Warning:
This is not a particularly positive review of freelancer.com but it is intended
to force action on all parties involved.
The
ever expanding freelance beehive that is freelancer.com is unwittingly creating
more "red light" districts within its framework. "Red
light" actually implies that although what ever goes on there may be
morally questionable, it is still legal.
But
what is legal about these actual projects that have been posted on
freelancer.com?
Samples
*These
are representations of some of the projects you can find on freelancer.com and
they are actual projects. All you need do if you care to follow the links is to
look just beneath the project for similar projects and they may lead you to
hundreds of illegal blackhat projects.
A
Closer Look
Creating
a YouTube BOT
The
"legality" of this project and projects of this sort may be something
that is arguable in the minds of some. But one thing that is certain is that
YouTube will definitely frown at the idea of having a BOT viewer to rack up
viewing numbers of a particular video post. They will definitely see it as an
illegal project.
Another
thing is that it is unfair to everybody except the video poster. It is unfair
to the human viewer and browser who would naturally want to see why such a
video has a high number of viewers. It will also be unfair to videos in the
same category as theirs because they will suffer for it.
Besides,
the creator of this illegal project can use this to make thousand of dollars
(conservatively speaking) whether he wants to use it to attract traffic to a
site or as a "service". This is definitely a black hat project.
The
same goes for the second. Facebook won't be pleased about such a project. They
will definitely view it as being an illegal project.
-it
encourages blackhat techniques by default because who is going to look at
racking up 100,000 Facebook Likes without thinking of a shorter cut to meet the
target if it is possible?
Any
we all know that it is possible because fake Facebook Likes are already making
the rounds.
The
Blame Game
This
is according to the order and portion of Blame.
Freelancer.com
They
take the lion share of the blame for not only allowing such but encouraging it
by default. Like we said before, these are just representations of projects
that are in there hundreds and possibly thousands when you expand it to include
other illegal blackhat projects on the site.
Taking
a proactive stand on this cannot be over emphasized and this is the defense
freelancer.com will naturally give but all you have to do is look just beneath
the project for similar projects and you will see how shallow the defense is.
Greed
But
freelancer.com has been proactive in some instances. There was a time when
there were lots of money exchange projects being posted on freelancer.com. A
majority of those projects had to do with people who owned PayPal accounts and
wanted a quick way to exchange the money using the freelancer.com in-house
payment system or by any other means.
Freelancer.com
considered these as illegal blackhat projects and was quick to shut such
projects down to the point of making it a point to announce that such projects
will not be tolerated and stiff penalties awaited those that tried it. Why were
they so quick to run this down? The only plausible reason that comes to mind is
that they have a tie in agreement with PayPal (as PayPal is known to pursue
with numerous sites). The agreement is actually strong enough to keep almost
all of PayPal's competition out of freelancer.com (one has been recently
included).
So
when it came to something that affected there pocket, they were quick to shut
it down. But when it comes to projects that can effectively run down the
integrity of other sites -they have similar projects in their hundred posted
just underneath.
Freelancer.com
takes the bulk of the blame because they are the only ones that can do
something about it.
-It
is their platform
-They
have shown that they have the capacity to shut things down if they really want
to
Incentive
What
they allow on the site makes them liable. You can't simply justify that you do
not have control over projects that are posted especially when those illegal
projects are highly detrimental to other sites. Such site will be confident of
having a good case against you if the matter goes to court.
Why
Freelancer.com will do Something Now
They
will do something about this if not for anything else but for greed. They
should know that now that it has come out and liability rests squarely on them
as far as the sites that are being rundown are concerned, they will have to
send out their "commando units" to shut this down just as they did
with the PayPal money exchange projects.
Something
Positive
Freelancer.com
recently bought over Scriptlance.com which is one of the pioneer freelancing
sites that was reputed to be the fifth largest of such before it was bought
over by freelancer.com. Good things are happening freelancer.com but this also
means that potentially more illegal blackhat projects are just waiting to be
posted. They have to be on their toes not just with what affects their pocket
but what might affect the pockets of other sites. And the real danger here is
that is that freelancer.com might have a case to answer to if such sites decide
to come after them for allowing illegal blackhat projects that are detrimental
to their site to be posted.
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