Spot.IM
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Spot.IM rebranded to OpenWeb in order to dodge ad blockers and bad rep
Spot.IM rebranded to OpenWeb in order to try and leave their questionable past behind, and no doubt to skirt around the many ad blockers (from uBlock Origin to router based solutions like Diversion) that block the Spot.IM applet, but the frankly unethical behaviour continues. This morning I got shadowbanned for empathising with Grace Dent's mental health struggles on a TV show and of course, appealing is pointless. It truly makes no sense why that comment would trip the filter. Far from an AI solution, it's very apparent they are using a conditional "if user says this then block else continue" mechanism. Eg. If user says mental then shadowban. Worse, companies outside the US like the Daily Mail are sharing (exporting) their users' email addresses with this company - based in America - and I have no doubt that Spot.IM aka OpenWeb are making money from this data. It's kind of fascinating really that such big household names are being duped by a company with such a shady background into letting them operate on their websites. And now we see they are manipulating reviews on trustpilot, harrassing users who already presented their email credentials to present receipts (lol) because this allows them to abuse the review system and have them taken down. Take a look at the OpenWeb section for example. Years of bad reviews, unfortunately many taken down using the abuse method indicated above, and a flurry of positive reviews on November 6th and November 7th. Nothing suspicious about that eh? And THIS is a company that Mail Online, Fox News, etc. are GIVING their customers email addresses and locations to. I cancelled my monthly mailonline subscription this morning. I don't mind paying my way but only if the host is behaving ethically. I'll just use Diversion to block the ads from now on. Fortunately, it has the added bonus of blocking the OpenWeb applet too.