WordPress needs a way to BLOCK users
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Attention tech support creators of wordpress control panel/ dashboard. Please add an option to remove “likes” and not just “followers” for us. Please provide a way to fully block other wordpress users, and I do mean USERS, from viewing our blogs. Currently when someone blocks another person, it simply means we don’t see their blog posts in the feeders. But they can still see us and take advantage. There is no reason for us to all mingle and generate insincere traffic. There needs to be a way to limit bots when they are more harm than good. Please don’t tell me to place my content in private mode. I shouldn’t have to do that. WordPress is a disrespectful community overall. The feeling of entitlement to indiscriminately tag and ignore requests to stop is shameful. Why should the owners of the wordpress templates who make revenue off our content, ignore this complaint any longer? This can only be a positive discussion.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
I understand your frustration here. The biggest issue is that there is no effective way to block subscribers, so it would be ineffective to provide the ability to manually unfollow , unsubscribe, or remove likes for a user. A follower could create a new account, username, or e-mail address and refollow the blog. Since IP addresses are dynamic, blocking the address would not work either. Also, other users who are currently on the same IP address might inadvertently be blocked as well.
However, I have a few recommendations: Make sure comment moderation is turned on Settings > Discussion so that all comments have to be approved. That way nothing will get through to the public side of your site without your approval.
I recognize that this isn’t ideal, but there truly isn’t any other way to prevent someone from viewing your site other than setting it to private and then invite only those that you desire to view your site. But, there are ways to limit users from actually interacting with your site via comments, which is truly the most disruptive action for a user.
Feel free to let us know if you have any questions.
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thoughtfullyprepping247
I’m not so sure I like that reply.
This reply comes after being ‘bot’ attacked by the same commercial sites every time I press publish.If you can block comments using keywords, it must be possible to block users in the same way.
Or is the coding too complex for today’s WP programmers?
If that user/bot then changes their name, or IP, the affected will soon cotton on to what is happening and add their new ID/IP to the block list. Which means WP won’t have to do a thing as it would be the user that decides their actions.
Bot’s and malicious users are reducing WP’s appeal.
While WP boast is a large percentage of the Internet runs on WP, that should be moderated by the knowledge that poor service is never appreciated. -
Hi there @thoughtfullyprepping247,
Are those bot comments ending up in the spam folder or are they still ending up on your site? If the latter, please mark them as spam so that Akismet can learn the bot patterns and eventually auto-spam them so that you won’t have to encounter them any longer.
Akismet, the spam-protecting software we use on WordPressdotcom, is a learning machine. If these comments are appearing in your Spam folder, then Akismet is doing what it is designed to do. However, we definitely help it adjust to new bot patterns by marking those comments as spam.
This situation is a bit different than above because it is a Terms of Service violation to spam comment, and we will suspend an account for using bots or for spam comments. Please report this account and our ToS Team would be happy to look into this:
http://en.wordpress.com/abuse/
@charmsandwards, please let us know if a user is spamming your comment section – that definitely can be handled by out Tos team.
Thanks!
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This bot activity is not making comments, it is however using bot behavior to boost their ranking by liking posts en-mass, automatically on various sites. With what appears to be different groups of bots targeting different interest blogs.
The one thing they all have in common is they are all “on-line shopping experience” sites.
Perhaps you could try asking your members of their experiences.
You can send broadcast messages can’t you?I have spoken too many who all know EXACTLY what they are doing but WP won’t do anything to block them OR give individuals the tools to block them out.
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While annoying, likes aren’t something to “boost” visibility. We also have automation in place to catch these bots abusing this feature.
However, many actual human users think that liking posts is a way to promote their own websites, but since there aren’t any ways to link back to their websites unless you go to the trouble of clicking through to their profile, they soon realize their efforts aren’t worth the time. This type of behavior happens through the WordPress Reader, where people can follow a topic and like posts quickly through that single interface. Likes are also different from actual spam comments as comment spam can include links to their sites and be indexed by search engines (which is their end goal). However, likes aren’t visible or actionable unless you’re logged into a WordPress.com account; as such, information about who liked your site can also not be indexed.
Again, this is the nature of having a website available to the public – to have it open means anyone can visit and like your post content. You can restrict access to your site or disable the Likes feature if this is bothersome.
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So we users have to put up with the notion that bots are going to get bored?
A reminder. Call it BOT 101.
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/bots/what-is-a-bot/
A bot is a software application that is programmed to do certain tasks. Bots are automated, which means they run according to their instructions without a human user needing to manually start them up every time. Bots often imitate or replace a human user’s behavior.Having read that, can a computer get bored?
Sort the problem in favor of those who breath, not in favor of other computers.
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