Help! How Did People Cheat on Bubblews?
@bagarad (14283)
Paso Robles, California
April 5, 2018 4:14pm CST
My old brain knows that many people cheated on Bubblews. I know I saw it happening. Unfortunately I can't remember all the ways they cheated. I know I saw rules being broken constantly, but I can't remember which ones.
Many of you were there with me and saw some of those same violations. If you remember what they were, could you help me remember? I do know that some were unjustly accused of violations, but many others were guilty because I saw what they were doing. I just wish I could remember. I'm hoping some of you have a better memory than I do.
I'm writing a post somewhere else and I'm looking for supporting details to explain the way people cheated there and how eventually it helped the site to die. My premise is that cheaters help to kill a site or keep it from continuing to pay. Any thought on this subject would be appreciated.
17 people like this
12 responses
@LadyDuck (457295)
• Switzerland
6 Apr 18
I try to explain at my best. Some users in Bubblews had created a "software" program that allowed to leave automatic comments and likes. If you remember, we gained with our comments and likes, so those users made money. Bubblews did not make money, because the pages were not really "viewed", so they paid cheaters and made no money from cheaters. This mainly happened when they welcomed so much the Vietnamese users.
6 people like this
@LadyDuck (457295)
• Switzerland
6 Apr 18
@akalinus They were supposed to delete people who did that, but most of the time they missed those people. I remember I wrote several email to let them know, they did not even reply. I think they did not care anymore. They wanted to close the site.
4 people like this
@OneOfMany (12150)
• United States
5 Apr 18
I remember posting a topic that I had written, and then seeing the exact content copied by someone else under a different title. These people were simply rampant there.
When we transitioned over here, my very first post here was also copied completely by someone else. I think they found out that things work differently here when they were banned. :P
5 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
6 Apr 18
@OneOfMany So sad. The only good thing besides the early cash I made there was meeting people I hadn't yet met on my other sites. Many didn't come here until after the fall of Bubblews.
3 people like this
@OneOfMany (12150)
• United States
6 Apr 18
@bagarad I was at Helium before, and they pointed to Bubblews as it was shutting down, and people there pointed to here.
3 people like this
@sprite1950 (30453)
• Corsham, England
5 Apr 18
Some of those posts were abysmal but it didn't matter how poor the content was it was allowed. I could never understand that.
3 people like this
@sprite1950 (30453)
• Corsham, England
6 Apr 18
@bagarad No I have no idea how it kept going so long. It was mega popular to begin with but it grew too big too soon and those constant server crashes used to drive me mad. I left before it closed because of that.
2 people like this
@sprite1950 (30453)
• Corsham, England
6 Apr 18
@bagarad People still talk about it all the time now. Most sites die and are forgotten but Bubblews remains a conversation topic even years after its demise. Did they owe you money?
2 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
6 Apr 18
@sprite1950 I left shortly after it stopped paying, but I left my account up so I could still comment if I wanted to.
2 people like this
@wolfgirl569 (94747)
• Marion, Ohio
5 Apr 18
The ones mentioned and I also seen a lot of posts that just repeated a line or sometimes just a letter over and over until they hit the minimum character count. It did not seem to matter if they got reported as they were still the the next day and the next. The biggest problem with that site was not throwing the cheaters out.
3 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
6 Apr 18
@wolfgirl569 I'm trying to give some the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they don't see themselves as cheaters. One certainly thinks he or she is justified. ( I still can't tell from anything posted whether this is a man or woman.) Another is not a native English speaker and that may be why she copies all or part of the previous comments on my posts lately. She's near the top of the leaderboard. I'm hoping my post helps those who mean well realize how they may be killing the goose that they hope will lay golden eggs for them. I don't want to think badly of either of them, but time will tell. Neither will be happy with my post. I'm sure of that. I've stayed as non-judgemental as I can under the circumstances. I'm still waiting for post approval.
1 person likes this
@wolfgirl569 (94747)
• Marion, Ohio
6 Apr 18
@bagarad That is sad that they are still trying it somewhere
2 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
6 Apr 18
@JolietJake That certainly was crooked.
1 person likes this
@JudyEv (325333)
• Rockingham, Australia
5 Apr 18
@JolietJake Is that what was happening? Makes more sense then if that's what was happening..
3 people like this
@LeaPea2417 (36392)
• Toccoa, Georgia
5 Apr 18
People plagiarising, copying and pasting.
2 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
7 Apr 18
@LeaPea2417 Maybe they just don't know any other way to behave.
2 people like this
@LeaPea2417 (36392)
• Toccoa, Georgia
6 Apr 18
@bagarad It was sad how some people would never learn and keep doing it.
2 people like this
@PatZAnthony (14752)
• Charlotte, North Carolina
30 Aug 18
No clue what really happened, although many stories about this are out there. Will we ever know the truth?
Only if Avi Dixit comes forward one more time and explains things to us. What happened to him? Someone said he has another site, but no clue what it is!
2 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
2 Sep 18
I've no idea what's happened to him, but I haven't exactly been trying to find out, either. Glenn Stok wrote a wonderful hub on why it and many similar sites we've written on have failed or will fail. It covers Bubblews, Niume, and Persona Paper. I like that it's objective with no personal ax to grind.
Here is why the business models used by many writing sites lead to failure. I offer my opinion based on my background as a systems analyst.
1 person likes this
@akalinus (40433)
• United States
6 Apr 18
People copied others. On one post they could barely write a sentence. On the next post, they spouted scientific knowledge or philosophical wisdom. It did not take a genius to figure that it was plagiarism. Then there were the little clubs where people followed each other and voted their friends up even when they wrote drivel. I saw lists of stuff with no content. Ten things I like about my room. 1. My teddy bear. 2. My pillow. It was not great literature.
2 people like this
@bagarad (14283)
• Paso Robles, California
6 Apr 18
Yet there were also many good writers there, many of whom are now here, that I never would have met had we not been on Bubblews together. So that and the high earnings I got while they lasted made the experience worth while. I was fortunate enough to emerge with only having lost that one payment of $25. I I'm sorry so many had lose a last payout because of policy changes. People who were almost to pay out then bore the brunt of the pain.
2 people like this
@RonElFran (1214)
• Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania
29 Aug 18
My memories of the ways people cheated on Bubblews are very hazy. I think I've put the whole thing out of my mind, and don't just don't want to think about it ever again.
2 people like this
@sunrisefan (28524)
• Philippines
6 Nov 18
I was there and did not break any rules and they were the ones who cheated me of $700 they owed me. Their greatest blunder was that they generalized all Asians and treated us several notches before other nationalities. Many innocent ones like me were the victims and I'm sure they knew about that.
1 person likes this
@sunrisefan (28524)
• Philippines
6 Nov 18
@bagarad That was exactly what they did, Ms. Barbara. I was so mad that I made one last long post that lambasted them and I even dared them to delete my post which they never did till their demise. When others who have been keeping mum all those time read my post, they followed suit and lambasted the administrators too. That was really hard on us innocent Asians because it was racism. They looked down on us and thought we were cheaters and not good enough of the English language. On the other hand, there were really cheaters but the problem was that the adminstrators did not know to separate the grain from the chaff. BTW, thanks for your sympathy.
@porwest (78761)
• United States
3 May 18
There were a lot of people who formed groups that would simply comment, like, and respond, and gamed the system. But let's be real here. The real end of the site was the owners. They overpromised and underdelivered, and they did not manage the administration, and as a result the money that they offered was never actually there to be paid.
2 people like this
@porwest (78761)
• United States
9 May 18
@bagarad It was actually something closer to a Ponzi scheme. But not one that is prosecutable. The old system relied on new users and new content to pay old user and old content. But the writing was quickly on the wall that they could not sustain that.
2 people like this
