Extremely unhappy with POSSIBLY RELATED POSTS
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I have just looked at a blog entry I made yesterday and the ‘possibly related posts’ is now linking to a RAPE story in a crappy UK newspaper called The Sun. Not to another wordpress blog, but TO A NEWSPAPER.
Why oh why oh why are you allowing my blog to link directly to The Sun newspaper??? To another wordpress.com user’s blog entry, well, that’s absolutely fine as they are part of the wordpress community and I understand these are auto-generated, but a direct link to that awful, horrid, filthy tabloid newspaper???? What has The Sun got to do with wordpress?? Is this a form of advertising I wasn’t aware of?
I’m *extremely* disappointed with how you have implemented this feature (which I’d otherwise thought had been a good idea).
The link I’m talking about is here:
And it’s the last auto-generated content link at the bottom.
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There are a large number of threads on this issue, in fact the most recent one was made about 5 minutes ago and remains at the top of this page. Please use the search button in the future.
You can turn it off easily, like others who have had problems with this feature by going to Design -> Extras.
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Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com, has taken the position that forcing blogs to link to mainstream media sites that do not link back is a good thing. God only knows why. The only option is to shut off PRP, which I did immediately, several months ago.
I even own several blogs off Wp.com and we receive hits from your PRP, while we do not have the PRP feature on our blog. Does that mean we’re mainstream media? I just don’t know. I don’t know what their thinking is around this.
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Raincoaster – thanks for your reply and that extra info. Like you, I am appalled that they are linking to mainstream media with no link back. As far as mainstream media goes – to most of us (at least in this country) there is a big difference between, say, linking my blog to The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, etc. But The Sun is known for its extremely bias (and very right-wing) reporting (it’s the mouthpiece of Murdoch).
It is also known for soft pornography, specifically – ‘page 3’. One need only do a google search just for “page 3” and you will know what I’m talking about.
So Automattic have sunk to the lowest common denominator.
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I am not as discriminating as you. I don’t care if I get linked to porn as long as I get reciprocal hits. But as someone once named “Best of the Web” by the Guardian, I have to say I think this is an appalling subjugation of the blogosphere to the mainstream media.
If it were not for the failings of the mainstream media, the blogosphere would never have come into being. For a company that builds blog software to do this simply does not compute unless they are planning on selling out to Rupert Murdoch very soon. And as far as I know, they aren’t.
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