During yesterday’s hysteria over the new policy change on GR, we decided to hop around to different sites and take screenshots of things we found rather hilarious. First, we were tipped off to this post of a Booklikes member and her reaction to the sudden influx of trolls to the site:
Note: if you are a member of either Booklikes or Library Thing, be wary. These sites are now rapidly becoming troll-infested.
Next we have before and after shots of Nenia, one of the moderators of the BBA group (a group that has recently been made secret and therefore invisible to the public and unsearchable in GR’s search engine). Here she is on September 18th, a few days before the announcement of GR’s new policy:
Wait a sec! Isn’t it against GR policy for authors to thank reviewers? Hmm…
Now, check out Nenia’s change of tune after the announcement that she and her friends can no longer target and bash authors they don’t like:
And her response after she realized that GR wasn’t going to repeal the new policy:
Aw, poor Nenia. She can no longer smear other authors’ reputations and ruin their careers in order to advance her own. Don’t we all feel sorry for her?
Yeah, right. *eye roll*
Next we have Litchick who suddenly realized that we’ve listed her on our BBG page. You all remember the dancing batman that Belle left us last year, right? Well, is even better:
Aww, wasn’t that nice of her?
Apparently the bullies have no qualms about putting authors on lists, but when they’re put on lists for their misbehavior, they can’t handle it.
Next we have whiny, little Derrolyn who is also bent out of shape for being labeled a BBG:
Sorry, Derrolyn, but we’ve never wanted the death of GR. We just wanted it cleaned up, which is exactly what is happening. The only ship that’s going down is the ship that you’re in — the ship of trolls. It’s not our fault you chose the wrong ship.
Next we found Hugh Howey’s reaction to GR’s new policy change on Kboards:
Hugh’s reaction pretty much sums up the majority of authors’ reactions to this news, as you can see in the comments on the Passive Voice, where PG covers the story here.
We knew back in March that when Amazon took over GR, there would be big changes ahead, within the year, in fact. It always happens this way when a large company takes over a smaller one. Changes are made within a few months and by the end of the year, the lay-offs start. If honest accounts are being wrongfully removed, . This will ensure the lay-offs happen sooner.
Also, we know for a fact that more than just the BBA list and BBA group were removed yesterday. As we were going through shelves for our shelf-reporting list, we clicked on many shelves that have already been removed. GR IS removing questionable content. You just need to give them time to do it. For the next few weeks, we will be watching GR like a hawk and reporting anything suspicious that they may be doing.
Another very important bit of news involves Mercy Pilkington of Goodereader.com. She made a very insightful point in her article, Goodreads Modifies User Terms To Prevent Author Bullying:
She also had some very interesting things to say about GR’s API:
Which gets back to our post on GR’s Review Fraud and the false advertising done through their API.
Last but not least, we want to make a few comments about the discussion thread on . You will notice that the discussion is infested with trolls who think they’re the majority on the site. They’re not the majority. Not by far. They’re just the loudest and whiniest who try to impose their views on anyone who steps in to disagree with them (including a few authors whose books were carpet-bombed yesterday because they stepped in to comment). We’ve been counting all of the distinct individuals who’ve been commenting on the thread. The trolls number around a hundred and they are the same ones who keep commenting over and over, drowning out the voices of people like Julia, who agree with GR’s new policy change:
Now compare this number, 100, to the THOUSANDS of people who signed the anti-bullying petitions listed on our sidebar, the petitions that appealed to Amazon to put an end to the bullying on GR. If you count the signatures, there’s over 2000. That’s more than 20 TIMES the amount of trolls commenting on GR’s announcement.
So… make no mistake people, the trolls ARE NOT the majority. They are the small minority who are stomping their feet and crying because they can’t abuse authors on GR anymore.
And if you think we’re wrong about their abusive attitude, all you have to do is take a look at these to really understand how deep the author-hatred goes:
Creepy, isn’t it?
Now, do you see why Amazon REALLY needs to clean house?
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An addendum.
We were sent this from a blog reader who requested we post it:
