What I'm still wondering... was Horse_ebooks was linking to completely unaffiliated spammy content, or did they build an entire constellation of shitty websites

What I'm still wondering... was Horse_ebooks was linking to completely unaffiliated spammy content, or did they build an entire constellation of shitty websites? And, most importantly, who actually wrote this visitor-triggered cron job script[1][2]? [1] http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355 EDIT: A ha! It appears they purchased Horse_ebooks from an actual Russian web developer in 2011 (who ostensibly actually built quotestatusjoke.com), and linked to legitimate crappy third party self-help ebook websites.