Guerrilla Spam

Back in april of 2005, my assertion that SEO could be used to censor "unwanted feedback" was greeted with a great deal of skepticism. Jimmy Wales even told me to put on a tin foil hat, so I could hide from the black helicopters (turns out that black helicopters exist too, but they are usually related to US special forces training... no luck on the foil hats, however...). Jeff Jarvis told me to shut up. (which I did)*

Some were extremely skeptical of my claim that CNN was engaging in blog driven Guerrilla marketing, “What, besides pure speculation, links this to CNN or Time Warner?" asks Brooks Jackson, the director of FactCheck.org. "It could be anybody." Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales argued, “Trace the ip number to somewhere or someone interesting, and you've got a story.  As it is, you've got spammers acting in ways that are incomprehensible.” Wales concludes, “Tinfoil hats and black helicopters have more credibility, to my mind.” However, one expert disagrees with Wales’s judgment of the spam. Describing the strategy of the alleged CNN spammers, the blog Spamroll asserts, “Frankly, the premise of the suspicion, and the way it was done, make a heck of a lot of sense.”

The vast majority of the bloggers and publications were not so as quick Jackson and Wales to discredit the story. Though only a minority of them delivered a guilty verdict to CNN; far fewer were willing to argue that CNN was innocent.

Coming from Wired? You'll probably want to read my original article on CNN comment spam. In addition, all of my posts relating to this story have been classified under Guerrilla Spam.

We now return to blogging with the regular and conspicious lack of planning, foresight, or purpose.

Man claims CNN messed with his Blog, is the headline in the UK Inquirer (not to be confused with The National Enquirer). The inquirer reports:

That's the remarkable claim of Nick Lewis at smart campaigns.com, here CNN is spamming blogs in a sophisticated Google attack designed to lower the rank of posts critical of CNN, by introducing spam into the comment stream.

True, that was part of my story, however I seem to remember deciding to include the word "may" in the lead sentence that introduced the idea:

Most alarmingly, CNN may have also left malicious keywords at least 3 out of 13 with the intent of using google's keyword stuffing detectors to censor them.

What difference does one little word like "may" make... Oh well, surely the Inquirer would mention the heart of the story; using guerrilla tactics to create buzz in the blogosphere. After all, this story doesn't work without that crucial part:

They are also trying to post press releases to well-read blogs, it is claimed.

No, I don't remember claiming that they were trying to post press releases to well-read blogs. I remember noting that the "news article" they left me read like a press release. However, these articles are always found with the guerrilla spam, and not all of the spam included these "articles". So actually, no: CNN isn't going around posting naked press releases, and that was never my claim.

My accusations against CNN are not politically motivated. I am not, and never will be connected to any right wing attack groups. I am, in fact, actively seeking ways to use the blogosphere as a weapon against right wing attack groups. I am the founder and chief administrator of one of the blogosphere's most well known left wing alliances. I am also listed partner and ally of the Progressive Democrats of America. I've been accused of many things in my day, but I've never been accused of being aright-wing henchman. My motivation is simple: I don't like the idea of always having to second guess whether someone is real, or a marketer. The idea of a major network using blackhat techniques to influence search engines makes me uncomfortable. It was my judgement that this behavior needed to be stopped as quickly as possible. Thus, I decided to make my case, for the record.

My investigation into CNN's possible guerrilla marketing campaign went national today. In the past 6 hours, the story has been picked up by some little names like Wonkette, Metafilter, TechDirt, and Ad-Land. Since this story is spreading like wildfire, CNN's PR people will likely respond to my request for a denial or confirmation. My guess is that they will deny it.

Anyhow, while I wait for the verdict, I wanted to answer a question I recently received: "why does 10 spams mean anything when there are over 10 million weblogs?"

First of all, most of the blogs in that statistic are dead, and haven't been updated in years. As I mentioned earlier, these spams have targeted mid-to-high level bloggers. CNN appears to have ignored all but the top 1000 bloggers (I'm #876 last time I checked).

So we take 13/10,000,000 to 13/1000 and we have something that seems more significant. Now consider how many blogs have even discussed CNN at any length? According to Blog Pulse, CNN is mentioned on every day on average by 0.15% of the 10,032,827 blogs its identified. Read this list of the posts that Blog Pulse is using to create that statistic. I am yet to find a case in which CNN is being mentioned as anything besides a source of news.

Update: Response to the UK Inquirer

This is CNN: the only major news network using your blog for an experimental guerrilla marketing campaign. [updated 4/28]