Marketer issues troll warning

24 January 2008

Tension over the way that marketers use StumbleUpon has come to a head, with calls for the site's owners to tackle harassment amongst its users.

Posting on Search Engine Watch, search engine optimisation (SEO) marketer Marty Weintraub describes how he has received death threats from other users of StumbleUpon in response to his declared enthusiasm for the social search engine.

"My first big mistake: posting to a search marketing blog about how much I love StumbleUpon," writes Weintraub. "Friends soon pointed out that long-time members of StumbleUpon were publicly calling for my suicide by methods I choose not to republish here."

Weintraub acknowledges that some activity by marketers has justifiably enraged community users. However, he says that a hardcore of "trolls" have targeted all marketers, whatever their use of social media, with unacceptable levels of abuse.

He warns that, if left unchecked, "vicious attacks could spread to corporate brands testing the waters of social media marketing", and he calls on eBay, the owner of StumbleUpon, to clamp down on harassment.

Asked about its response to the claims, StumbleUpon's VP of Marketing, Dave Feller, told Spannerworks News: "We take the concerns of our members seriously. When users register on our site, they agree to our Terms of Use which state that they cannot post 'threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable' content.

"StumbleUpon does not condone behaviour that violates our Terms, and will take action when these situations occur."

Category: Natural search, Online marketing, Search engines, Social media