I confess I’ve never been to The Huffington Post – I didn’t even know that Arianna Huffington was a real person until recently. I understand it’s a wildly popular celebrity gossip blog. It went live in May 2005.
It appears that one of the people posting at the blog got himself banned when he discovered one of the commenters attacking him (a troll) was actually the blogs technology manager, heckling him under the name ‘yacomink’.
So, the contributor – Dr Rost exposed yacomink in a post and was promptly banned from access. He had about 60 posts up at The Huffington Post.
He found yacomink’s IP address and, after a further search, found a web page for Andy Yaco-Mink, which included the following: “Andy Yaco-Mink is the Huffington Post’s technology manager. He lives in Brooklyn.”
Dr Rost wrote a Huffington Post blog exposing Andy Yaco-Mink as the troll, suggesting that he had probably manipulated the Post’s systems to get his comments placed in the readers’ favourite comments.
He wrote: “In order for the Huffington Post to maintain its credibility, the site needs to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest or rigged rankings.”
Rost started his own blog after being blocked and receiving this:
“You have not been ‘fired’ but rather asked to refrain from posting as our editorial staff felt that your recent blogs were not in line with the mission of our site,” the Huffington Post wrote in a letter to Dr Rost.
“This was not an Arianna call. Ultimately, the decision was an editorial one – not one person to be held responsible – really,” concluded the letter.
Rost has been re-instated to The Huffington Post. Gossip is a lucrative business, a site technology manager attempting to drive traffic or influence rankings by trolling is something most of us see as unnecessary, but it is not uncommon for top blogs to use their own people to push up their rankings.
Hello. Andy Yanco-Mink - The Huffington Post technology manager. What part of ‘you can be traced’ slipped past you?
The Huffington Post is number nine in the top 100 at Technorati - with 9,397 inbound links.Â
via: The Guardian
First off, the Dr. has not been reinstated. He was permanently blocked and Arianna’s reply is nothing more than excuse making.
The Dr. exposed the fact that Huffpost is being compromised from the outside and from within. Yakko the wakko has been following the Dr. around. Do read his entire set of posts and you will get a better grasp on the situation.
The trollz have taken over Huffpo and in some cases they are the overwhelming commentors. As well it appears that Neo Con bloggers are making appearances on the site which is hardly in keeping with being a liberal/progressive site.
Arianna is apparently enjoying the friuts of her very successful site, but it is being over run by people trying to run people off and they are slowly doing a good job of it. She needs to stop jetsetting and hobknobbing with the rich and famous and come back and do a little housecleaning starting with Yakko the wakko.
We can only guess what else this little troll has been manipulating in her and on her site. Advertisors would be well informed to keep an eye on the place. I’ve never seen an ad on the place and thought it was ad free until I turned off my ad blocker for a few minutes and holy mackeral the place is crawling with ads which makes me thing not as many people are actually seeing the ads as the advertisors may think are seeing them.
Okay, thanks. I popped over to see Dr. Rost’s post, hadn’t been there, can’t see much of a reason to head back.
I did see some complaining in a Technorati search about the advertising, you certainly aren’t the only one picking up on that.:^)