So, I’ve been following the whole expose-MyBlogLog-weaknesses, publish-MyBlogLog-exploits, business courtesy of SEO jester Shoemoney. The latest episode seems to involve Shoemoney’s figuring out to masquerade as other “people” by altering your cookie to match another individuals’ unique MBL ID — and furthermore, decided to publish a list of famous bloggers’ IDs for folks to mimick (which was easily determined).
And that’s when Shoemoney got banned.
Why?
Well, let’s quote Eric “everyone’s first contact” Marcouliier:
We banned him for publishing other people’s data on the site and urging readers to spoof them. On what planet is that not a bannable offense?
Most planets, I suppose. On the other hand, we should remember that at this point, there isn’t actually a terms of service. In fact, Eric “we’re trying our best” Marcoullier mentions on the official MBL blog:
1) We’re going to post an official Terms of Service (ToS) and hold people accountable. It’s hard kicking people’s asses for breaking the rules when the rules aren’t posted anywhere. That will change. Things like blatant advertising in profiles will not be tolerated.
While I suppose it makes sense that Shoemoney should be banned for posting other people’s data — then encouraging users to spoof them, shouldn’t MBL follow its own sentiments and at least draft a proper terms of service first? After all, its hard to obey laws when none are written down in the first place. Sure, you could argue that spreading exploits is a reasonable offence for banning.
On the other hand, Shoemoney’s a popular blogger and a reputable SEO to boot. MBL’s growing, but it couldn’t try and handle this kind of affair with a little more discretion? After all, if MBL is a blogger’s tool, ought it not try and work with bloggers towards some sort of resolution than outright banning? The temptation to game a service grows as the service grows in popularity; and I’m sure that MBL is working over time to curb spam as their latest posts suggest (as an aside, I got some Nigerian-type-scam messages for the first time via MBL a few days ago — I guess MBL is really growing when people are spamming you over their service). However, isn’t part of the solution working with the community?
Rather than outright banning, doesn’t it make more sense to create a culture where people are encouraged to report weaknesses so that they can be fixed with each “version”? Perhaps individuals such as Shoemoney (or Andy Beal) can be publicly recognized, or privately brought into the fold, for their efforts.
At the end of the day, I think that banning a popular blogger such as Shoemoney isn’t really going to accomplish much. Its not based on any firm rules that they themselves recognize is necessary to hold people accountable to. And its not going to prevent Shoemoney — or anyone else — from publishing MBL weaknesses, and in turn, exploits.
14 Comments
Tony, I think your thought that MBL should work with folks is right on. Especially, when there are no “terms of service” BUT, there is also blatant violations of straight up decency and common sense. When folks choose to do what Shoe did, it calls into question their character and their motivations. I can say that I don’t have the time nor patience to “work with” people who demonstrate they aren’t trustworthy. I think Shoe fell into this category. I would have bounced him too. He should have known better! You don’t let a kid off the hook for cheating, because you didn’t have it on the wall or in the school handbook. Ya just know what it is right and what is wrong, period!
Well the “exploit” that Shoe discovered has been known about for over a month.
Reporting exploits is one thing, outing them to drive traffic and damaging someone else’s business isn’t very gentlemanly.
What can you expect from someone who kickstarted his own community by selectively inviting 8000 as a contact.
It’s hard to argue a case in favour of banning Shoe whilst no terms of service are available.
Ouch been a bad couple of weeks post yahoo. The Lack of terms & conditions does muddy the waters a bit.
However I can’t help but feel given the stick they’ve been getting lately the ‘i’m taking my ball home’ attitude could have been avoided.
David do you delete spam? You don’t have a comments policy
All I can say is at least they’re millionaires now. Just do what Yahoo! tells you.
Unlike other aquisitions MLB was pre-alpha with not so many users. They sort of hit it big time before the founders really confronted the pains of massive server loads, spam, etc. without a big corporation behind them. I don’t think they’d ever be able to ban Shoemoney if they were still indie.
Andy, I thought ShoeMoney was documenting MBL weaknesses. Maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here but that’s not what I’d consider spamming.
The comment regarding a comments policy was purely to demonstrate that websites take unilateral action on all kinds of things if they look on them being harmful to the site or their users. They don’t need terms of service cover it.
Terms of Service would be a benefit, but that acts as a set of ground rules upon which decisions would be typically based.
You are suggesting that without terms of service, there are no rules, effectively anarchy.
What is in fact the case is there are no written ground rules, and MBL determine the rules as they see fit, just as you do on your personal blog as regards comment spam.
Maybe they should have a ToS because they are a company selling a service (the tracking) but this wasn’t anything to do with the tracking service.
Ah you do make a good point Andy, so I subscribed to your feed.
I think it was a heated response by MBL, probably made in a hurry when they were upset. Shoemoney might be wrong, or he might not.. depending on whose side you’re on.
It’s just a very bad PR decision on the part of MBL. I think they should have at least emailed Shoemoney about the whole matter before doing something just drastic as banning him without notice. After all he has a high social profile and I think they should have took note of that.
I had a really good time setting up faked arguements between friends on blogs that used MBL avatars in comments for like an hour between the Shoemoney post appearing on Techmeme and the hole getting patched. It was such a simple thing to do! If it had been known for weeks as was alleged above, it sure didn’t get fixed until now! And I seriously have been driven nuts by mistaken avatar switches in the past. Plus I think some of the people involved are weasles, so though I honestly admire the heck out of the MBL model, I was happy to have an hour of fun with it.
Lately they’ve been getting a *lot* of bad exploit press. Banning Shoe is a way to tell people to “report a bug” instead of “blog a post”. They’re in damage control mode right now and not making well thought out decisions.
I don’t agree with it, but I understand their mindset. Unfortunately, this will only create more bad press.
You could also look on it that people are deliberately searching for bugs and using it as linkbait.
You should maybe do some research into reactionary development cycles and the harm it can cause, especially in the games industry.
Bloggers should not make any rules like yeah this is rule1 rule2 and blah blah.They should play by their own rules and yeah getting the readers mood too.Thats the key.Its a free ground…If you can live it
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[...] Much has been written about the “Shoemoney Affair,” in which the blogger known as Shoemoney wrote about a MyBlogLog hack that allowed unscrupulous types to spoof their identities, and was subsequently banned from the service, despite the fact that — as Tony Hung pointed out at Deep Jive Interests — MyBlogLog didn’t have a terms of service agreement that said anything about banning people (it has since developed one). The banning also happened despite the fact that, as Eric Marcoullier of MBL admits here, someone else had posted something about the same exploit over a month earlier (although it was on a French blog, and therefore might have been missed). [...]
[...] Much has been written about the “Shoemoney Affair,” in which the blogger known as Shoemoney wrote about a MyBlogLog hack that allowed unscrupulous types to spoof their identities, and was subsequently banned from the service, despite the fact that — as Tony Hung pointed out at Deep Jive Interests — MyBlogLog didn’t have a terms of service agreement that said anything about banning people (it has since developed one). The banning also happened despite the fact that, as Eric Marcoullier of MBL admits here, someone else had posted something about the same exploit over a month earlier (although it was on a French blog, and therefore might have been missed). [...]