Stuff that occurs to me

All of my 'how to' posts are tagged here. The most popular posts are about blocking and private accounts on Twitter, also the science communication jobs list. None of the science or medical information I might post to this blog should be taken as medical advice (I'm not medically trained).

Think of this blog as a sort of nursery for my half-baked ideas hence 'stuff that occurs to me'.

Contact: @JoBrodie Email: jo DOT brodie AT gmail DOT com

Science in London: The 2018/19 scientific society talks in London blog post

Wednesday 10 May 2017

Bloglovin mysteriously re-using my posts without permission

Edit: 10 May - I emailed support@bloglovin.com and asked them to remove my blog, which they appear to have done. Thank you Bloglovin!

------ Original post ------


If this post appears on Bloglovin please know that I didn't authorise it and am trying to get my content removed. I've emailed support@bloglovin.com

Oooh I'm a little bit annoyed. Bloglovin has reposted all of the posts from this blog (going back to 2013), under a different URL, with a 'frame'. For any given post the entire text is there (I really wouldn't mind if it was just a paragraph or two with a 'read more' link that came back to this blog, as is usual with RSS scrapers). Apparently, despite this frame thing I get all the benefits of visits and analytics - but I don't really want my stuff published in this way, and no-one asked. I had to go on a bit of a hunt to find that FAQ as I assumed it was at the end of the page... they have that godawful endless scrolling so more crap (I mean my excellent posts) kept appearing.

This seems rather like taking liberties with what I'd hoped this blog's RSS feed would be used for. Short of shutting down either the RSS feed or the blog I'm not sure how I can stop it.

Here's what my blog looks like on their site. Granted it's rather nice, I'll give them that. And I have 3 followers...

Were you to click on any of the posts you'd be taken to a link like this -

http://frame.bloglovin.com/?post=5618773817&blog=6409739&frame_type=blog_profile 
or
http://frame.bloglovin.com/?post=5550415765&blog=6409739&frame_type=blog_profile

- and the entirety of the post. All the links on the page point correctly to this blog (or wherever I linked them to) so that's not the problem, On further checking it seems that while all the links on the page point to my links if you hover over them, if you actually click on them the "frame.bloglovin.com" overlay remains], I just find it quite weird that my content has been hijacked in this way, with a different web address and my content placed within a frame that links to other similarly-framed posts on my blog and completely unrelated blogs. I don't really like it and want it removed.


If you click the large X it clears the panel of other posts (I have to admit I really like that format, god I'm so annoyed with their nice layout while they pinch my content) and the link reverts to my blog. But it's perfectly possible to read my posts there without ever visiting here. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter as this blog has no advertising on it so it's not possible to make money from it, and I'm apparently not losing any views / analytics. But I'm just miffed about having my posts repackaged in this way. Thrrrppp :-รพ to bloglovin. Mutter grumble. Take my stuff down please.

I see I'm not alone in finding this an irritating way to 'reach an audience'.


I've no immediate plans to take legal action myself though (I've never had to do so when asking people to take down content that's been reposted without my permission) but I suppose the next escalation level is to rename this blog to something that is deliberately disrespectful about bloglovin ;)



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Comment policy: I enthusiastically welcome corrections and I entertain polite disagreement ;) Because of the nature of this blog it attracts a LOT - 5 a day at the moment - of spam comments (I write about spam practices,misleading marketing and unevidenced quackery) and so I'm more likely to post a pasted version of your comment, removing any hyperlinks.

Comments written in ALL CAPS LOCK will be deleted and I won't publish any pro-homeopathy comments, that ship has sailed I'm afraid (it's nonsense).