Hate speech writers using your automated notifications to contact me
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Hate speech writers are hijacking your notification system. I got several emails recently from a user ‘VirgoStarlight’ whose ‘Great posts worth seeing from’ section in the notification email have the most racist and offensive titles I’ve ever seen online.
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Hi there,
What is the site you are getting this email from? I do not see any WordPress.com site owners with that username, so any additional info you have is appreciated
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I’m not sure how to attach screenshots here, but I’ll copy paste the content of some of these notifications I’m getting in my email:
“Virgo Starlight liked your post on AyurVedic Astrology
They thought Food Related Concepts in Astrology was pretty awesome.
You should go see what they’re up to. Maybe you’ll like their blog as much as they liked yours!
Great posts worth seeing from Virgo Starlight:The Black Race Produces Calcified Adrenochrome Which Is Thicker, Stronger And Creamier
Child Sex Trafficking through the Corruption of Hillary Clinton, Haiti, Clinton Foundation, ties to UN, Verified Pedophile Arrests, John Legend
SNCTM : perversion and ritual magic amongst the satanic elites”I clicked on the username and it brought me here: https://alchemicalvirgo.com
More information about Virgo StarlightURL: http://virgostarlightgmail.wordpress.com
Email: (email visible only to moderators and staff)
Whois: http://whois.arin.net/rest/ip/75.15.226.79 (IP: 75.15.226.79)I am so grossed out to even share this as an example of hate speech. It’s horrible.
I got a whole series of similar ones. This user liked a bunch of my posts and the automated notification system sent me links to all their crazy racist conspiracy theory stuff, and suggested that I should check it out and might like it.
I understand this automation was written to connect like-minded people but it’s being hijacked to spread misinformation and racist ideas. Obviously they’re going to have to rewrite this functionality to prevent this from happening.
Thanks for the follow up, everyone.
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The email you describe is a notification for a post like on your site. If your site is set to public, and the post likes feature is enabled, anyone with a WordPress.com account can like posts you publish on your site.
We do have measures in place to prevent abuse of the Like feature, but in this case the account in question has not done anything that we would describe as abuse – based on the available evidence their likes and reblogs of posts on your site are legitimate interactions, i.e. that blogger clicked Like on the posts because they read and liked the posts.
I completely understand that you don’t appreciate seeing a link back to their site in the notifications for these likes, but there’s no way to prevent that. If someone has a site linked to their WordPress.com profile, that link will accompany any like, follow, or comment notification generated by the account in question. If you find the site objectionable, just don’t click on the link in these notifications.
If you believe the content on the site violates our terms of service, you can report that directly to our terms of service team as explained at https://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/. But in this case that blogger is not breaking any rules by simply liking posts you’ve published on your blog.
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“I completely understand that you don’t appreciate seeing a link back to their site in the notifications for these likes, but there’s no way to prevent that.”
This statement is not true.
It’s not that user’s posts that are a problem. It’s your notification system serving them to my email.
You are WordPress. You don’t just decide what the notification emails include, you decide it for everyone everywhere on your platform. You designed your notification emails to serve the blog posts of users to the person receiving your notification. Right now your decisions about driving engagement on your platforms through email notifications are spreading racism and disinformation.
You have control over that.
I curate my own feeds and emails to make sure I don’t spread hate and lies. I never would have seen the hateful information this person is spreading if it wasn’t for the configuration of your notification system. You served this to me. They simply used your engagement driving system to reach me. It’s your system.
My Facebook feed is full of stories about corporations refusing to protect the public from algorithms and automated systems getting subverted to spread disinformation. Why am I not seeing stories about WordPress’s notification email settings? This absolutely has to get fixed.
If you can’t write a bot or monitor the systems that are serving these links to people’s emails you have no business running a hosting platform.
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You have control over that.
You can turn off email notifications of new Likes in your https://wordpress.com/me/notifications
See here for more details :
https://wordpress.com/support/email-notifications/As @kokkieh already mentioned, Liking a post is not against WPcom’s Terms of Use. If the WPcom site in question is violating the ToS, you have the option of reporting them.
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I should be able to receive notifications of activity on my site without WordPress opting me into exposure to hate speech and conspiracy theories without my consent. You put those engagement drivers on there and failed to monitor their usage, and now you’re defending it.
You keep trying to put the blame for this on me or on the user who created that content. But it is your engagement driving emails which are giving hate speech and conspiracy theories free advertising space in my inbox.
I got three separate emails from WordPress for every single activity that user performed on my site, and every one of them included an automated promotion of that user and their content.
Stop serving me content packaged with my notifications if you’re not going to be responsible for making sure that content is safe and as free of disinformation and hate speech as possible. I’d understand if you were doing something to prevent it but it just slipped past because of a clever new wording. But you are doing nothing but directing me to report that account or turn off my notifications. That implies that my personal settings are to blame, or that the other user is to blame. But I did not opt into “related” content packaged with notification in my settings. And that user isn’t paying to send it to me. You are sending me their racist conspiracy theories, for free! And you’re sending me A LOT of it.
That is irresponsible and your statements about having no control over it are false. You have control over the “related” content you advertise along with my notifications.
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Can you send more information on this?
I got three separate emails from WordPress for every single activity that user performed on my site, and every one of them included an automated promotion of that user and their content.
Also is it just this user, or are there others that are delivering a lot of notifications this way?
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Sorry I didn’t realize there was still activity on this thread.
So far I’ve only noticed this user because their username sounds like someone who’d legitimately be interested in my blog.
The user went through several posts on my blog and liked, commented and reblogged each one. I got an email that they liked it. I got an email that they commented on it and I should moderate the comment. And I got an email that they reblogged it. Their comments were each promotions of their own site.
I got 16 emails in all. And every one of them had links to the user’s posts automatically added to the notification email by WordPress’s engagement driving email format.
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Ok, please report the site via either https://wordpress.com/support/report-blogs/ or https://wordpress.com/abuse/
That will send it straight to our Abuse Team, as this is not something we can handle on the public forums.
And for now, I recommend adding them to your blacklist: https://wordpress.com/support/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist
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Thank you. I will.
But that won’t help with the real problem I’m concerned about, which is the fact that WordPress’s format for their email served those blog post suggestions to me without vetting them in any way. It provided free advertising for white supremacist eugenics-promoting conspiracy theorists to reach my inbox with a subject line custom targeted to me personally to look legitimate.
That is wrong. It was wrong of them to say there was nothing WordPress could do about it. The real issue is the chosen format of the engagement driving section of the notification emails. This section should be deactivated until WordPress can write a bot or hire a team to curate suggested links.
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Thank you for that feedback, our responses to this kind of content is alway evolving, and I am happy to pass this on to our Trust and Safety team for consideration.
For the time being however, you will need to blacklist them as explained here: https://wordpress.com/support/settings/discussion-settings/#comment-blacklist
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Thanks for that. I think this is an impactful issue. It’s comforting to know it’s under consideration
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