Spam reviewer is disrupting album ratings, review bombing
A reviewer by name of Simone Appolini is going around review bombing AllMusic leaving useless one-star or two reviews. At first I thought it was just a bitter reviewer and paid no heed till I saw their negative reviews everywhere. Nearly every album I have reviewed I have seen their negative reviews. Now there might not be anything against policy with repeatedly dropping negative reviews, if it weren't for the repetitive construction of their "reviews".
As another report presented (link below), here is how the reviews are patterned most of the time.
The band's [year] album, [title],
- 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.- "Their first EP."
and then a slight variation:
- "Their second EP."
- "A stop-gap EP."
- "Their only album before disbanding."
- "One of its albums."
- "Self-explanatory."
- "Fourth EP"
- "A cash-in compilation."
- "An early-years compilation."
very rarely have I ever seen a positive review from Appolini, and rarely do they deviate from this formula. When they do, it's still negative and stunted but goes a bit longer than these types they rely on. My main gist here is that this is spam, and it disrupts the reviewing process which is meant to express personal opinions and help passersby decide on what music to get into. Appolini is very clearly a bot, they have to be, and the rare authentic-looking reviews probably only exist to dispel any accusations of spamming (which has to be against policy, it just has to be). There is another report concerning this individual (see: A spammy reviewer is actively making your site worse), but the maintenance person Zac did a shoddy job addressing the situation. On that page, Zac said:
"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."
He didn't get to the root of the problem. Sure, they're not selling anything or using hate speech or rhetoric, blah blah blah. But they are clearly using bots and mechanical methods of submitting, it's undeniable, the evidence is right there. He failed to take appropriate action against this bot and to ban the account, which is the action to take. And Simone Appolini continues to review bomb metal albums and other genres too with impunity and it's getting infuriating. No federal crime or anything is being committed by Appolini, but their intent is far from honorable and they're just making AllMusic a miserable place for readers of reviews; not because of the negativity but because of the mechanical repetitive nature of their useless reviews. Someone, please do the right thing and remove this account from AllMusic, they're obviously spamming and review bombing, which in other platforms is against policy. I don't know if AllMusic has such a policy, but they ought to.
