Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I represent the A-ads bitcoin advertising network and I'd like to resolve an issue which has been prominently featured for at least a couple of years.

When you search for A-ads in Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=a-ads the first hit is a topic at bitcointalk which reads: "a-ads.com SCAM - Bitcoin Talk"  :(. If you read this topic diligently you'll understand that the original poster's question was fully resolved and we are not scammers. For some reasons Google believes it's the most pertinent result in regard to A-ads however it creates a very negative image about our company and it's also 100% false because we are not scammers.

I would like this topic to be deleted/hidden or archived so that Google stopped featuring it in its results.

If the bitcointalk administration doesn't believe this topic should get such a treatment, I request its Subject to be changed to "Is A-ads scam?" or something less demeaning because at the moment it's simply unacceptable.

I've tried contacting at least six different moderators here to no avail.

Best regards,
The A-ads team

It's already archived (On this forum, archiving means the topic was moved into the Others -> Archive section).

AFAIK moderation/administration doesn't manipulate content like that.
This is a forum, meaning content is provided by the users and as long as its within the lines of the forum rules, there's no moderational involvement needed.

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For reference: Thread in question - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=749432.0

The original post contains nothing but false accusations. I'm not sure that's how things should stay/be. And as moderators of this forum I guess you should strive to keep the forum topics relevant, objective and true. The one we're talking about is nothing but.

By your reasoning I am perfectly allowed to create the topic where I will say things like, "bitcointalk forum is run by wretches and the whole forum is nothing but scammers gathering" and that would be OK, right?

Yes that's how this forum works.
Officially you are allowed to accuse anyone of anything, but should provide sufficient proof. In reality people are just saying what they want. You can pick any business that advertises here and start a topic in the service discussion saying it's shit, scam and people should avoid it. I've seen it done by competing businesses like gambling sites, that were using new accounts to start topics meant to discourage people.

On the other hand you have to understand that thoroughly checking each accusation would require a lot of time and effort from staff members. They can't simply delete a thread because you, the business owner, have vouched for it.

You could call those "wretches" running the forum (being theymos) themselves scammers, if you want to.

Scandal Source says Theymos scammed 6000 BTC, worth $14.8 million dollars today (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1995930.0)

(Obviously that topic is pure bullshit, yet it still exists, as it's not breaking any forum rules.
No, I'm not facilitating the creation of spam/troll topics, just giving examples of how moderation is executed.)

Lovely. Still I'm perplexed as to why this topic cannot be hidden/deleted as I'm perfectly sure SMF can do that.

I'm asking this for the sole reason of recovering our name/image. I've no idea why Google algos believe this three years old topic deserves a top spot.

Edit: if you're aware of any means of contacting Google for this URL removal, I'd be glad to know. I've found nothing so far.

It absolutely can be removed, however it won't. The forum doesn't, and should never, limit other users' free speech - even if what is being written is blatantly incorredt.

People often make their decisions based on Google results. If by free speech you mean "vilifying in order to destroy one's business" then I'm simply astounded. I'm all for free speech if it's civil, polite and respectful. That's not the case though.

99% of people won't read past the original message to find out that this topic is falsehood.

I'd recommend getting an SEO / Media Outreach agency, to work on getting positive coverage (on larger, reputable platforms - blogs, media outlets etc). By having this online, you should easily be able to push the Bitcointalk result to the second page. Bitcointalk ranks quite well, but most of the time only for specific BTC & ICO topics. So for your product, you should easily be able to outrank the negative thread if you get more positive coverage and sites online, I think.

It does, it should, and you seem to have a distorted understanding of what it means for free speech to be protected.

The forum does not moderate scams or scam accusations. Topics will not be deleted or moved to the trashcan for being misleading, being a scam, or anything else. The only reasons for a thread's removal is for violating any forum rules (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0) which do not have anything pertaining to scams or scam accusations. They only pertain to posting behavior (i.e. spamming, off topicness, duplicate threads, etc.), and those are the only things which will be moderated.

Perhaps talking about free speech was inappropriate in this scenario.

Would you say this is better?
"The forum doesn't, and shouldn't, silence criticism of any member, service or business posted here - even if it is blatantly incorrect".

I have no idea what your company is all about nor have I ever used your services but it seems that you have some issues.
McAfee security regards your website as "high risk - dangerous".

When I googled "a-ads" as you said, this is what came up.

https://i.gyazo.com/215daa5e1b941fe5481b02e3974cb274.png

Here is the site report that the popup gave me.

https://www.mcafee.com/threat-intelligence/site/default.aspx?url=https%3A//a-ads.com/&ref=safesearch

I just wanted to note you to that one as well as of course it would discourage anyone who is trying to deal with you.

Good Luck

We'll contact McAfee to resolve this issue.

Meanwhile VirusTotal indicates we're 100% clean (https://virustotal.com/en/url/b96afb1252a67381d4a574fd10a63d0e7da2480f63cb2a967490ab6eb7b005e9/analysis/1504274284/).

Do you think it really has that big of an impact to possible customers? I mean, once you click it it's pretty obvious that your service isn't a scam.
Couldn't you just start another topic for your service (if you don't have an official one already), once that one has more replies, it might show up on top in the future?

A-ads have their official topic. It's older (made in 2013) and have much more replies (54 pages). So, it's strange that official topic shown in much lover position than this accusation.

Could anything confirm that McAffee no longer considers a-ads.com website "bad"?


Yeah, their ranking system nowadays is really hard to understand.

It's interesting that Google determines that post should come up first on search results.  Previous posters are correct though, BCT will never remove the post themselves, the only possible thing you could do is create a lot more positive content around the forums here.  I don't know if you have marketing guys, but if you do, I'm sure they can think of some ideas.

I did a Google search. Looks okay now.

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The PageRank algorithm that Google uses seemed to be weird, and sometimes websites that contains virus and other malware appear at the top results (which Google should be trying to at least remove on their results). It really is not bitcointalk's fault if the certain topic is in there, and there's no way a post can be deleted here as long as it doesn't break any rules, even though the subject is misleading. How about contact Google on this matter and see what their say is?

Google doesn't have this option unfortunately.

The situation has improved. Hopefully Google will further lower the standing of the "bad" topic.

Google sometimes just sucks.

They hid the topic for three days and now it's back to number one (among other more active bitcointalk topics).

Google still features the bad topic as the second result for the "a-ads" search query.

If anyone here is eager to permanently solve this issue by any means possible, we are ready to pay this person up to USD $100 in Bitcoins.

I guess the moderators/owners of this forum are too rich to care.

It would be against the way that the forum is run to do as you are asking, and therefore I sincerely hope it will not be done. It doesn't matter how much you try to reward the moderators for doing so.

So, you're looking to bribe the moderators?

Nope, I was thinking about making a donation to this forum. Also "bribing" means something illegal or bad, while our intent is to remove a false topic from Google's search results.


Featuring false topics which slander someone's reputation is certainly not against any rules in the universe, right. And defamation suits are a figment of my imagination, right.

Also, let's imagine you've been dox'ed and someone created a website with a very good Google standing where he or she says very bad things (none of which are true) about you. Would you be glad if this website existed?

I really really don't understand what you're all on. It surely looks like you take pride in the s**t that's going on here.

I, nor the moderators, couldn't care less about the rules anywhere but this forum. 'Slander' isn't a punishable offence here in accordance to the rules.

Doxxing is incomparable to someone saying "You're a scammer". The former should be, and in most cases is, removed from the forum.

Look, I've used A-Ads a lot as both an advertiser and a publisher, trusting the site (either through deposits or withdrawals) with $1000+. I know that it isn't a scam, and I wouldn't imply that it is.

However, if a topic on the forum criticizing A-Ads (just like a topic criticizing myself or Lutpin, of which both exist) is removed it shows that the moderators are not impartial in that way. That is a very bad thing, as it then allows for this very same bias to appear elsewhere on the forum. This is why the topic shouldn't be removed (as I said previously), not because I enjoy the defamation of a legitimate service.

Most people won't read past the first message of the topic which means they will get an impression that we're indeed "bad" people. As I said earlier I'd be totally glad if the said topic got edited and, instead of saying what it's now saying, it would ask the same question, like "Is A-ads s..m?" That would be more than enough but I cannot get even that from the owners of this forum.

So, no volunteers to get $100 worth of bitcoins?  ;)

OK, let's raise the stakes. It's gonna be $150.

I don't really care how it's gonna be done as long as it's a more or less permanent solution.