Les, CNN may be trying to censor a post of yours; I know this comment has nothing to do with the post, but I nevertheless think it should interest you as it involves two things you’d like destroyed: CNN and Spam.

For the past day, I’ve been investigating what I believe to be a rather evil guerilla advertising campaign by CNN.Here are all of the details

You’ve received one of the spams here(and your only the 2nd one that I’ve found so far… basically I haven’t even been able to prove that it was spam until finding it on your page too! Here is the address of the spam:

http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/comments/5143/#c30100

The object of the spam actually appears to be to set off google’s detectors for keyword stuffing. Those word’s on the end of the spam are the oldest and easiest to detect search engine optimization trick in the book. Most likely, if google has passed through that page, its either been removed from the index, or has been punished rather severely.

I wanted to know if you’ve noticed any change yet in the amount of traffic coming in through google. Basically, I haven’t been able to prove yet whether CNN might be that evil. Anyhow, regardless, you should remove that spam if google hasn’t found it yet. Let us not allow our negative opinions of CNN to be censored.

Onward,
Nick

You can contact me at

e-mail: n e t p o l i t i k (to da’) h o t m a i l (.) c o m
AIM: NickLewisATX

You know, I was awfully suspicious of that message when it came through, but I got distracted and let it slide. Now that I’ve read this I think I’ll go delete it. Thanks for the info. That’s very interesting indeed. Considering that I was being highly critical of Nancy Grace I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the intent behind that comment.

Google still seems to be sending me lots of traffic, but I’ll keep an eye on it.

Incidentally, I did notice that the pagerank for that page is currently 0 whereas my front page is currently 7. Don’t know if that means anything.

I went and did a Google search for Nancy Grace and my entry about her came up as the 21st most relevant link so it doesn’t appear they’ve punished me for that allowing that comment as of yet. I can also see why they’d want to try. I also found an additional cut and paste comment like the one I just deleted over at this blog making for three confirmed cases of it now.

Actually, just delete the search terms if you get this message in time. I want to save it as evidence

Oops. Too late. Just killed. If they come back, though, I’ll delete just the search terms next time.

Oh no matter, finding case three makes our case for this even better. Besides, this conversation should do… I have some more to say about this, but first I have to alert the skeptical Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility group that I have something more than just a strong feeling that its spam.

What are most pages ranked as on your blog? Is 0 particularly small?

It appears the a battle has been one! They are still spamming but, now, they are spamming respectfully (i.e, they are harder to see, and they no longer mess with google).

About the Troubletown ‘toon:  sometimes you just have to laugh and cry at the same time.

About the guerilla spamming:  in any system with a flow of energy (nutrients, cash, public opinion) where there are nooks and crannies that create eddies, parasites will evolve to exploit those niches.  Perfectly natural and predictable.

The only puzzling thing about it to me is that, with only one life to live, a human being would voluntarily become a parasite…