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We just recently heard of a story that we’ve never encountered before. That is, Goodreads deleting one-star ratings of a mysterious GR Giveaway carpet bomber. If you read the emails we received below, you will see for yourself (we blacked out any identifying information):
This is another sign that Goodreads is headed in a much better, more author-friendly direction. Hopefully, this sort of thing will continue.
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.
This actually reminds me, what exactly is the Carpet Bombers beef with author-friendliness? Like when I briefly tried booklikes, they seem to use author-friendliness in quotations. You know, as if it means more what it literally says.
As far as the above, happy Goodreads is going in a better direction.
Also, (though I doubt their intelligence to understand this) don’t the carpet bombers understand that multiple reviews don’t necessarily mean a thing if they are (at times) done by the same person?
I barely even use Goodreads anymore. The only usefulness I get out of it is finding obscure books I never heard of.
I was looking at the petition earlier after reading this. In the short term removing anonymity from known cyberbullies is a good idea, I would strongly advise against removing anonymity from those who are victimized by said cyberbullies.
Removing anonymity is a good band aid solution, but it victimizes those who need anonymity the most. Like people whose careers could be ruined by goodreads carpet bombers.
If there was a more medium ground that allows anonymity for victims (like those who are cyberbullied), while tracking cyberbullies I’d sign it in a heart beat.
The troll clan on BL hate authors. They don’t care why someone puts your name on the list, they just follow it like lemmings. Saw one of them refer to an author the other day with accusations of something others have done, not related to the stated reason she was supposed to be on there. All authors not part of their inside group are generic enemies of the state.
What gets me is the “logic” behind the term Author Behaving Badly. Is what an author does in their own private life somehow everyone’s business, and they need to know the stuff — and if they don’t like them they refuse to buy their work.
Like even if say someone is Republican/Democrat, why has the authors political views somehow become the business of these reviewers? Again, unless it has a direct baring on the readability of the work in question, it’s irrelevant.
I have some stories myself about booklikes. I got followed by a bunch of “goodreads refuge” booklikes bullies.
I’m still very leery about goodreads.
As you should be. GR is still not as safe as it should be.
I would bet good money that if you ask one of the minions why they one-starred a particular author, they’d have no idea except that said author was on “the list”. Yes, they’re indeed lemmings, although one of them said she always “thought for herself” when confronted with her behavior last year. Really? Then why would she have one-starred all the same books that the bully group one-starred, many in the same day? I guess she just happened to read all those books independently of her bully friends’ influence…yeah right!
Yes I’m aware it’s stating the obvious with these people. But I strongly doubt these losers even read the books they review. Like one lady I met on booklikes, even like bragged about only reading like 35 pages into a 350 page book.
How are you reading the book, if your only reading 35 pages in? If it were 250 pages in, that would be one thing. But 35 pages.
OK full disclosure, I also shortly did reviews. Though it never really appealed to me, just because there is (like the above picture) just a downright weird expectation of reviews using star systems. If it weren’t for star systems taking a reliability beating, the stars would be the only thing providing leverage for these people.
There is this odd cognitive dissonance between old fashioned book reviews–I remember the days of reading those kinds in short story zines–and ones today that are “video reviews”. I have all sorts of issues with video reviews anyway. Mostly because so often the focus seems to be on tossing books at walls, and tearing out pages.:/
I seriously hope they don’t consider audio or video carpet bombing.
Not sure where else to mention this. Not to sound prone to conspiracy theory, but I’m starting to question the judgement of GR people that use the term author behaving badly. Assuming the term even mattered to begin with, am I the only one that finds it a little disturbing people use and abuse the term to further their own agenda?
Even if it was ever a noble term (I don’t think so), to me a “fellow author” holding a grudge for ten years all the way labeling said author ABB seems like the term is being used and abused. Though I’m not idealistic enough to think it was never intended to be used and abused.
But I seriously question the motives of people using the term.:/