'Followers' Spam
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I’m a new blogger and already find myself inundated with Followers and ‘likers’ who only wish to generate traffic to their own Multi-level marketing blogs. I can’t see why, as the owner of my blog, I’m not allowed to delete unwanted Followers. Judging from the forums this is an on-going problem, so why is WordPress not addressing the issue?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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To be honest I place very little value on likes because I’m aware of the numerous like button spammers who click to suck our readers into following them. So the bottom line for me is that as I cannot control the like button spammers the number of likes on my posts and pages have no integrity. Therefore as none of us can have any confidence in the numbers of likes and for that matter followers, I would not cry a river if the like button was eliminated from our blogs. WordPress.com Follower Management
We cannot delete followers and even if we could we could not prevent them from following again by using the like button and follow button on the to gray Admin bar.
To disable likes so the display of gravatars does not appear see here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/likes/
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We cannot block or delete subscribers from public blogs. Everyone on the internet can view and follow any public blog. That is in fact what the public designation means and anyone anyone with internet access can follow your public blog’s RSS Feed.
You can change your blog visibility to “private” http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/privacy-settings/ Please read this about public blogs that become private blogs > Blog Privacy and Subscribers > http://wpcommaven.wordpress.com/2011/09/05/blog-privacy-and-subscribers/
Note that you have complete control over everything that’s posted to your blog via comment moderation
http://en.support.wordpress.com/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-moderationYou don’t have to post any comment on your blog. Delete troll posts http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/how-to-starve-a-troll/
and mark only spam as spam. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2013/01/24/mark-only-spam-as-spam/ -
I see that same reply to every post regarding spam likes/followers and I’m just not buying. I don’t want to go ‘private’ and be driven underground by the bad guys. I don’t care if they ‘follow’, but I don’t see why I have to passively promote them. There could easily be a function that allows me to hide followers and ‘likes’, so why not? By forcing me to allow these charlatans to promote themselves on my page, WordPress is basically allowing me to give them unpaid advertising. Frankly, since these sites seem to have no content other than pushing schemes on ‘How to make money from your blog’, I don’t see why they’re not considered straight advertisements and charged, or prohibeted, accordingly.
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I’m not selling anything.
I’m a Volunteer and if you read what I linked to you will become aware that I am unhappy with the situation too.
I’d like to manage my followers list by keeping it up to date so I can have some confidence in the numbers of followers reflected in my site stats.
Moreover I pay for No-Ads upgrades to keep all advertising off of my blogs but that doesn’t extend to removing the likes gravatars. The like and follow links on the navigation bar and are under the control of the logged in visitor, not the owner of the blog being visited.
WordPress.com accounts and Gravatar accounts are one in the same and we cannot prevent any logged in user from clicking follow or link buttons. That is our reality.
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I did read your link, and perused your blog, suspicious that you were indeed the friendly face of the WordPress status quo. I see that you are not and am ‘Following’ you now because you’re sharing a lot of valuable information.
Having said that, ‘reality’ in the cyber-world is in the hands of the Administrator, and I again ask why, if bloggers can control what comments are seen on their pages, it would not be useful to allow them to control the display of Followers and Likers?
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I’ll tag this thread for a Staff response which I suspect will be along the lines of …
we have no intention of changing the status quo and neither your nor we can look into the minds of another person and ascertain if they are sincere when clicking a like button or a follow button …and we aren’t willing to devote Staff time to removing likes upon blogger requests for that reason nor will we devote Staff time to removing followers who can simply follow the blog again by RSS feed …
and if you don’t like this you can make the blog visibility private or move your content into a self hosted WordPress.org install where you can control what you refer to …
Please subscribe to the thread so you are notified when they respond and please be patient while waiting.
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I can’t tell if this response is meant to be as nasty and dismissive as it sounds, or if you’re just really cynical about the folks for whom you claim to ‘volunteer’. In any case, you’ve convinced me: I’ll be looking for other venues in which to tell my tale.
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Hi again,
It’s not meant to be either. It’s just what my guess as to what the response from Staff will be. I happen to ♥ WordPress.com and though I have self hosted I chose to accept the limitations and move back here. -
One thing you can do is turn off Likes for a blog post. While writing/editing a blog post (at least through the Dashboard), there is a “Show Likes” setting that can be unchecked. This will prevent the “Like” button from appearing on the post itself and on the admin bar that logged users have.
It won’t let you pick-and-choose who is allowed to “like” and who isn’t, but it will prevent “like” spam if you are willing to not use the “like” feature on your blog.
timethief’s comment moderation suggestions will also decrease the amount of spam that appears on your blog.
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Thanks for your feedback.
We monitor Likes to ensure people do not abuse the system, but have no plans at this time to remove the option. Instead, WordPress.com provides these options as opportunities for people to show their appreciation for our bloggers’ content and to follow updates. You can hide likes, as ecumenicallife explains, but we do not currently provide the option to remove certain likes on a given post and keep others. That could be an option in the future, however, as we are always striving to improve our users’ experiences.
Keep in mind that followers are not visible to the public, and is simply a system to allow individuals to watch for new blog content, much as they would with an RSS reader. This has the benefit of driving more visits to your site.
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‘Keep in mind that followers are not visible to the public’…I guess this was so obvious that no one pointed it out. Color me stupid, but that solves half of my problem; nine-tenths, probably. Thanks, and I will mark this resolved primarily to prevent others from basking in my ignorance.
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