Forums Banned from BHW

[Abdul123]

Makes sense to me. It was my brother that introduced me to the forum back around lockdown time when I said I wanted to learn marketing to help with the family business. I have since shelved that idea due to other commitments but I did take that place, very very seriously since. But one little disagreement with mods, instead of handling any constructive critcisim and maybe passing on feedback, I felt they took that personally, as if you are questioning their 'authority'. I swear I felt after a disagreement a mod waited ages to leap on me again at the right enough moment - which, in this case was 'arguing' with a 'more favourite' member. Granted I was in no position to be throwing tonnes of money at them, but I was still a paying member. I bought as regularly as I should have, and I tried my best to abide by the rules; I never even used any profanities on the board, let alone anything else. All that hard work building up a reputation to try to help me earn a living and *poof*. Just like that, it's gone. And down to I feel - ego problems of a few people in power. The last part is obviously disputable. But that's how it looked to me and I was hardly there to make trouble Anyway, I did think Z was one of the more pleasant and easy going staff their to talk to. Some of the mods were fine too. Decent in fact. But with others, it was the case they would become assholes seemingly as soon as they got promoted, wheras some were assholes abusing power since before I got there, and apparently continued to be so after I was no longer a member.

I am not sure if they do this out of malice or because they are aware that the ship is sinking and are doing whatever they can to keep getting that paycheck for nothing. That means everything needs to be smooth on the surface: no complaints, no feedback; they remove your posts/threads if you say something they disagree with, etc.

I received a warning for "discussing prohibited activities"simply for saying that what's going on right now isn't okay (backed up with clear facts and evidence)

It's crazy how fast they are at silencing people, but when it comes to real moderation and catching the bad guys, they act very poorly, and most of the moderation is actually done by the community.

I've seen scammy threads up for hours and were only removed after I reported them; if I hadn't, they probably wouldn't have found them on their own.

So, we are also doing their job, and in return, we are being treated like crap.

 

[Preying Mantis]

Too late to sell though imho. Everyone is botting to make their site look bigger than it is. They also seem to be losing rankings even to SEO tools pushing their own blog and knowledgebases pages. And there is no real incentive for anyone that isn't selling or astroturfing for marketplace gigs to even be there. Treating members like crap isn't exactly the way forward. If the seemingly countless stories of people talking about unfair banning and treatment, and abuse of power are true, might just be the crappy moderating and poor administrative decisions catching up with them.

Bro they had a listing up for BHW years ago and they wanted tens of millions for it.

They probably want even more for it now. It’s why they allow AI content, so to my can be like “look bros who want to buy look how much content we have just don’t look at all the complaints or the obvious AI stuff”.

DD and the staff are morons.

 

[shattered world]

Bro they had a listing up for BHW years ago and they wanted tens of millions for it.

I saw that. I think it was around 2018 on Flippa or similar site and he wanted something crazy for. $17 million if I remember right.

I know that forum brings in money cause they milk the fuck out of it but $17 million for it?

That was back before the AI spam and other issues. My bet is he's going to pump MP2 out at some point and then try selling it again shortly after. Dude clearly just wants to dip out at this point you can see the frustration in the way he responds to members on there.

 

[ggmopa]

I saw that. I think it was around 2018 on Flippa or similar site and he wanted something crazy for. $17 million if I remember right.

I know that forum brings in money cause they milk the fuck out of it but $17 million for it?

That was back before the AI spam and other issues. My bet is he's going to pump MP2 out at some point and then try selling it again shortly after. Dude clearly just wants to dip out at this point you can see the frustration in the way he responds to members on there.

That is insane. And in 2017? If i'm not mistaken, that is just before when big Social Media as we know it today really started taking off, right? Around 2015-2016? I know someone who sold a health and fitness forum in exactly 2017 if I remember correctly. But it was definitely around this time. And that site was HUGE. And he only got six figures for it. Not really notably close to seven figures either. Today it's just essentially become a den where members dm each other about steroid deals or publicly review them. If not it would be gone. Another example of the same niche (it's a niche i'm invovled in) is now a private forum. They appear to be trying a different strategy now that has little to do with traffic and clicks and traditional monetization of public forums. But the best example is the story of the bodybuilding.com forum. That was one of, if not THEE highest traffic forum of it's generation. And now it is GONE. That's when any forum owner with any common sense and and market awarness could probably see where things were heading, but this who posessed these cashed out quick and without getting too greedy. Some of the buyers were big, could take a fianncial hit if things went wrong and had specialised teams and strategies. Like the company Vertical Scope, for example. They even built their own version of XenForum they custom made exclusively for their own portfolio of forums. The offer for a single forum wasn't really necessarily that signficant though. So to expect $17 million for a single forum just seems outlandish. I would love to have seen what any professional evaluation uncovered. Because that doesn't seem like a very professional estimate; it seems very poorly informed. And I mean this is all assuming they even made it that far!

Edit: just on a side note to emphasise just how powerful a force was against forums, look in to the story of Zyzz from the bodybuilding.com forums. This place wasn't just about Bodybuilding. Or even Health and Fitness. It just became a general gathering point on the Internet for people to hang out on. And their was a guy on their called Zyzz who was something of a celebrity across the forum with mout deviating from the subject too much. Dead at 23 from heart issues - read: fitness drug abuse. But he was so inpactful I have read previously he was known as the 'Original Internet Influencer'.

 

[t0mmy]

Funny thing is DD bought it for like half a million ffs... I wish Dave had offered the forum to the old mod team that hung out in IRC back then, I remember them talking about it and a lot agreed they would have done a group buy to purchase it from Dave, but he never even ran it by them!

 

[shattered world]

That is insane. And in 2017? If i'm not mistaken, that is just before when big Social Media as we know it today really started taking off, right? Around 2015-2016? I know someone who sold a health and fitness forum in exactly 2017 if I remember correctly. But it was definitely around this time. And that site was HUGE. And he only got six figures for it. Not really notably close to seven figures either. Today it's just essentially become a den where members dm each other about steroid deals or publicly review them. If not it would be gone. Another example of the same niche (it's a niche i'm invovled in) is now a private forum. They appear to be trying a different strategy now that has little to do with traffic and clicks and traditional monetization of public forums. But the best example is the story of the bodybuilding.com forum. That was one of, if not THEE highest traffic forum of it's generation. And now it is GONE. That's when any forum owner with any common sense and and market awarness could probably see where things were heading, but this who posessed these cashed out quick and without getting too greedy. Some of the buyers were big, could take a fianncial hit if things went wrong and had specialised teams and strategies. Like the company Vertical Scope, for example. They even built their own version of XenForum they custom made exclusively for their own portfolio of forums. The offer for a single forum wasn't really necessarily that signficant though. So to expect $17 million for a single forum just seems outlandish. I would love to have seen what any professional evaluation uncovered. Because that doesn't seem like a very professional estimate; it seems very poorly informed. And I mean this is all assuming they even made it that far!

Edit: just on a side note to emphasise just how powerful a force was against forums, look in to the story of Zyzz from the bodybuilding.com forums. This place wasn't just about Bodybuilding. Or even Health and Fitness. It just became a general gathering point on the Internet for people to hang out on. And there was a guy on their called Zyzz who was something of a celebrity across the forum with mout deviating from the subject too much. Dead at 23 from heart issues - read: fitness drug abuse. But he was so inpactful I have read previously he was known as the 'Original Internet Influencer'.

Yeah it makes you wonder who the hell evaluated it at that price. But I think it says more about the pricks running it that they think they can even list it for that much.

That kind of greed is what sunk other SEO forums overnight. Which one was it again that decided to put up a paywall? WickedFire I think? Whichever forum it was, I remember that was the final nail in the coffin for the community. Literally overnight they just went.

Funny thing is DD bought it for like half a million ffs... I wish Dave had offered the forum to the old mod team that hung out in IRC back then, I remember them talking about it and a lot agreed they would have done a group buy to purchase it from Dave, but he never even ran it by them!

Be honest was BHW even worth half a mil back then or did Dave just find a retarded investor who would pay anything without questioning it?
L

 

[t0mmy]

Yeah it makes you wonder who the hell evaluated it at that price. But I think it says more about the pricks running it that they think they can even list it for that much.

That kind of greed is what sunk other SEO forums overnight. Which one was it again that decided to put up a paywall? WickedFire I think? Whichever forum it was, I remember that was the final nail in the coffin for the community. Literally overnight they just went.

Be honest was BHW even worth half a mil back then or did Dave just find a retarded investor who would pay anything without questioning it?
L

It was worth much more I would say, not sure if you were a member there at the time... but the quality of services, quality of members and the info they shared, plus the community on there was top notch. DD raped the forum for mass profits, in doing so he destroyed what made there special.

 

[Rem]

DD raped

is it still raped if they bend over willingly?

 

[t0mmy]

is it still raped if they bend over willingly?

You'd need to ask BTB, he's had his shite pushed in by DD many times.

 

[ggmopa]

I am not seeing anything in the way of Social Media traffic, mentions or even visibility. Even if you do a manual search people asking about them a good decade a go. There has been virtually nothing the past year at all besides the odd complaont here and their about spam and certain service listing like this (translated from Spanish):

Someone on blackhatworld.com tried to sell me this sub for $120
Title: Someone on blackhatworld.com tried to sell me this sub for $120

They offered me both r/litigi and r/domandaonesta for $200, both with PayPal payment.

I was hoping to post the conversation, but they deleted the chats before I could take screenshots (or they banned it instantly as soon as I reported it, I don't know).

Just so you know, guys.

LOL

Were they so arrogant, they thought they wouldn't need any Social Media visibility? Not even Media tycoons made that mistake. No Social Media presence and clearly no PR team. I would knock about £300,000 off the offer for this alone

Has anyone ever taken a look at the site technical infrastructure and backend? I mean don't take it from me, it's something I have heard being said on the forum itself, that their databases have been hacked more times than a timber forest. There is no evidence though that i'm aware of, just a claim made on an ordinary forum post. Though considering how unimpressive and shabby their off-page is and has been when it shouldn't have, and for an SEO and marketing forum of all things , it wouldn't be surprise me if it was true

 

[shattered world]

I am not seeing anything in the way of Social Media traffic, mentions or even visibility. Even if you do a manual search people asking about them a good decade a go. There has been virtually nothing the past year at all besides the odd complaont here and their about spam and certain service listing like this (translated from Spanish):



LOL

Were they so arrogant, they thought they wouldn't need any Social Media visibility? Not even Media tycoons made that mistake. No Social Media presence and clearly no PR team. I would knock about £300,000 off the offer for this alone

Has anyone ever taken a look at the site technical infrastructure and backend? I mean don't take it from me, it's something I have heard being said on the forum itself, that their databases have been hacked more times than a timber forest. There is no evidence though that i'm aware of, just a claim made on an ordinary forum post. Though considering how unimpressive and shabby their off-page is and has been when it shouldn't have, and for an SEO and marketing forum of all things , it wouldn't be surprise me if it was true

There was a database breach back in 2014 but that’s the only one I know of.

Have I Been Pwned: Black Hat World Data Breach

In June 2014, the search engine optimisation forum Black Hat World had three quarters of a million accounts breached from their system. The breach included various personally identifiable attributes which were publicly released in a MySQL database script.

haveibeenpwned.com

DD always denies it but I know of multiple people who found the leaked account credentials and successfully used them to access accounts so he’s full of shit. Probably just denies it for legal reasons.

I don’t know anything about the backend. I’d imagine only a former admin like Z would know anything about what their backend has been like the last few years.

 

[GoldenGlovez]

Funny thing is DD bought it for like half a million ffs... I wish Dave had offered the forum to the old mod team that hung out in IRC back then, I remember them talking about it and a lot agreed they would have done a group buy to purchase it from Dave, but he never even ran it by them!

Aye, this was indeed the case. The money was there, but the sale went through without a chance to counter offer. Shame really...

There was a database breach back in 2014 but that’s the only one I know of.

Have I Been Pwned: Black Hat World Data Breach

In June 2014, the search engine optimisation forum Black Hat World had three quarters of a million accounts breached from their system. The breach included various personally identifiable attributes which were publicly released in a MySQL database script.

haveibeenpwned.com

DD always denies it but I know of multiple people who found the leaked account credentials and successfully used them to access accounts so he’s full of shit. Probably just denies it for legal reasons.

I don’t know anything about the backend. I’d imagine only a former admin like Z would know anything about what their backend has been like the last few years.

I was personally contacted on the IRC by someone offering the DB including thousands of sample contact details, metadata, etc asking iirc ~$5k USD before it was made public. I raised the flag to the new administration team and was pretty much told to fuck off, it never happened. Same deal when I pointed out referrer data from exec, mod, etc were being leaked from signatures when they removed the URL rewriting service that specifically prevented that.

 

[t0mmy]

Aye, this was indeed the case. The money was there, but the sale went through without a chance to counter offer. Shame really...

Yeah I mind the chat about it in irc.. a shame indeed, bz would have just changed my profile pic to a dick pic.. would never have went how things went with the guys that did unfortunately get it.

Miss them days and those guys, I don’t think a lot of people know (you do), but that’s actually what sparked my final argument with DD and ultimately my decision to tell him to stick my account up his arse (a great day for him no doubt). I was telling btb to get fucked in a public thread as he was disrespecting the old team, they were my friends and he’s a big gimp.. which they were happy to let him know at times when he’d try to join irc back in the day.

They seen him for what he is and what I’ve always shouted loudly.. and he knew it, hence him still being bitter and sparking that argument with myself - and you know I do like a good argument and bit of madness especially with the likes of him

 

[SilverClouds]

Hello Fellow OO Members,

Last night I received a permanent ban from BHW over sharing some memes and roasting one of the mods with memes.

I hope same does not happen here, memes are meant to be enjoyed and not taken personally.

The meme that got me banned:
View attachment 4805

Thank you

Are you banned, though?? Went to your profile on bhw and you don't seem to be banned?

 

[AdeelAlam]

Are you banned, though?? Went to your profile on bhw and you don't seem to be banned?

They unbanned me, with a last warning

They are very harsh with their decisions tbh.

All my motivation to contribute there has evaporated.

 

[TheVigilante]

They unbanned me, with a last warning

They are very harsh with their decisions tbh.

All my motivation to contribute there has evaporated.

Means one more chance to abuse them common you can do it

BHW the end all thanks to Adeel

 

[t0mmy]

Haha maybe this is the new meta? Complain about being banned over there in a thread here and you’ll get unbanned over there.. have we done a complete 180?

You’re welcome from everyone here Adeel! Now behave yourself over there from now on, ya hear!?

 

[Preying Mantis]

Haha maybe this is the new meta? Complain about being banned over there in a thread here and you’ll get unbanned over there.. have we done a complete 180?

You’re welcome from everyone here Adeel! Now behave yourself over there from now on, ya hear!?

Bro this is 100% it. Not even the first time cause they banned some other members, execs and jr. execs like @SilverClouds who wasn't even fucking online at the time. People complained here then all of the sudden they were "investigating" or some shit and lifted the bans acting like nothing ever happened.

This is what happens when people get banned from platforms and then complain in public places like X lol. 100% a good thing there's a public place to complain about this shit now cause it means these fucking retards running BHW can't just sweep it under the rug.

Makes you wonder how long they've been doing this shit for tho.

 

[t0mmy]

Bro this is 100% it. Not even the first time cause they banned some other members, execs and jr. execs like @SilverClouds who wasn't even fucking online at the time. People complained here then all of the sudden they were "investigating" or some shit and lifted the bans acting like nothing ever happened.

This is what happens when people get banned from platforms and then complain in public places like X lol. 100% a good thing there's a public place to complain about this shit now cause it means these fucking retards running BHW can't just sweep it under the rug.

Makes you wonder how long they've been doing this shit for tho.

Yeah I know bro, hence the joke about it "being the new meta" now and "have we done a complete 180"

Ohhh I know all about it and could tell you a story or 20.. but it's sunday so I'm gonna try relax a bit lol