WordPress announced two new themes today and of course I couldn’t wait to take a look. They are named “Newsworthy” and “Visual.” When I got to the bottom of the page, what should I see but a couple of spam Likes. Or at least what I call spam Likes. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, WP does about them. (Yes, I did call it to their attention.)
The purple/green avatar belongs to “interpretiveliteratureprojectnwc,” who has no Gravitar profile and whose associated WP blog “is no longer available.”
The lime/green avatar belongs to “turchakvitalik,” who has no Gravitar profile and whose WP blog is empty, set up but never used.
Two more suspicious avatars have appeared on the site since I started writing.
Second from right is “beritaharianindonesia,” with no Gravitar profile and an unused WP blog named “berita harian indonesia.”
On the right end is “winxpcom.” Again, no Gravitar profile and a handsome but very empty WP blog.
(A reminder: In order to Like something on WordPress, you must be a registered WP user. To be registered, you must either establish either a WP blog or a Gravitar profile.)
WordPress might not consider these spam, but they are typical of what I would suspect to be spam. Except for the first, these are not blatantly commercial (eg, “cheaplouisvittons”) like the Likes that appeared on Pied Type, but they are examples of Likes I would probably delete and why I turned off Likes on this blog.
Here’s are some larger screenshots, in case these particular avatars rotate off the page or are removed:
Kneecap the spammers and send them to Gitmo – seems simple to me
Sounds like you don’t like them either. I’d settle for just being able to get them off my blog.
I have to admire your plucky optimism PT, in hoping that something might chance if you just stay on them. Personally, I don’t WordPress make to changes that have no immediate financial reward for them. What I do expect is for them to continue making weird changes behind the scenes that we get to stumble upon long after the fact…
Yep, that sounds par for the course. Nice of you to elevate my bitching to “plucky optimism.” 🙂
I’m not understanding what the spammers purpose of “liking” is about if their gravatar doesn’t take the clicker anywhere….
FYI… I wasn’t impressed with the Newsworthy theme. But I do really like the Visual theme.
I don’t understand it either, but I do believe there are lots of people out there who get their jollies just knowing they’ve annoyed someone and nothing can or will be done to stop them. I think WP is wrong (or making excuses) when they say they must figure out a motive before they can stop the spammers.
I wasn’t wild about either of the new themes, although I confess I got distracted before examining them closely.