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A spammy reviewer is actively making your site worse

TL;DR: A certain AllMusic user's spammy reviews (41200+ reviews in <4 years) have made AllMusic a less useful, more hostile place to visit. This post requests that some sort of mitigating action be taken.

(Feel free to reach out if you want the specific username, but I'm sure you're already aware of this person. Hint: they review a lot of metal acts.)

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A certain AllMusic user has posted over 41200 reviews since November 9, 2019—that is, nearly 30 reviews a day for 3.8 years. With few exceptions, the reviews are content-free and negative/dismissive. Almost none of them demonstrate even a cursory engagement with the album they're supposed to be reviewing. Instead, they generally follow one of a set of obvious templates, coupled with a seemingly arbitrary rating. Some of the most common templates include:

The band's [YEAR] album, [ALBUM_NAME],
- isn't any different from the rest of their discography.
- is continuation of their usual style.
- is a (rehash|replica) of their (past|previous) (works|discography).
- is a (rehash|replica) of the (past|previous) (one|two|three|...).
- is a replica of their debut.
- is indistinguishable from their previous efforts.
- (continues|shows) the band's compositional stubbornness.
- shows their little relevance among their niche.

Roughly 13300 (>30%) of their reviews follow the above pattern.

[COUNTRY]'s [ARTIST_NAME] are a clone of [ARTIST_1], [ARTIST_2], ..., and [ARTIST_N], as shown by their [YYYY] (album|debut|EP), [ALBUM_NAME].

About 4200 (>10%) of their reviews follow that pattern.

In several thousand other cases, this user's reviews dispense entirely with the pretense of being a review. A random sampling from a few pages of the "Album Reviews" section of their profile, with accompanying star ratings:

- "Their first EP." (1 star)
- "Their second EP." (1 star)
- "A stop-gap EP." (1 star)
- "Their only album before disbanding." (1.5 stars)
- "One of its albums." (3 stars)
- "Self-explanatory." (1 star)
- "Fourth EP" (1 star)
- "A cash-in compilation." (1 star)
- "An early-years compilation." (1.5 stars)

Please notice those star ratings. Over 37000 (~90%) of this user's 41200+ reviews are rated two stars or fewer. Often this user makes their way through a band's whole catalog, burdening each release with an excessively negative rating that, as I've hope I've managed to establish, is based on nothing. 

I'm not sure what this user's deal is, but whatever their intent, the result is that they're making your site a less useful, less welcoming place to visit. Their valueless, mean-spirited reviews show up as the highlighted review in User Reviews sections across your site, sitting right alongside AllMusic's official (and generally far more thoughtful) reviews—and in cases where AllMusic hasn't supplied an official review, the reviews stand as the only review of a given release.

I've used and enjoyed the AllMusic Guide for something like twenty years at this point. I (and I'm sure many AllMusic users) would really appreciate it if you could do something about this issue. I have to believe this kind of low-quality, artist-bashing spam cannot be what AllMusic had in mind when they implemented user reviews.

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YC

Amen to that! Simone Appolloni is a cancer to Allmusic.com in the metal sections. That bot (because no human can do so much reviews) is dumping your credibility to the garbage. I can't believe you don't even see this yourselves on your server stats.

I'm searching for a band, maybe less knows or more obscure, and always have to check for that bot's reviews to know if it's a real review or a preformatted trash review for that bot.

Don't you have rules against this? Please be proactive and remove/ban this bot's account....

Comment

I've had discussions with this person (who is a person and not a bot) and while I don't agree with their takes on music or how they choose to rate things, they're not violating any of the terms of service or our guidelines for reviews.

The majority of the reviews are not helpful, and the low ratings are equally not useful, but they aren't selling anything, they aren't using hate speech, and they aren't using bots or mechanical methods of submitting.

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YC

How about just review bombing. Especially if it's only one person doing all that crap. IMDB.com has mechanics against that but, hey, no one at AllMusic.com seems to have the guts to do anything about it. Scared of being sued? Who in his/her right mind would even agree/defend this trash... But corporate policies... yeah, those again. Anyone willing to grow a spine? Probably not...

RR

I've come across a series of Appolloni's reviews referring to a transgender artist (Domino) as "it," which IS hate speech.

Misgendering aside, the "reviews" were similarly content-free, being identical repetitions announcing that each album was one of the artist's releases

MC
I recently discovered this "Simone Appollini" when I was looking through the AllMusic page for one of my favorite bands: The Queers. After I noticed that the solitary reviews for the groups newer releases had received 1 and 1/2 star user ratings and were accompanied by dismissive reviews, I thought maybe I had just come across someone who really hated the band. They had left negative reviews for every single release, which led me to dig deeper. I came across people discussing this person on Reddit, a SomethingAwful forum, and a couple other places until stumbling across this post. As I've surmised from the opinions of others and everything I've seen myself, there's only one logical conclusion: it's a bot.
 
After all, how else could you pump out tens of thousands of these reviews over the course of just a few years? It's next to impossible and frankly unimaginable, considering that it is A) extremely time consuming and B) utterly pointless. You would have to spend every waking moment methodically going through an artist's discography typing out some variation of the same thing over and over again, I'd have to imagine it would get a little tedious after a while. Not to mention the time it would take to actually listen to all of these albums before writing a review, but my guess is that "Simone" isn't actually listening to any music.
 
Checking here, it appears "company participant" Zac has spoken to "Simone", and is assuring us that it is, in fact, a real person. We'll just have to take Zac's word for it, I don't suppose he's going to provide us any proof, nor is it possible to find out for yourself, as there is no way to directly message a user on AllMusic or communicate with them via reviews (more on that later).
 
The only evidence to support the existence of a real person named "Simone Appollini" lies in the fact that some of the reviews are rather articulate (on a very small scale that is, perhaps 1 out of 100). For example, the first release by The Queers, their 1990 album "Grow Up", comes across as a scathing but overall knowledgeable account of the album and the group as a whole. If one had to guess at first glance, it appears to have been written by an actual human being. Meanwhile, the rest of the reviews for this artist consist of repeating the same variation of a phrase which simply describes the release, such as "Their first EP" or some sort of brief dismissal of the work, such as "...is a continuation of their usual style". What's particularly of note, however, is that there are a number of reviews that are almost nonsensical and appear to have been written by either someone who doesn't speak English or some sort of AI-generator. Take for example this review of The Queers album "Save the World" which reads as follows: "The project's 2020 album, Save the World, explains by itself." 1 star.
 
Strange that someone who is seemingly articulate enough to weave together a thoughtful albeit standoffish review can in the next breath lose their grasp on the English language. That's not how people talk. Not to mention they don't even bother to state anything insightful or useful in the slightest on the remainder of the releases. "Split album." 1 star. "An EP." 1 star. That's not quite how people review things, is it?
 
Disappointed that one of my favorite bands was being hindered by unfair and unjust reviews, I left a comment on one of The Queers albums reading: "Please ignore the negative spam left on all Queers releases, this is a terrific album." 24 hours later, I returned to my comment to notice that my review had been edited to simply state: "This is a terrific album." I understand my initial comment probably broke some sort of arbitrary rule regarding discussion of topics unrelated to a release itself, but then I asked myself, "if the user review section is so heavily moderated, why isn't anyone doing anything to stop this 'Simone' spam?" Not only are the reviews generally uninformative and mean-spirited, they're also a considerable hindrance to the rating system of an album, especially for lesser-known albums which may only have few reviews or none at all. And yet it remains. Not only am I unable to indirectly reference "Simone" on the site in the only way possible, but this blatant and harmful spam is seemingly protected by AllMusic for whatever reason. Very strange.
 
It's no question that the quality of the AllMusic website has gone increasingly downhill over the past few years. As it stands today, it's next to impossible to scroll through the website without a dozen different pop-up ads covering the content. And don't forget how pushy they are when it comes to their annual subscription. That's not really an indicator of a prosperous website. If only there was some way to drive up traffic or get more people to engage in the content.
 
Hey... I've got an idea. What if there was someone who systematically went through every single album on the site and instigated some sort of confrontation? Boy that would get people riled up! Nothing gets people more engaged than making them feel the need to defend what they love, and when it comes to music, everyone's got an opinion! Yeah, if only there was some sort of bot designed to give every album zero stars and write generic, dismissive comments that are easy to cut and paste into every single release. You could even recycle the same words and phrases over and over again! But wait a minute, Zac here, a guy who works for the company, says "Simone" is actually a real person and that there's nothing they can do. Oh, nevermind I guess. Looks like the only thing they can do is dispel rumors or delete comments claiming that "Simone Appolloni" is a bot. Right, perfect, thanks for your help. Simone is AllMusic. AllMusic is Simone. I recommend using another website next time.
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Amen! I've noticed this Simone Appolini and unfortunately I don't think it's a bot (ive seen some positive reviews but those are super rare), its a troll who has nothing better to do than to review bomb almost every metal album I've seen, or nearly every album overall I've seen. What in the hell is this person thinking, why are they doing this? It's not constructive, it's annoying, and it brings down the stats for no reason. I'd understand stats being lower if it was a real review, but yeah no this creep keeps review bombing. There should be a policy against review bombing aka trolling, it's ugly and takes away the professionalism we're supposed to have here. That account needs to be blocked, it's creating a toxic negativity that isn't contributive in any way

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B

I cannot comprehend why Simone Appollini has not been banned. Not sure what caused him to become such a miserably disgruntled individual. My theory is the metalheads in high school bullied him for being a little wuss. 

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