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Stumbleupon opens doors to 'partners' (previously called SPAM)

 
http://getsatisfaction.com/stumbleupon/topics/get_rid_of_this_spammer

Nub of this discussion is that a complaint about spam — self-discovered sites entered into the Stumbleupon database — is answered by staff with a new concept that has not been explained before: “the Partner Program”.

So here are two more things that are very wrong with the New Stumbleupon:

— anyone can “add a site”, whoever they are, whatever their motive, from their home page, whereas before another stumbler had to thumb up their site before it was circulated and fed to other users. While that system was often abused in the last couple of years, it was good in principle, given that SU is meant to be about members “discovering” and rating sites.

— certain “stumblers” (actually corporations) — and NPR is the one cited here — no longer come under the paid-for stumbles category, and neither are they spam, according to staff. They are part of the previously unannounced Partner Program!

From the TOS:

1.4 …. Accounts created with the primary intention to promote a product or service are considered “SPAM” and subject to termination unless expressly authorized in advance in writing by StumbleUpon.

SU is making a complete farce of its own rules (not for the first time) and the notion that it is about peer recommendations.

From the discussion, which I hope will continue:

To allow a corporation to submit sites - no matter how well-loved that corporation is - IMHO goes against what Stumble was, is, and should be about.

In SU’s own words, “People-Driven Technology: Using a combination of human opinions and machine learning to immediately deliver relevant content, StumbleUpon presents only web sites that have been suggested by other like-minded Stumblers. Each time the ‘Stumble’ button is clicked, the user is presented with a high quality web site based on the collective opinions of other like-minded web surfers.”

With the corporate Stumbles, I have often gotten an NPR or what-not page in my SU queue that has neither been submitted nor reviewed by anyone else. After 5ish years and 57,000 Stumbles, I shouldn’t have to deal with that anymore.

I know that I and others like me in NO WAY want to say that you shouldn’t be able to Stumble NPR, GOOD, and other sites like it… instead, we want the quality-driven content, as decided by actual users and not corporate lackeys, to come back to StumbleUpon.

When you allow corporate self-submissions, you become a social-networking site no better than one that would allow each and every blogger in the entire world to self-submit their own blogs for review. Or, heaven forbid, we end up with a queue full of concierge.com crap!

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