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As a warning for all: if you are someone with special needs, or suffer from any kind of medical, mental, or psychological disorder (i.e. dyslexia, any learning disabilities, etc.), then please keep off the Amazon fora (edit: in particular, the Meet Our Authors and Top Reviewers forums). You will be antagonized for it.
Example:
« Jane Litte Reveals Her True Colors… As An Author! Anne Rice on the Amazon Bullies »
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.
Thanks for this story. And there is no question that ghastly and abusive things are said in the Amazon Forums. There is a lot of malice, and a great reckless disregard for the truth in vilifying and tormenting people.
But I think we all have to remember that the Amazon Discussion Threads in the Forum are a beautiful idea. There has always been great potential there. And there are many marvelous discussions going on in any number of Forums, including Books, Fiction, Christianity, the Catholic Forum and others. —— Customers meet, exchange ideas, become friends there. I know. I do this all the time. But it could be so much more if only there were real consistent moderation and Amazon had the people power to enforce its only guidelines against abusive posts. —- I hope we will see the day when the Forums are moderated, and the bullies and abusers are sent packing. — Myself, I still post, but I wouldn’t want any unsuspecting customer to step into the Forums without some warning of what can happen. —– And if you do encounter abuse, by all means accept Amazon’s offer to report what you see to them. They really care about the us, the Amazon customers.
That is right, Anne. The discussion threads could be a great place if it wasn’t for the bullies and in fact, there are many threads from which the bullies steer clear. We should probably edit the post to warn people about the MOA and TR forums.
I’d like to add something to my own comments here. The more I reflect on it, the more I wish the Amazon Forums carried some kind of warning label. It’s just too easy for some unsuspecting customer to stumble into them and become the target of unbelievable malice. —- And the Top Reviewers Forum is especially bad when it comes to this, a place of breathtakingly vicious gossip and endless malicious trash talk. I just don’t think most customers realize that the management can’t really regulate these discussions effectively, and that the posted guidelines are not necessarily going to protect them from stunning abuse. —- I know the internet at large is supposed to be full of this kind of viciousness. But Amazon is an online bookstore; and you just wouldn’t expect the level of out and out hate one encounters in these Forums. —– There is a clique dominating the Top Reviewers Forum and it’s relentless. The clique is made up of males and females and at times they seem to compete with one another as to who can say the nastiest, the most irresponsible things. In their confrontations, they are utterly devoid of compassion, or kindness, or sincerity; but even when those confrontations are over and the victim has moved on, the clique gossips endlessly about the target, trying to bait the target to come back and engage again, and revive the spirits of those who so love to inflict emotional distress. —– I’ve been studying it for some time, marveling at the dynamics of the group; and I must confess I’m mystified. I know what these people do and I can see how much they enjoy it, but deep down, I never will figure out what they really want — why it’s so pleasurable to them to mock, and insult, and seek to hurt others the way they do. And what I really don’t understand is why they lie so much. I can understand arguing; I can understand angry arguing. But lies and lies and lies? I just don’t get it. Why the need to twist, to warp, and to out and out lie? I do know this much: if the guidelines were applied, these abusers would be off the site overnight. They’d be banned. But I think they know the guidelines won’t be applied, and they are at present as bold as ever in seeking to hurt those whom they’ve marked. I think STGRB is wise is saying in essence don’t go there! Yes, the Forums have potential and good things can happen there. But the risk of being hurt is just too great. This can be emotionally disastrous for customers. I have to say with STGRB: just don’t go there; it’s not worth it, not until Amazon does begin to seriously investigate the level of abuse.
I don’t think Amazon will ever do that (despite it being a fantastic idea) because Amazon doesn’t appear to care or even know what’s going on there in the first place. I honestly believe basic, programmed robots act as the moderators and there is precious little human oversight.
For that very reason, I’ve started going to brick and mortar stores again. Yea, this bullying issue is hurting their business from me.
I simply won’t purchase regularly–if at all, from a site that refuses to regulate their competitive nastiness.
I will not buy from Amazon as well. As long as they will not stop the bullies I will get books from the store in person. Even though their prices are usually better. If more people did this I think they would pay attention to the bully’s comments.
What you often can do is to buy directly from the author’s publisher. Many of the smaller presses have that option. What’s good about that is the authors get a higher percentage of the royalties, so you’re both avoiding Amazon and helping an author.
I’m no psychologist, but I bet that outrage (or at least the feeling of superiority you get when somebody else screws up and you’re in a position to harp on the screwup) is addictive for some people — addictive enough that some people will try to bait old targets into “screwing up” again.
I’ll keep this in mind for friends with special needs.
Also just so you know, it’s not always easy getting a job if your a trans person. But of course, people like this conveniently ignore that.
Removing anonymity from amazon can’t happen soon enough.:/ We need it now.
To be fair I don’t think they said anything about trans people.
I honestly think there is something more sinister at work with Amazon. Just today they came out with an apparently April fools about generating books and algorithms.
Really Amazon, do you value your authors that little you would make a joke about them?