The promise of finding like-minded people is an irresistible siren call for would-be Internet socialites, and a boon to businesses purporting to serve this need. In the mad dash toward profitability, however, some ventures cross the invisible line that delimits the proverbial circle of trust, thus earning the wrath of the ones who built most of their equity. This essay explains what the aggrieved users of site gone bad StumbleUpon can look forward to.

Table of Contents

The Last Stand of the First Stumblers

This rant exists because I thought I should say something in response to recent posts by Deborah and Venus Envy about StumbleUpon's seemingly inexorable putrefaction. These brave souls have my deepest sympathy and I wish them the best of luck, but I really think StumbleUpon isn't likely to deploy the policies and mechanisms that longtime stumblers would need for a successful defense of their community; rather, it is more likely to implement measures aimed at re-educating them. Indeed, StumbleUpon's attitude toward the first stumblers in 2008 is not unlike that of the Catholic Monarchs toward their Jewish subjects in 1492: convert or leave. How did it come to this?

Snowballs in Hell and Boxer Stew

The current situation had already been brewing for some time and, finally, reached a standstill at around the time of the acquisition by eBay. It stems from the fact that StumbleUpon makes money from sponsored stumbles and, consequently, doesn't want people to find the good stuff and prospective friends by browsing through review blogs, but rather by hitting those stumble buttons and letting the StumbleUpon algorithm work its magic. This explains why StumbleUpon has turned its back on a whole class of formerly-desirable users — users who get other users to spend more time on the site but whose activity somehow results in reduced aggregate stumbling. In fact, one might argue that, to the extent that they appropriate the site and foster a reliance on community processes over AI algorithms, users whose blogs are too informative and inboxes too well minded are bad for StumbleUpon. And, using the same logic, one might be tempted to conclude that anything that leads to blander review blogs and a latent mistrust of other users is good for StumbleUpon. And this is where things get ugly.

In Soviet Stumbleland, the Critters Spay and Neuter You

Consider the situation in which spammers and other pests - whether deliberately (because they see you as a competitor) or unintentionally (because they are rude and inconsiderate) - get you to neuter your blog; that is, you continue thumbing and tagging things but you now write inoffensive reviews, post lots of pretty pictures, put your list of friends on a diet, etc. Beyond that point, as stumblers resort to stumbling through your favorites in order to get anything of value in anything like a reasonable amount of time, StumbleUpon observes a net (albeit small) improvement of their bottomline. Why, then, should StumbleUpon heed oldtimers' pleas to discipline spammers? You got it. And, actually, it's a little worse than that.

Getting Schooled by Spammers

The most sophisticated spammers build visually appealing blogs that attract hundreds or even thousands of fans (some of which are actually just alters and associates), and indulge in moderate amounts of demagogy and staged drama to get attention. They then use their influence to peddle pages to the masses by various means: they may add pages to fans' stumble queues; or send them links via the private message system; or just add the pages to the StumbleUpon database and rely on their “weight” to get the StumbleUpon algorithm to show the pages as stumbles. * And here's the bad news I promised: StumbleUpon loves these good spammers because they are actually promoting StumbleUpon's preferred usage of the system, and this means that oldtimers who don't want to get with the program have comparatively little clout and, accordingly, little hope of prevailing.

You Can Check Out Anytime You Like

Now, you might think that the apparent prospect of berated users simply leaving and dragging their friends along with them might elicit some sympathetic reaction from SU. And you would be wrong. SU knows you won't leave

And, yet, there is still hope.

Big Brother, Where(fore) Art Thou?

Nah, I was just kidding. ^_^ There is actually no reason to hope because, ultimately, the trouble with StumbleUpon is its business model. As long as it doesn't change, there will continue to be virtually no incentive for StumbleUpon to implement advanced features that might empower conscientious users to make the service better for all users. In fact, it's not hard to imagine the opposite: a dystopian StumbleUpon in which StumbleUpon staffers posing as your pests and friends (undercover curators of the StumbleUpon ecosystem, if you will) work in tandem to modify your behavior on the site for the sake of corporate profits… and, not coincidentally, to chase away the old curmudgeons and stalwarts who think StumbleUpon belongs to them.

But that's just crazy… isn't it?

* No, I am not imagining things: this is stuff I learned from the horse's mouth as a result of a close encounter with some stumble-spammers, some of whom actually turned out to be pretty likeable (but, also, pretty cynical) folk.