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This just in. We are happy to tell our readers that thanks to articles like and petitions like , GR is FINALLY starting to listen to its members regarding author bullying on the site. In a (20 minutes ago), Kara made a big announcement regarding reviews and author-bashing content:
Well done, Goodreads!
It has come to our attention that our site has been accredited to certain authors. We want to let you know that this is false. As we say on our Who We Are page: we are readers, bloggers, and Goodreads members (not authors). The bullies want people to believe that we are "authors seeking revenge". This is simply not true. We are readers who wish to end the hate culture that exists on GR and Amazon.
STGRB does not tolerate discriminatory comments against any individual on the basis of race, religion, country of origin, sexuality, gender, appearance, etc. We also do not tolerate aggressive and/or disrespectful comments directed toward any members or regular readers of our site. Comments of this nature will be removed and repeat offenders will be banned. For more information on our Code of Conduct, please see A Notice From Your STGRB Administrator.
is an anti-bullying site "dedicated to exposing cyber bullies and gathering support for legally curtailing their actions and terminating their influence."
Because of the tragic death of Charlotte Dawson, a petition for tougher cyber bully legislation was started and over 140K people have signed it already. If you would like join in, sign here.
if you want to petition Jeff Bezos to protect Amazon.com users and indie publishing authors from bullying and harassment by removing anonymity and requiring Identity verification for reviewing and forum participation.
A group of authors who have come together to mutually support one another and to put an end to online abuse.
Please click the following link to learn about Goodreads committing the crime of deception, violating FTC policies, by allowing corrupt data (fake ratings and reviews) to pass through their API to millions of users across the world:
Goodreads Review Fraud
Social networking sites that are common bully hangouts:
Absolute Write
Amazon Forums
Goodreads
Kindleboards
Blogs to avoid:
Be Still, My Heart
Buried By Books
Cuddlebuggery
Dear Author
Great Imaginations
Midnight Garden
Misanthropic Bibliophage
My Fiction Nook
Pocketful of Books
Pretty Deadly Reviews
The Book Goggles
The Book Owl
The Book Smugglers
The Midnight Garden
The YA Kitten
.38 Caliber Reviews
Read more here.
To learn more about Goodreads' anti-bullying policy they began to enforce in September of 2013, please read this post.
Please lodge a complaint against GR's carpet bombers who are in civil protest against GR's new anti-bullying policy:
Visit our Carpet Bombers Page
If the bullies try to argue that Goodreads is a site for readers only, please reference and the quote from it below.
“We’re in the media business today. We’re in the business of helping authors and publishers market their books to readers. And that’s where we make our money. We sell book launch packages to authors and publishers and really help accelerate, build that early buzz that a book needs to succeed when it launches and accelerate that growth through ads on the site.”
- Otis Chandler, founder of Goodreads
Want your copyrighted material removed from Goodreads? Then read this post.
To report the abuse on GR and/or Amazon to the NBC news, report it here and they will investigate.
If you'd like to access our password protected posts, please contact us. Please note, each password protected post has a different password.
Sign .
Although they consistently read our site, the GR bullies and the Amazon fora trolls are not allowed here. They are not allowed to comment, participate in discussions, or harass our visitors in any way. This site is not for them. This site is for others. It was made to warn and educate them about the GR bullies and their behavior.
All donations go to the STGRB treasury whose sole purpose is to help struggling authors. Many authors who have been attacked online cannot afford to hire IP attorneys. This fund was created to support them.
All screenshots and excerpts on this website are protected under US copyright and DMCA fair use.
All material on STGRB is the intellectual property of the owners of this site and is protected by DMCA. Any copying, quoting, or sharing of this material without our consent, beyond the terms of fair use, will be subject to DMCA takedown.
Angela Horn
Ann Somerville
Linda Hilton
Ridley
STGRB is in no way affiliated with an author known as Rick Carufel. We do not condone his aggressive behavior such as hacking into private accounts to publish people's private information, convenient lying and spreading misinformation, and contacting their employers to get them fired, harassing charities to pay his rent and cocaine dealing. We recommend our readers be wary of him.
STGRB is not affiliated with an author known as Carroll Bryant, who has been banned from sites like ours for threatening members. We do not condone his tendency to publish private conversations between other people or information given to him in confidence by others without getting permission first. We encourage our readers to exercise caution around him and be careful what information they give him.
Note: Carroll Bryant is a pen name.
About time! Can we go report all the old reviews and helped we know of to test if they follow through? I’m curious what the big baddies will have to say about this.
Yep, you sure can! We have yet to see how well they will enforce this new policy, though.
I’m sure the bullies will have a hissy fit as soon as they hear the news, but that’s to be expected.
My friend tested flagging. Nothing happened.
You have to wait a few days. It’s the weekend. GR staff is not working right now. Wait until next week. Then you’ll start to see things disappearing.
I am beyond happy to hear this. This actually makes me a little teary. In a good way. FINALLY they have listened to the 99.99% who post decent reviews and are nothing like the 0.01% that like to bully to feel better about themselves.
I also LOVE that they are going to remove lists and shelves. Bullies 0 – Everyone else 1
I do think this is a step in the right direction – but it remains to be seen how well implemented it is.
As some of the commentators on the actual thread have said where will the line be drawn? Personally I see no harm in a shelf called “not my cup of tea” (for example) where you can list authors/books you know you dislike the writing of – will this be deemed as possibly commenting on author behaviour and be deleted? For those people who require a shelf to remind them of authors not to read, and who mean it in a polite way they might be penalised needlessly.
I must also add, having read some more of the thread, it does seem … harsh that the reviewers are not being provided any warning… Still, when the ruckus with the RP Groups kicked off the site acted without warning then as well so there is a precedent.
You know? I don’t mind the no-warning thing. As long as you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve nothing to “fear”. If, on the other hand, you HAVE been a bad girl or boy – I really don’t care if they treat you harshly. You deserve it. Typical though that they implement the “remove bully reviews/shelves/lists” thing the day after I find an alternate to GR… 😀
Mmm, I do see your point and I do think some shelves that people use are just disgusting so I have no compunction about the shelves being deleted (and to be honest I really don’t understand people using shelves in that light… all my shelves are based off genre, I don’t need a memory aid/specific shelf to remind me which books I disliked). The reviews… well they do put time and effort into them (even if we strongly disagree), I guess I think it only polite that a heads-up is given (then again I reply to every e-mail I am sent both in and out of work so people know I have it – to me it is the polite thing to do). Different strokes for different folks and all that.
So with Miranda on one of her multiple ID’s actively carpet bombing books from ‘the list’, can we expect that people like her and the known accounts that exist solely for carpet bombing like Valentina , Alyona and Victoria M. to be deleted soon? We must flag them to make sure, as well as negative shelvers they’ve missed like and .
And of course the fake reviews that Trollaxial dirties the site with will at least have to come off sticky. We need to report all of these until they are gone.
Good work STGRB, for progress so far.
Care to share what this alternative is?
Booklikes
http://booklikes.com/
Be careful, though. The trolls are headed over there:
https://stopthegrbullies.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BooklikesTrolls.png
Wouldn’t it be funny if all the bullies moved to booklikes and it would suddenly be safe for everyone else to move back to Goodreads?
Figures, doesn’t it? I find an alternate, booklikes, and the bullies move in. Guess who’s moving right out again…? I don’t deal with bullies. No. Just. No.
Seems that Booklikes doesn’t want them either. They’ll have to set up a private forum where they can bash among themselves and be ignored by the functional humans of the world.
CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES, C’MON! *clap clap* LET’S CELEBRATE!!!!!!! WOOT! WOOT!
I hear ya, Anony Mouse!
Do a little dance.
Make a little love.
Get down tonight!
Ha!
Get down tonight!
😀
This is GREAT, and it’s all owed to STGRB! Before this site, the bullies were running rampant and NO ONE was holding them accountable.
So I guess it means the BBA forums have been deleted? That is wonderful news! There was no place for those pages on Goodreads.
Great job, STGRB!!!!!
What are people like ol’ Hairy Manface going to do when they have no place to unleash their unhinged hate-filled ranting and ravings?
This is great news! Someone was listening and observing and finally cut these people off.
Ridley is spitting mad on Twitter.She might just explode today.
Is it just me or have Grimlock Coaxial’s shelves disappeared already?
STGRB will be helping Goodreads find those reviews/shelves/lists/groups that need deleting by publishing links on our blog and directing our readers to them so they can be flagged. Any authors out there who wish to have something flagged, send us an email and we’ll put our team on it.
I tried to go to those links and flag them, but they cannot be flagged . All one can do is select-cut-and-paste the whole lot and write an email to .
That works. Or you can go here and report the shelves:
This seems like great news, I really hope Goodreads stand by what they’ve said. This change took a long time coming, but it is a very welcome change. The bullies are really vicious on Goodreads, (and on Amazon) so I am delighted to hear that Goodreads are going to address this problem at last. Goodreads could be an amazing site if it was bully free, it really could.
Thank-you STGRB for all your hard work. STGRB was one of the first blogs that highlighted the serious cyber bullying on Goodreads. Athena, you have suffered personal attacks many times while trying to support people who have been attacked on Goodreads, at least all your hard work is finally paying off. I don’t imagine the Goodreads bullies will be happy when they hear about this. They’ll most likely fly into an angry rage, but by the sounds of things their angry comments will be deleted.
The bullies have always insisted there wasn’t any bullying on Goodreads, well if that is the case then why did Kara make this announcement?
The bullies have quietened down a bit since STGRB started reporting on their bullying behavior, but every now and then they still push it too far. Recently the Goodreads bullies have really come under the spotlight, loads of people are blogging about the problem. It’s a pity the bullying was allowed to go on for this long before Goodreads stepped in, it’s a pity so many authors and readers were attacked by the Goodreads bullies before something was finally done about it. I truly hope that the Goodreads bullies are wiped out.
If things improve on Goodreads I may even create a new account myself, Goodreads could be such a great place to chat about books. Well done STGRB! Well done everyone who supported the people who were attacked by the Goodreads Bullies! And well done Goodreads for finally doing something about the dreadful cyber bullying that happens on your site. This is great news.
Thank you, Juno! Have you read the comments on the thread over there? Wow! They are really whining and crying over it. 😀 Ha! Not surprising though.
Yeah, we know. Believe us. We know.
Reading that thread is like reading a convention of divorced women who can’t stop fighting with their ex-husbands and refuse to ever let things go. That’s what it sounds like when they go on about authors being abusive to reviewers and how readers deserve to be warned about these supposed scumbags. Even with that, it’s amazing how they just go on and on and on.
Ha! Too true.
Good God! Talk about cry babies. I’ve been reading the feedback discussion since yesterday. It’s so satisfying to watch. ::grin::
The age of trolls has ended! The time of peace has come!
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Little LoTR humor there.
How dare a site that is supposed to be about books and book reviews enforce that the content actually BE about books and book reviews! The nerve of some people!
For those who labored under the delusion that STGRB was fighting bad BOOK reviews, if this doesn’t open your eyes, nothing will. The trolls were told they can still write BOOK reviews and yet there whinging and whining about censorship because they’re not allowed to personally attack authors. The sense of entitlement of these people is mind-blowing.
The age of trolls has ended!
Yes, it has.
I don’t trust Goodreads an inch. This sort of thing is why. Which is why I asked about an alternate site up-thread. Goodreads has proven way too many times how two-faced they are.
Isn’t it funny (I’m not sure funny is that right word?) that most of the people who are whinging and whining over on Goodreads about this new announcement are listed on the STGRB Badly Behaving Goodreaders list. 😉
The bullies want to defend their right to bully, god help anyone who disagrees with them. Although when you think of the amount of people who have accounts on Goodreads, these nasty bullies a only a tiny minority. GR should delete all of the bullies accounts and be done with it, deleting their shelves is not enough. Who wants to listen to them moaning about their right to bully?
LMAO! Good move! 😀
This is great news. I get so much pleasure watching Kara finally get put in her place and forced to type that announcement. Talk about pie in your face. She’s one of the primary persons who refused to remove all the reviews and listopias. She personally wrote me back refusing to remove the BBA Listopia, and guess what, it’s gone! Guess we win. Thanks to STGRB, Supporters, and Goodreads new boss, Amazon! I guess the big guy DOES get the final word, haha. Time to do the happy dance right on top of the troll heads.
That alone is a victory, twice over (List gone, pie in Kara’s smarmy face). GR has saved themselves hundreds of sock puppet accounts just to vote that list off pages.
This positive change wouldn’t have been able to happen if it wasn’t for all the supporters of the anti-cyber bullying movement on Goodreads and elsewhere. A BIG thank you goes out to all who put themselves out there and weren’t afraid to speak out against the abuse on Goodreads and Amazon.
Good job, everyone!
I noticed the BBA group itself has disappeared. Has it been removed or just been made secret?
You caught that, too, huh? It was made secret. That’s the message we got when we clicked the link on our BBA Listopia Voters page. But secret essentially means its gone from the public eye, which is good.
Regardless of how this thing with GR goes, I’m staying under the radar. I just don’t have it in me to face anyone down about this whole thing. And I really don’t want my account to be deleted. If it goes, it’ll be my choice, not some random person who works for GR. I’ve been on GR too long, and I have invested too much time and too many years on that website.
And I’m really not that bothered by how the bullies are silenced, as long as they ARE silenced. They’ve taken something that was great and ruined it for everyone. Hopefully some day soon it’ll be a great place to meet likeminded again.
I’m speechless. I never thought I’d see the day!! I hope this isn’t just some kind of game GR is doing.
It still remains to be seen. I think it’s for real this time, though, due to Amazon’s involvement.