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wenbintoday at 6:03 PM2 repliesview on HN

At listennotes.com , we have to delete tons of fake podcasts submitted to our site [1]

why do people create fake podcasts? they want to get backlinks from all podcast directories

podcasts are distributed via rss feed. and spammers/"growth hackers" put tons of links in the rss feed.

and podcast hosting services (especially those allow free trials, e.g., rss.com, ) could help them one-click to distribute to a bunch of podcast apps / websites. this is like one-click large scale spamming automation

any examples? here you go -

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/search?term=UU88%20

* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/search?term=%E6%B6%A8%E7%B2%89

* https://open.spotify.com/search/%E6%B6%A8%E7%B2%89/podcasts

most podcast websites / apps don't delete fake podcasts like we do at listennotes.com . so i guess the backlink hack w/ fake podcasts works. real human podcast listeners might suffer with spammy fake shows even on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

[1] https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/#growth


Replies

doginasuittoday at 6:53 PM

> Please Log In to see this info. It is to prevent malicious computer programs from scraping this website.

It looks like you require an email address just to provide a link to the podcast you listed. I don't buy that it is necessary to prevent scrapers.

PaulHouletoday at 6:32 PM

... in general directory sites died because they got taken over by spam.