this drum.

Calling out HuffPo was awesome too.

~~~
derleth
I'd rather see him call out HuffPo for promoting dangerously idiotic quack
bullshit.

[http://www.scienceduck.com/2010/07/08/the-huffington-post-
ha...](http://www.scienceduck.com/2010/07/08/the-huffington-post-has-a-soft-
spot-for-pseudoscience/)

~~~
fusiongyro
I think your link is broken.

~~~
derleth
Thanks; here's another:

[http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/huffpo_once_again_running...](http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/huffpo_once_again_running_irresponsible_quackery)

[http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/10/26/huffpost-
health...](http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/10/26/huffpost-health-a-
soon-to-be-one-stop-sh/)

------
DanBC
Cracked.com has mastered the shitty 'listicle'[1].

(<http://www.wired.com/magazine/tag/cracked-com/>)

([http://www.cracked.com/article_16272_the-top-7-secrets-to-
wr...](http://www.cracked.com/article_16272_the-top-7-secrets-to-writing-
cracked.com-top-7-list.html))

about the spam: I miss the days of god-tier trolls SPEWS.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Cracked at least makes a modicum of effort -- they have a stable of columnists
who are more focused on being funny or informative than being eye-grabbing
(Seanbaby probably being the most well known).

9gag and FunnyJunk are a whole different level of content farming.

~~~
duskwuff
> Cracked at least makes a modicum of effort

In particular, Cracked at least makes a pretty decent attempt to make their
(mostly original!) editorial content the focus of their articles. The
"listicles" that Maddox is really focusing his ire at here generally have
little to no original content at all -- the bulk of their posts are either
"borrowed" images or scraped/stolen content.

------
laconian
I want Maddox to riff on those those insipid ads that go like: "Single mom in
Podunk, OH discovers 1 silly trick to make wrinkles disappear, and doctors
HATE her!" So much potential for comedy there.

~~~
dools
You should send that to him as a suggestion. He loves it when his readers
suggests things they'd like him to write about.

~~~
Drbble
Don't make Maddox do all the work. Post a list of 7 funny comments on your own
site and I bet Maddox would want to link to it.

------
PaulHoule
oddly, hardly anyone realizes that Ranker.com is actually one of the most
successful semantic web plays...

~~~
DrCatbox
Say what?

~~~
PaulHoule
They use data from Freebase (the little brother of the Google Knowledge Graph)
to help users populate the lists.

They get 8+ million page views on a good week.

~~~
adventureful
Fortunately Google's Panda has dramatically slowed down the growth for sites
like Ranker. Google applies an extremely heavy penalty for using content from
sites like Freebase and Wikipedia. If those penalties didn't exist, there's
little question Ranker would be a top 1k site.

Other lame content theft sites like Mahalo have been practically put out of
their misery.

~~~
PaulHoule
Ranker ~is~ a top 1k site.

Personally I've looked over the data for a number of successes and failures
and I don't believe the conventional story about Panda.

Adding the data in this article to everything else I know about Ranker just
confirms my model of what works and what doesn't.

~~~
nowarninglabel
No, they are not, at least not according to major reporters of such stats.
What measure are you pointing to in order to indicate they are a top 1k site?

~~~
PaulHoule
they ranked at #992 in Quantcast last week; they're got the Quantcast tracking
code too, so the traffic numbers aren't crazy

------
lukejduncan
There is a gmail plugin for sending canned responses. For repeat spam
offenders I create a filter that automatically deletes the email and responds
with a canned "Stop spamming me. Your original email was deleted and never
read." I never have to deal with the spam and they have to deal with mine.

~~~
donatzsky
That's assuming your replies end up in a mailbox they actually monitor,
though.

~~~
lukejduncan
Typically these repeat spammers are individuals who manage some community
email list (think apartment association or university student org) and don't
know how to do anything but add people and copy/paste into the to field. For
these people it works great.

------
Natsu
> Tools to automatically check whether or not submitted content was original
> would be trivial to make. Yet they don't exist because it's not in these
> sites' best interest to stop accepting stolen bullshit.

How is a tool supposed to know who has permission to do what? Yes, you can use
heuristics to make guesses. But you're making _guesses_ , you don't actually
know anything.

~~~
Zak
He's talking about originality, not permission. An automated tool could fairly
reliably determine how much content was already posted elsewhere.

~~~
Natsu
Permission is what's required. I get that he hates that, but that doesn't make
him right.

He's using the number of other copies as a heuristic. But that heuristic fails
when people _want_ to spread their content, which is far less uncommon than he
believes.

~~~
Zak
Permission is what's required to keep from getting sued, except that the DMCA
keeps you from getting sued when it's user-submitted content. Permission isn't
necessary at all. Maddox is promoting originality because it's a component of
having a quality site. I'm sure he's aware that most of the people running
those sites don't care about quality and is making an issue out of it because
he wants other people to dislike the sites.

------
RegEx
I've linked to terrible list posts just for easy references. I'm sorry for
making the web a worse place :-\ I'll be much more diligent from this point
on.

------
dfxm12
I know this is more like a sub point of the article, but I'm amazed at how
poorly people deal with spam.

~~~
drivingmenuts
That's because it's illegal in most municipalities to douse spammers in
gasoline and light them on fire.

------
alanh
Blech, all-caps large bold Arial just _screams_ “I DON’T KNOW WHAT HELVETICA
IS.”

Love that a Maddox page hit HN front page, though. It’s like a blast from the
past, but new.

 _Edit to make this comment slightly more acceptable on HN:_ CSS protip: If
you want to show Helvetica to OS X users but not Windows users who are lucky
enough to have it installed because Windows renders Helvetica like shit, use
this font stack:

    
    
      font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial,
        Helvetica, sans-serif;

------
fak3r
Yes, yes, 100 times yes. I'm so sick of the shallow, mindless BS these sites
repost constantly. Great post, great details and investigation. Thanks

------
benologist
I thought this was going to be about Mashable. :(

~~~
AznHisoka
I read Maddox as Madoff, and thought this was written by Madoff about how SEO
is like a pyramid scheme :(

------
skrebbel
Damn, that was a very long and hard to read Maddox article. He's losing his
charm. Or growing up, or something like that.

~~~
trentmb
Even more likely, you're growing up.

Maddox was funny when I was 12. I'm 22 now.

~~~
bwahahahaha
"I'm 22 now."

Priceless!

~~~
chrisdone
Being younger is hilarious!

~~~
muyuu
I know, right? when I was 3 I didn't understand the hilarity of it all. But
now I'm almost 7 and I know it all.

------
Camillo
Nobody has mentioned this yet, but if HN doesn't, who will? So, here goes: the
graph makes no sense! Overlying the reading time and attention span graphs
only makes sense if they use the same scales, but then why would attention
span decrease as the number of list items increases? Shouldn't it be a simple
horizontal line?

~~~
saturn
Maybe it means "remaining attention span"?

------
jamespcole2
For some reason whenever I read Maddox's posts I picture him as Spider
Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan

------
McKittrick
finding it ironic that i found this article on HN, a content aggregation
site...;)

~~~
lotharbot
HN is a different beast. We link to others' content instead of rehosting and
claiming credit (and ad revenue) for it, and much of the value of HN comes
from the original content we post in the comment threads. This site doesn't
even vaguely resemble spammy content rehosting sites.

~~~
McKittrick
I was being a bit cheeky. I agree that HN is different than the some of the
blatantly awful aggregation sites. HN uses only headlines, gives attribution,
etc. I don't buy the community argument though - lots of sites take linked
headlines, snippets and degraded images and package it up with a comment
system. Aggregation - community driven, algorithmic, etc. - is still
aggregation.

------
tubbo
this is basically 8 out of every 10 Huffington Post articles

------
stevejabs
Apparently it's perfectly okay for him to post lists though?

[http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=overrated_sandwi...](http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=overrated_sandwiches)

~~~
alexanderh
Did you even read the entire article? The link you posted is fair use images,
and 100% original writing content. It has nothing todo with what he is
complaining about.

------
adventureful
He certainly whines very impressively and profanely. The comedy is in his
article having contributed about as much value as any given content
aggregator, it's little more than a big bitch fest.

~~~
skunkworks
That seems like needless hyperbole, if not a poor attempt at snark. There's
plenty of content in there.

------
archetypical
I agree linkbait lists are garbage, but the writing is awful and full of
profanities, and the author goes on and on about the linkbait content he
supposedly despises (complete with pictures).

I was going to say it all comes off as gradeschool, but little kids have it
much more together.

~~~
duskwuff
This is what Maddox does (and has been doing since 1996).

------
lubujackson
Wow, I remember reading similar "insight" about top 10 lists back when Digg
was the thing. Somehow I'm not surprised this website looks like it was made
in 1993.

~~~
Animus7
That's because it _was_ made in the 90's. Maddox has been writing for ages
[1], and he keeps the site "shitty" as a sign of protest [2].

[1] <http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=archive>

[2] <http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=faq>

------
magikbum
Ironic that this article is in itself linked..

~~~
bonzoesc
Not really; it's linked here, not copied wholesale here.

------
ckluis
Personally, you can't blame people for doing their jobs.

You can however blame them for repeat spamming you. Blaming the list is just
dumb.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"Personally, you can't blame people for doing their jobs."_

Woah. Why not? Why can I not blame someone for doing a job that's a net
negative to society? Why can I not blame someone for doing a job that's purely
parasitic and creates absolutely nothing of value?

By that logic, I can't blame dealers for pushing crack to kids - because
they're just doing their jobs. Or, more legally, I can't blame used car
salesman for being lying, swindling cheats, because they're "just doing their
jobs".

~~~
AznHisoka
because life is a rigged game and some people came into this world with a poor
hand. if you blame ppl for doing their jobs, you have to blame God for
creating an unfair world.

