July 28, 1999
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Web-Address Ban by Yahoo!
Draws Howls From Users
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
A new move by Yahoo! to clean up its stock-chat message boards has users -- and some competitors -- crying foul.
On Saturday, Yahoo implemented a new system designed to keep off-topic and inappropriate posts off its popular Yahoo! Finance message boards (quote.yahoo.com). The site now maintains a list of Web addresses, or URLs, that it considers banned. Yahoo's boards automatically reject posts that contain those addresses.
Some of the URLs were banned because they had been repeatedly posted on numerous boards. That practice, known as spamming, is a familiar tactic of people aiming to draw attention to Web sites -- sometimes simply to promote a business or share information, but other times as part of investment scams.
But some Yahoo users say the ban on the URLs is tantamount to censorship. "So, because someone else maybe spammed this URL all over the boards, now I can't link to it? That's just silly," says Eric Holst, a Miami, Fla., software developer and avid Yahoo user. He says his account with Yahoo was deleted after he posted several messages criticizing the new policy. He says those messages have also been removed by Yahoo.
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Yahoo declines to comment specifically on any of the banned URLs. Further, Yahoo won't say how many sites it has banned, or what exactly it takes to get a site on its blacklist. "This move was designed to enhance the user experience," says Mike Riley, producer of Yahoo! Finance. "The feedback we're getting on this is overwhelmingly positive. The only feedback I know of that's negative is from people that were making those types of problem posts themselves."
Mr. Riley declines to comment specifically on Mr. Holst, but said public criticism of Yahoo isn't in itself grounds for removing a user's account.
Message-board operators like Yahoo have come under pressure to clean up the content on the boards, which have long been a favorite playground for stock promoters and others looking to manipulate stock prices. In one high-profile case in April, a former employee of telephone-equipment maker PairGain Technologies allegedly used a Yahoo message board to direct users to a Web page made to look like a news story on Bloomberg L.P.'s Web site. The report falsely stated that Tustin, Calif., PairGain was being bought by an Israeli company for $1.35 billion.
PairGain stock raced in response, before falling back when the hoax was exposed. The former employee has since pleaded guilty to securities fraud.
Yahoo's ban also includes a block on linking to Web sites that use IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses -- combinations of numbers that can be used as substitutes for the more familiar ".com" Internet addresses. In the PairGain hoax, readers were directed to an IP address to mask the fact that the page they were going to wasn't really from the Bloomberg site (www.bloomberg.com), but rather resided on Angelfire.com (www.angelfire.com), a Web-site hosting service.
Since Yahoo won't say which sites are banned, users have been swapping anecdotal evidence about which addresses appear to be blocked. Some have expressed frustration that Yahoo didn't notify the users that the change was coming.
"One of the most troubling things is that we don't know what [Yahoo's] standard is for deciding which sites are banned," says Bonnie Nuss, a free-lance writer in Austin, Texas, and a regular on the Dell Computer message board on Yahoo. "That has led a lot of people to think that this is a business-oriented decision to block out competition."
Like Mr. Holst, she, too, says she her account was deleted after she criticized Yahoo on message boards. Yahoo declines to comment on Ms. Nuss.
One of the sites Yahoo has banned is Freerealtime.com (www.freerealtime.com), a site that provides stock quotes and other financial data.
"This doesn't sound right at all," says Brad Gunn, president of the Irvine, Calif., Web-site operator. "It makes you wonder, are they really doing this from a spamming point of view or a competitive point of view? Do they just not want anyone to leave their site?"
Mr. Gunn says he considers his site a competitor to Yahoo. In addition to providing financial data, the site also features message boards. "People are allowed to link to pretty much anything they want from our boards, including Yahoo," Mr. Gunn says.
Yahoo's Mr. Riley declines to comment on Freerealtime, but says Yahoo isn't trying to keep its users from visiting competitors' sites. "We go out of our way to make other financial-information sites accessible," he says, pointing out that links to Yahoo competitors are available through the site's search engine.
But Steve Carnes, co-founder of KingFine (www.kingfine.com), another banned site where users swap stock picks, says Yahoo appears to be restricting where its users can and can't go. "They really seem to be cutting down on the free exchange of information," he says. "If Yahoo had a problem with us, I'm fully available. They could have contacted me. Why not have open communication before they ban us?"
Mr. Riley declines to comment on KingFine.
Other sites that Yahoo has banned include:
StockVotes.com (www.stockvotes.com), a site that lets users swap stock picks. "We have a legitimate Web site. We have certainly never spammed anyone. I can't think of any reason why they would block us," says Peyman Aleagha, chief executive of the Toronto Web-site operator.
ISN Stock Watch (www.isnstockwatch.com), a site that offers market data and commentary. Steve Protter admits that some "overzealous relatives" did post several messages on Yahoo boards promoting the site, based in Chicago. He says he asked them to stop when he realized what they were doing, and says that regardless, his site shouldn't be held accountable for their actions. "If you're selling jeans on a message board, that's one thing. But if you're publicizing a story on somebody else's Web site that's about the stock in question, there should be a different standard," he says.
Spam has always been a problem on message boards. The forums represent essentially free advertising space, and users are often forced to wade through such off-topic conversation in order to find valuable chatter.
Mr. Riley says there has been an "overwhelming demand" from Yahoo users to do something about spam on its boards.
Yahoo's competitors, like Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com) and Silicon Investor (www.techstocks.com), say they deal with spam on a case-by-case basis. And when there is a problem, they say, they will remove the messages and the user who posted them, rather than ban the content outright from all posts.
"This is a tool that we're trying out to help us improve the boards," says Mr. Riley. "The Web is a constantly changing environment, and I can't say whether this is permanent. But right now, our users like it."
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