Below is a post we published on July 17, 2012 to show our readers exactly what we meant by personal attacks on authors in reviews. It was because of these reviews and the attention our blog received from our HuffPo article (post to come) that GR was forced to act and publicly publish their Terms of Service clarifying their reviewing policies.
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For today’s post, we want to show you some screencaps of reviews we deem inappropriate, or bully reviews. Please note, the purpose of this site is not to fight against critical reviews. It is to fight against bullying. We are presenting these to you because we have had a few requests for what we consider inappropriate. Why do we consider them inappropriate? A book review is, strangely enough, a review of a BOOK and yet these “reviewers” just cannot seem to stop talking about authors. So instead of telling you about bully reviews, we will show you.
But we saved the best for last. This review was written by a GR bully named Blythe who attacked and harassed a 14 year old girl for taking offense to Blythe’s language because, get this, Blythe is an 8th grade English teacher. Below are couple excerpts from Blythe’s review:
Michelle, the 14 year old, wrote in her review:
To which Blythe responded in her own review at the bottom:
Then Blythe rallied the bullies and attacked Michelle on the comment thread of Michelle’s review. Archer, one of the three ringleaders, left this comment to Michelle:
Okay, so, breathe slowly and let’s recap. Lady Blythe is an 8th grade English teacher who lives in California. Archer is a 20-something man who lives in Australia. And this is how they treat a 14 year old girl.
Are you disgusted yet?
Wait! There’s more. Let’s check out Goodreads terms of service where it specifically talks about children and inappropriate content. If a person creates an account on Goodreads, he or she has to agree to these terms:
You agree not to post User Content that: (i) may create a risk of harm, loss, physical or mental injury, emotional distress, death, disability, disfigurement, or physical or mental illness to you, to any other person, or to any animal; (ii) may create a risk of any other loss or damage to any person or property; (iii) seeks to harm or exploit children by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable details or otherwise; (iv) may constitute or contribute to a crime or tort; (v) contains any information or content that we deem to be unlawful, harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, harassing, humiliating to other people (publicly or otherwise), libelous, threatening, profane, or otherwise objectionable; (vi) contains any information or content that is illegal (including, without limitation, the disclosure of insider information under securities law or of another party’s trade secrets); or (vii) contains any information or content that you do not have a right to make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships; or (viii) contains any information or content that you know is not correct and current.
So, do you think Goodreads is enforcing its TOS? From the evidence above, I’d say not.
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It is great to see a young girl like Michelle enjoying reading so much. She comes across a very mature in her comment & she writes an informative & good book review. Well done Michelle!
As for the bully reviews written by the trolls, well they’ve said enough all by themselves. Anyone reading their bad language & hate filled “reviews” can clearly see that they are just nasty trolls.
And so we see how GR really works once again.
Here’s a bully alert at a new venue, Barnes and Noble, where a reviewer gives a book one star and then goes on to bash it because it has gay content. NOTHING about the book. Just about gay content. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/reviews/Morning-Star%2FKayla-Jameth/1112572396
Hi Everyone!
Did anyone ever read about the case in the UK were a woman was badly bullied by on-line trolls? The trolls tormented her mercilessly on Facebook by threatening to kill her and by calling her a pedophile. They made her life hell, they didn’t even know the woman! They just picked on her for no reason what so ever. Sound familiar?
SO the woman went to the high court & forced Facebook to hand over the bullies IP address. It turned out that one of the main bullies was a police officer!!! He had multiple fake facebook accounts. Amazing story! Here is a link to the whole story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2194950/Nicola-Brookes-Facebook-Officer-arrested-case-mother-subjected-months-online-abuse.html
I have posted other links in a previous comment of mine. The links were news reports about the increase of suicides in Ireland caused by on-line bulling. Many young people have taken their own lives directly because of on-line bullying. More recently one of our politicians took his own life after he was bullied on-line relentlessly. Our government has promised to introduce regulations and legislation to stamp out cyber bullies! They were talking about on the news again this last week.
On-line security expert Paul C Dwyer, president of the International Cyber Threat Task Force says, QUOTE: “There needs to be a public awareness campaign to drive home the fact that what is illegal offline is illegal online. If people think they can hide anonymously behind their computer, they are wrong. In many cases, their identity can be easily found out through their IP address. It is not sophisticated criminals doing this.”
Things are going to change & its going to change soon!
Wow! Thank you for sharing, Gill!
There’s a special place reserved in hell for adults who bully children like that.
Enough said.
I hope I’m not considered to be a GR bully by writing my opinion. Thank you.
Okay, so I must admit, that at first I thought Stop the GR Bullies was a fraud RUN by bullies, because of what I’d heard. And I have to say, I’ve delved into this topic immensely. I do believe that sometimes you DO overreact and I must say that I DO disagree with what you say but of course we are all different people!
But I’ve matured, and I realize, that I really can’t just hate you guys. Because this is your opinion. I would hope that you’re better than being a sockpuppet author. Some of what you say rings true and I agree with it and some of it doesn’t, and that’s that.
I looked into that whole Michelle League of Strays thing. Michelle posted her review on June 14th, 2012. I look at her profile now and there is only one rating and one review. Obviously that one rating/review has got to be League of Strays.
Now while there is a chance she couldn’t have updated for a long time I don’t think that’s a case. I believe Michelle was a sockpuppet account created to give a positive review of League of Strays. I am trying not to write a hate review so here is my evidence:
This is Michelle’s review. If you look at the top right corner you will see Jun 14, 2012, the date of which Michelle published her review.
Now click the name Michelle.
First of all, Michelle’s profile is private, which doesn’t say that much I suppose, but is a little suspicious when you add on the fact that there is only ONE RATING and ONE REVIEW.
Plus, (and this is my opinion), Michelle’s review was a mixture of overtly positive and mature. Of course, there are many positive but mature reviews. But add this to what I see here and it looks like Michelle WAS a sockpuppet account.
Now maybe you shouldn’t include hurtful GIFs with swearing, but I can see their point. Another case of author sockpuppeting.
Michelle’s profile does look suspicious, but consider this: she has one review and one rating.
Amanda, , has more than 700 ratings, all of them one star.
Michelle MIGHT be the author or a friend of hers. In any case she is only interested in this particular author/book.
Amanda is on a mission of hate, negative voting anyone and everything for political reasons. Oh, and she MIGHT be a sock, maybe for someone who got banned.
Or Michelle might have only one rating and one review because she was attacked by Blythe Harros and told to fuck off by Archer Adam Pring, both adults, and Michelle, being a teenager, got scared, left Goodreads and didn’t return. We heard directly from the author on this one and she verified that this was a young, teenage girl. Her daughter, in fact. Also, I have 14 year-old nieces who write as well as this girl. Some kids have a talent for writing because they are encouraged to read and write by their teachers in school and by their parents at home. I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with you, Jessa.
LOL! I like your theory better.
If it had been a case of author sockpuppeting, Michelle’s account would have been removed and the author would have also been removed from GR as well. They weren’t.