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"Don't be evil" Rapgenius got punished for playing the game better than anyone else. Who's to say this couldn't happen to highly relevant sources of informati
by sscalia 13y ago
"Don't be evil"
Rapgenius got punished for playing the game better than anyone else.
Who's to say this couldn't happen to highly relevant sources of information? Wikipedia? Underground sites?
This is the equivalent of censorship.
- minimaxir 13y agoWhat? The "game" RapGenius played was the act of being evil.
- petercooper 13y agothe act of being evil. Let's get some perspective here. They were offering to promote people's pages in return for them linking back to them. Far from being evil, this isn't even illegal.
- codygman 13y agoSo? Only one thing matters: They broke the TOS and Google rightfully enforced it.
- tedivm 13y agoThe point isn't that Google was wrong in doing so, at least not in the thread you're responding to. The point was that violating a TOS is not "evil"- no one died, no one was tortured or raped, there weren't death camps or civil liberties being violated. This was stupid, it wasn't evil.
- captainmuon 13y agoWell, technically they didn't break the TOS, because you don't sign a TOS to get listed on Google. :-)
- codygman 13y agoWell, technically since they didn't sign up for getting listed on Google they shouldn't complain about getting delisted. :-) Also, they could have submitted their site to Google.
- JohnTHaller 13y agoFirst, you don't understand what censorship is. Second, RapGenius cheated the system. They knew they were cheating the system. They violated the public guidelines that tell you not to cheat the system. And now they are paying the price. Why is that so difficult to grasp?
- goldenkey 13y agoIn addition, they had no furtiveness; it appeared they thought this was something that required no concealment. I'm guessing they don't have a media relations employee, because any decent quality control would have said direct emails from @rapgenius to random folk about a seedy scheme aren't the best idea. At least a proxy should have been used.. Their emails were wanton risk, the wording had no stealth; they got what they deserved.
- randallsquared 13y ago> it appeared they thought this was something that required no concealment. Exactly so. It seems they were doing it in the open because they didn't understand that anyone would object.
- trevelyan 13y agoHighly relevant sources of information don't show up in the search results anyway.
- sejje 13y agoThey most certainly do in the vast majority of my searches.
- quack 13y agoWikipedia isnt gaming the system to make wikipedia relevant. Theyre not ramping up efforts to get inbound links from random blog websites. If anything this shows that RapGenius's numbers were hyper-inflated by SEO games rather than user relevance.
- cycrutchfield 13y ago"This is the equivalent of censorship." How is penalizing them for engaging in shady SEO tactics considered censorship?
- sejje 13y agoWhen I google "eminem lyrics" they don't show up in the results. Fine, whatever, seo penalty. When I google "rapgenius eminem" they don't appear in the results. That's pretty close to censorship. I'm not necessarily against it, but I don't disagree with the usage of the term.
- cycrutchfield 13y ago>When I google "rapgenius eminem" they don't appear in the results. That's pretty close to censorship. You can also go to rapgenius.com and search for eminem yourself. Or navigate a few pages in the search results until you find the link. Think of it this way, if I want to be listed in a phonebook but I'm an obviously shady actor and the phonebook company refuses, is that censorship? You play by the rules if you want to be ranked.
- sejje 13y agoBeing denied entry in a phone book is censorship. It doesn't matter if it's merited or not. I get that you play the rules. They're being censored for not playing by the rules.
- sejje 13y agoI think they got punished for playing the game worse than anyone else. Blackhat SEO out in the open is not a good game.
- ceejayoz 13y ago> Rapgenius got punished for playing the game better than anyone else. I'm sorry, what? Didn't they lose the game?
- colechristensen 13y agoThey weren't 'playing the game better,' they were cheating. It wouldn't ever happen to Wikipedia and you know that the comparison is absurd. It isn't the equivalent of censorship, it's rewarding the good behavior of the competition.