Absolutely the worst service experience I’ve encountered in 20 years on the Internet …
I believe this is now the 4th or perhaps the 5th revision of this review. Every time I post the review, spot.IM "reports" my review to Trustpilot with a new complaint. My review is then taken down until I edit the review to resolve the new complaint and then it is re-posted, until the next spot.IM complaint. Nonetheless, I refuse to submit and I will continue to modify and post my "edited" review for others to read.
My review focuses on my experiences with a corporation named spot.IM. Spot.IM is a privately held Israeli company that provides websites with “online community” software, much the same way Facebook or other social media services do. In short, from the perspective of those of us who participate in social media on the Internet, spot.IM’s service consists of operating comment boards that millions of Americans use. In the case of spot.IM, they claim to be working with more than 25% of the US-based digital publishing industry.
If you sign up as a user on the social media section (comment boards) of any of those websites, you become a customer/user of the spot.IM services. That being said, I have used social media services for at least ten years and, more specifically, I have participated in the online communities in the MarketWatch and Fox News websites for many years while never encountering any service related issues whatsoever. Nonetheless, in the summer and early fall of 2018, I suddenly found myself encountering service problems with the spot.IM services that had been recently implemented on these two websites.
Long story short … after spending weeks trying to resolve these problems, it seems that spot.IM has now terminated my service on at least two news websites. More importantly, spot.IM will take actions that may potentially deny me service and the ability to participate in any of the publishing websites that use spot.IM services, which means 25% of the US-based digital publishing industry, including The Huffington Post, AOL, Time and Forbes.
To provide a bit more information on my service experience with spot.IM, I should outline the full story from the beginning.
My first adverse experience with spot.IM’s service was when comments that I posted on MarketWatch were immediately deleted. I wasn’t receiving any notifications or errors and the process seemed to be operating just as it always had. The comments were simply being deleted the moment they were posted. Since my comments were completely innocuous, my immediate assumption was that I had encountered some type of technical issue.
Initially, I turned off all ad blockers, disabled all Goggle Chrome privacy settings and even turned off my anti-virus at one point in an attempt to diagnose the problem. Finally, after sending several emails to the MarketWatch support area, they responded that they could not identify the source of my problem and, therefore, they had forwarded my email to spot.IM support for follow-up.
After waiting several weeks for a response from spot.IM’s support area, I posted a scathing review on Trustpilot regarding the total lack of service and mentioning potential motivations for that lack of service. Spot.IM’s response to the appearance of this adverse publicity was almost immediate, which is interesting. Spot.IM support contacted Trustpilot and requested my email address along with stating, “Sounds like you are having some issues with our product.”
I responded and described the service problems I was encountering with the MarketWatch website. The spot.IM response was, “We took a look at your MarketWatch account and can confirm that it is unable to post because it is connecting from a malicious IP address.”
Since I use Comcast for my Internet service, my understanding is that my IP address changes regularly. So, that explanation left me somewhat skeptical but I didn’t feel it was worth pursuing. Adding to that skepticism was the fact that MarketWatch had not mentioned any issues with my user account and forwarded my email as a technical issue to spot.IM support. However, I was receiving services from spot.IM and my ability to participate in social media was restored. No harm, no foul, right?
About 3 weeks later, the spot.IM service abruptly began deleting my comments on both the MarketWatch and the Fox News websites. No notifications of service termination, nothing in the form of an explanation to the user. Keep in mind they have your email address, so a notification of termination of service would be considered a simple professional courtesy.
Contacting spot.IM support again, their response was, “I can confirm that your account was banned on Fox due to violating the Fox News Community Guidelines.” Considering the fact that the rhetoric from some users on the Fox News comment board is notoriously outrageous, I was stunned to say the least.
I should note that I have consistently maintained that I have never violated the spot.IM Terms of Use nor have I violated the Fox News Community Guidelines. I’ve never used foul or crude language, never threatened anyone in any way whatsoever nor have I ever posted “fake” news or other falsehoods. In fact, aside from pointing out logical contradictions, debunked conspiracy theories and providing links to credible sources that contradict blatantly false statements, I’m confident that my comments were always reasonably civil.
Nonetheless, as soon as one anonymous person at Fox News declared me persona non grata, according to spot.IM, the spot.IM service immediately began using their “proprietary” tracking technologies to identify me on all of the social media websites where they provide services. Once their technology had identified me, I was apparently reported to the website as a “bad” person. This is apparently one of the “features” of its service that spot.IM promotes in its marketing. Therefore, once Fox News declared me “banned”, my access to the MarketWatch website was immediately terminated without notice.
Unfortunately, like most other everyday Americans, I hadn’t bothered to hunt down and read all of the spot.IM terms of service until I had a problem with the service. Especially the “Cookie Policy” which states,
“When you visit or access our websites or applications operated by us, or when you interact or engage with our content (“Services”), we use (and authorize third parties to use) web beacons, cookies, pixel tags, scripts, tags, API and other technologies (“Tracking Technologies“).
The Tracking Technologies allow us to automatically collect information about you and your online behavior, as well as your device (for example your computer or mobile device), in order to enhance your navigation on our Services, improve our Services performance and customize your experience on our Services. We also use this information to collect statistics about the usage of our Services, perform analytics, deliver content which is tailored to your interests and administer services to our Users, advertisers, publishers, customers and partners.
We also allow third parties to collect information about you through Tracking Technologies.”
- Spot.IM Cookie Policy, Retrieved 2/9/2019
Moreover, if an American user were to question the legality of spot.IM’s actions, it should be noted that spot.IM's Terms of Use stipulate that spot.IM services are governed by the laws of the State of Israel.
“13. Governing Law and Jurisdiction
These Terms of Service shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Israel. Any claim relating to the Site or use of the Site will be governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the State of Israel, without reference to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising out of or related to your use of the Site will be brought in, and you hereby consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue in, the competent courts in the district of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel.”
- Spot.IM Terms of Use, Retrieved 2/10/2019
To this day, I do not know what comments, if any, might have triggered spot.IM’s machine learning “analytics” and prompted the company to forward my comments to a Fox News moderator. Nor do I know what comments were judged as “violating the Fox News Community Guidelines” and, therefore, justified my service being terminated by spot.IM.
Spot.IM publicly acknowledges that, as a feature of its service, they actively track anyone who has been banned by one spot.IM client and report that the person has been banned to any other client with whom the person is suspected to have an existing account or opens a new account. Within about 48 hours of being "banned" by Fox News, my access to MarketWatch as also terminated. I would note that it's not as if I was attempting to be devious, both accounts were under the same email address.
So, in total, I would have to say that my service experience with spot.IM has got to be the most horrible service experience I’ve ever had.
