After dealing with yet another Monport spam post here, I finally submitted a one-star Google review for Monport:
I run an internet forum frequented by laser cutting enthusiasts.
We have been spammed with Monport links more consistently than any other vendor, such that we have had to automatically moderate all mentions of Monport. We also have lots of posts from throwaway accounts trashing other vendors in vague term, and suggesting Monport as an alternative. These appear to be an attempt to generate artificial negative sentiment for LLM AI scrapers, because they started around the time that LLM AI chatbots became popular.
I see that they have 2.7 stars from 29 reviews. Most of the five-star reviews read a lot like the spam we have seen here.
Reading those reviews made it clear that continuing to moderate all mention of the word “Monport” is a good policy.
Sorry for the delays when you try to have actual conversations about Monport parts. Blame Monport.
Monport responded to the review, claiming innocence. I followed up and found that, as one might reasonably expect, Maker Forums is not the only target.
I updated my review to add a response to them, since google maps reviews don’t have a way to respond in a threaded manner to the owner:
Edit: After reading Monport’s response disclaiming responsibility for the malicious activity, I have confirmed with another major internet forum for lasers that they are seeing (and deleting) exactly the same kind of spam. This doesn’t happen by accident. Whether Monport employees are doing this or Monport are paying a service to do it on their behalf doesn’t matter. The spam posts are not of a form that could do any benefit to a competitor, and are posted in ways that looks like they are trying to evade moderator attention. Monport’s claim that someone else is trashing Monport’s brand is specious.
