en WordPress.com Forums › Ideas

Edit or block "likes" from repeat offender spammers

  • Author
    Posts
  • #1494845

    kbsalazar
    Member

    I’ve noticed a larger number of “likes” coming from spammer sites – people who post those opinions so that others track back to their home site. I like “likes” from (ahem) like-minded folks who are truly interested in the content. But these spam likes that link back to money making schemes or worse are annoying. And possibly harmful.

    I would prefer to leave “likes” on for legitimate users, but kill the spammy ones manually as I notice them. Even better would be linking the “likes” system to a spam-fighting utility, much as comments are handled now.

    So how about it. Do you like “likes?” Do you see them as a valuable feature worth preserving? Or should it just be turned off or killed entirely to spare everyone the nuisance?

    kbsalazar

    The blog I need help with is string-or-nothing.com.

    #1494953

    justjennifer
    Moderator

    Lots and lots of discussion on this topic in the forums.

    Unfortunately, not currently possible. Many of us have simply turned off their display. This won’t stop people from “liking” a post, but it does remove the reward factor to spammers. Once upon a time we could report abuse at gravatar, but that option has been removed from gravatar profiles.

    (K, is that you!? Jen)

    #1494955

    kbsalazar
    Member

    Thanks, Jen!

    With luck I will be able to expunge “likes” from every page and post via some sort of global mechanism (there are a lot of posts). Sad to see the feature trashed by abuse. I enjoyed tracking them back and finding interesting people at the other end.

    Kim

    #1494956

    raincoaster
    Member

    You can always report their blogs or Gravatar profiles as Spam.

    #1494958

    justjennifer
    Moderator

    @k – you can globally disable Likes from the Dashboard>Settings>Sharing> Likes
    See here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/likes/#likes-and-your-site

    If the person’s blog is hosted on WordPress.com and is actually spam, then, yes, it can be reported following these instructions http://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/

    But, rain, the button to report a gravatar for abuse/spam has been missing for a while. Is there another way to report them now?

  • Author
    Posts

The topic ‘Edit or block "likes" from repeat offender spammers’ is closed to new replies.