Definitely negative. Also last one is Feb. 2017 not Feb. 2014.
Very helpful list @Gerardf -- thanks for pulling this together.
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Definitely negative. Also last one is Feb. 2017 not Feb. 2014.
Very helpful list @Gerardf -- thanks for pulling this together.
Gerardf
Active Member
Linking another thread discussing SA:
Fake news never ceases to amaze me
Comments from today (Sept 4) regarding the distinction between SA "Blogs" v. Fake "News" is relevant and accurate. The problem is the Google-bots and other algo-bots do not make the distinction it seems. On the internet it seems, all blogs and news are the same. This would be almost impossible to fix, but this is a big reason why we have all the crapola out there as "news".
As I had mentioned earlier, paid blogs by anonymous posters will always bring out the worst--since we tend to gravitate toward bad news and negativity--increases the clicking of the article, increases the money the author receives.
Further SA had been hit with investigations by the SEC alleging Pump and Dump schemes, which could bias their editorial staff to look more favorably on negative bent articles.
Scammers Used SeekingAlpha for Bogus Stock Promotions, SEC Says
With a young volatile stock/company it's easier, IMHO, as an editor to favor the negative articles if one has any concern about pumping and dumping practices. As the company matures and posts profits/revenues, this may change. They actually have in the website rules that they may not allow blogs about stocks trading less than $1 per share or company valuation less than 100 million.
Fake news never ceases to amaze me
Comments from today (Sept 4) regarding the distinction between SA "Blogs" v. Fake "News" is relevant and accurate. The problem is the Google-bots and other algo-bots do not make the distinction it seems. On the internet it seems, all blogs and news are the same. This would be almost impossible to fix, but this is a big reason why we have all the crapola out there as "news".
As I had mentioned earlier, paid blogs by anonymous posters will always bring out the worst--since we tend to gravitate toward bad news and negativity--increases the clicking of the article, increases the money the author receives.
Further SA had been hit with investigations by the SEC alleging Pump and Dump schemes, which could bias their editorial staff to look more favorably on negative bent articles.
Scammers Used SeekingAlpha for Bogus Stock Promotions, SEC Says
With a young volatile stock/company it's easier, IMHO, as an editor to favor the negative articles if one has any concern about pumping and dumping practices. As the company matures and posts profits/revenues, this may change. They actually have in the website rules that they may not allow blogs about stocks trading less than $1 per share or company valuation less than 100 million.
Here's how I look at it. As long as the company is losing 1/3 of a billion on revenues of 2 billion, it's going to be very easy for bears to write negative articles. So get used to it. The tide won't turn until there's a full quarter of profitable M3 production, probably Q2 of 2018.
IMHO, in general Google value honest user generated content with high expertise (TMC forums). An example of high quality pages in Google guidelines is a "Factchecking page on an Internet rumor debunking website". Financial information pages needs to be very high quality though.
Revealing/debunking low quality financial info articles could be valuable.
Source, see this pdf
Revealing/debunking low quality financial info articles could be valuable.
Source, see this pdf
Seeking Alpha literally hurts my brain and maybe my soul too. I think that reading and responding to 99% of TSLA posts and comments there will decrease your quality of life.
I do however use it for the conference call transcript when I can't tune in.
I do however use it for the conference call transcript when I can't tune in.
I have been following SA for more than 5 years now, ever since I clicked on a JP article that came on my iphone yahoo feed. In early 2012 it was a mix of positive and negative articles, with JP mostly holding the banner for the most vicious FUD. But my mid 2014 it was amply clear that it is the negative articles that garner the most clicks like attracting fleas to sh-it. A ton of them. The number comments count, became a badge of honor for many. JP used to brag how one of his articles had more than 1000 comments, a record for SA.
So it degenerated to who can generate the most comments (which has a direct correlation to click count). So articles became more and more nonsensical with outlandish and exaggerated headlines. The more outlandish it is, the more shorts piled on the comment section, and more bulls rushed into defend those outright lies. So it was a win-win for the blog site owners, because they soon discovered that click count increased exponentially for outlandish idiotic stuff - like this stupid recent Anton article comparing Bolt vs. M3 sales for August.
So the blog owners, started encouraging the bears to write more and more nonsense. For example, the first comment on every article is an extremely negative comment from one particular poster. I cannot believe this can happen without the connivance of the site editors.
I tend to call it SeekingLies, but SeekingClicks is equally good.
So it degenerated to who can generate the most comments (which has a direct correlation to click count). So articles became more and more nonsensical with outlandish and exaggerated headlines. The more outlandish it is, the more shorts piled on the comment section, and more bulls rushed into defend those outright lies. So it was a win-win for the blog site owners, because they soon discovered that click count increased exponentially for outlandish idiotic stuff - like this stupid recent Anton article comparing Bolt vs. M3 sales for August.
So the blog owners, started encouraging the bears to write more and more nonsense. For example, the first comment on every article is an extremely negative comment from one particular poster. I cannot believe this can happen without the connivance of the site editors.
I tend to call it SeekingLies, but SeekingClicks is equally good.
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JRP3
Hyperactive Member
Exactly why I stopped doing just that
I will say that for a time arguing with the bears forced me to dig deeper and do more research to support my position and I enjoyed the challenge. Now all they can challenge is my patience.
ValueAnalyst
Closed
I agree with almost everything you said up to this point. This is not what is up for debate here. I agree that there are a handful of contributors who, for some reason or another, are constantly writing negative articles on Tesla, despite having been proven wrong repeatedly.
Please note, however, that the wording of their articles are usually misleading, and not necessarily incorrect on most occasions (although I'm sure one can find exceptions if they went back and reread). Although I'm sure there are exceptions, their articles usually say something like, "Elon did this and said this, so can his intention be this [something super negative]? we'll see."
This is what is up for debate. Is SeekingAlpha intentionally colluding with them? I think not.
Note that apparently many companies try to get SeekingAlpha to take articles down, so this isn't just a Tesla issue. The vast majority of contributors are amateurs and majority of articles reflect that, but some articles actually add a lot of value, and some contributors do very good analysis. I don't read the vast majority articles either, but there are contributors I always read.
So you may ask, why is SeekingAlpha holding onto these contributors? I wish they didn't, but the following may be why.
These contributors simply get the most views among thousands of contributors probably because they are writing very detailed but negative articles about one of the most widely followed companies, and humans are evolved to pay attention to the negative/danger.
---------- The above was about articles -------- The following is about comments
There is an entirely different dynamic going on in the comments sections to articles. I don't even hang around in the comments to Tesla articles anymore, because perma-bears and perma-bulls attack each other with extreme intensity, and I never really get anything positive out of these discussions anymore and it's impossible to keep up with the increasing number of personal attack and report each one. I don't know what they get out of doing this (because no one gets paid for leaving comments) but they do...
ValueAnalyst
Closed
You may have had an account at SeekingAlpha longer than I have, but how many articles have you published? How many e-mails have you exchanged with the editors? How many times have you gotten on the phone with them? How many jokes have you exchanged with them? Maybe I'm wrong, but through my interactions, I have come to appreciate all they have to go through and put up with to do what they do, and it is a lot! Again, please note that I used to think negatively about some of the editors, but I was naive!
I never said SA is completely neutral on Tesla, but they have come a long way in balancing the prevalence of bear and bull articles throughout the last year, agreed? My beef is with the fact that everybody here seems so convinced that SeekingAlpha has bad intentions, without really understanding the innerworkings of how an article gets written, edited, published, commented upon etc.
Note that Tesla's future is not as certain as, say, a consumer staples conglomerate. The company has many competitive advantages, but only we think they are durable, whereas some people don't. Tesla still does not yet show bottom-line profits, and only we think they will, whereas others don't. This is a battleground stock, and yes, a handful of contributors are clearly motivated in some way to constantly publish negative articles, but I don't blame SeekingAlpha for letting them do so. IN FACT, SeekingAlpha has been more proactive than I would have thought they would be in implementing their rules against MontanaSkeptic et al. He and I were both banned from commenting on each other's articles for example... I think that's fair, because things really got out of hand at times...
Yes, I do think I may be wrong, but my point is that so many of you think you are certainly right about the malicious intent on the side of SeekingAlpha (which is a very serious accusation) without any concrete evidence, and I'm providing alternative explanations which y'all are ignoring, again, without sufficient evidence.
I think where the disconnect is that for some reason y'all believe SeekingAlpha editors know Tesla as well as you do and just letting these people publish their negative articles even though they know these articles are completely wrong. I don't think this is the case. The knowledge on TMC regarding Tesla is the most I have ever seen on any company, but SeekingAlpha is not just about Tesla or the few bad apples. It's about more than 10,000 contributors writing about thousands of stocks each and every day and the moderations of hundreds of comments on many articles. This is a lot of work, and nobody is perfect.
Basically y'all are expecting SeekingAlpha editors to see the future of Tesla that you do, and blaming them with severe accusations when they don't. This is in-line with what many commenters do when I write about other stocks.. I've written articles on many stocks in many industries and literally every time there is at least one commenter who is certain that I'm colluding with a competitor, or the company, or SeekingAlpha, or some weird agency against the investors... This happens whether I write about a company or a commodity or a bull article or a bear article on any company. Literally every time, when people don't see how I can possibly disagree with something they invest in, they automatically assume I have malicious intent... It's really odd, but it happens all the time.
ValueAnalyst
Closed
Yes - I agree that there has been a negative weighting on Tesla articles. This is not what we are debating here.
I also agree that a handful of contributors are for some reason constantly publishing perma-bear articles. I don't know why. You don't either.
What we are debating here is: is SeekingAlpha doing this on purpose. I may be wrong, but I think not. Y'all seem so certain, but you don't seem to have proof...
I have provided alternative explanations which can be true: negative articles attract more attention, it may just be a numbers game as Tesla was (in my opinion) overvalued in 2014 and 2015. I only got into the stock in 2H16 for example. It may also be a numbers game in the sense that more bears are submitting articles; I simply don't know, but you don't either, and the accusation y'all are making are very severe and they are being made without apparent sufficient evidence and very nonchalantly, which is bothering me.
This is mischaracterization!! Tesla's SP didn't go up 17 to 380 in a linear fashion. It shot up to $300, then it gradually declined for three years!!! Then it shot up again in the last 8 months. So during those three years, some bear articles (except for the obviously misleading ones) were in fact beneficial to readers.
You are making an observations (that two stopped writing) and then making HUGE assumptions!!! How do you know they "gave up?!" How do you know it's because their "articles got rejected?!" That is simply one out of numerous possible explanations!!!
I can tell you personally that most of my articles get approved. Once you get a feel for what the editors are looking for, it's actually pretty easy to get articles published for someone who has a finance background. What most contributors, including myself, struggle with is they assume that if an article isn't published, the editor must have it out for them, so they get into verbal arguments with the gatekeepers (as I did many times) so their articles don't get published. This is not a fancy collusion conspiracy theory, but I bet you that this is the actual reason majority of the time.
Also note that these articles don't pay much, and spending even half a day writing a Tesla article to bring the article to the quality level that the editors are looking for is not good return on time. So I write on other stocks as well where the bar is a bit lower because dozens of contributors aren't submitting articles. I try to keep a mix.
Thanks - I appreciate the kind words.
ValueAnalyst
Closed
There is not much correlation between number of comments and views for an article, so again, you are misinformed and making a ton of assumptions.
My two articles that received most ever views were not Tesla articles. Tesla articles get 10x more comments than any other article. How do you explain this?!?!
The number of views to comments ratio is like 50x to 200x depending on many factors. Many other factors are a lot more important in generating clicks than the number of comments.
Comments are a lot with Tesla because there is a handful of very determined perma-bears that respond to every positive comment on Tesla.
Please do not project yourself as someone who is knowledgable about how these things actually work when you (very clearly to me) know zero.
Xenoilphobe
Well-Known Member
People actually read this crap? Seeking Alpha is right up there with the National Enquirer | Hottest Celebrity Gossip & Entertainment News
Remember the radical extremes sell - so they only publish contentious stuff to get clicks..
Remember the radical extremes sell - so they only publish contentious stuff to get clicks..
Sudre
Active Member
Irreverent of the articles on Seeking Alpha, I stopped reading all of them because there is no way to tell which ones are useful. If they added a feature similar to these forums where any paying member of Seeking Alpha could rate any article with an Agree, Disagree, Informative, or Misleading then I could get a good feel for which articles are worth reading without having to research all 10,000 contributors. It would also encourage me to become a paying member.
Say I find a Seeking Alpha article in a news feed, click on it and see 24504 people found the blog to be misleading and 6 liked it while 8 found it informative. I'd move on instead of wasting my time. I don't have time to read the hundreds of comments some writers have particularly after I found out the comments are easily removed. Places like Seeking Alpha are supposed to make my investing time easier not more labor intensive.
Do they have this feature?
And no. The nubmer of followers does not help.
Say I find a Seeking Alpha article in a news feed, click on it and see 24504 people found the blog to be misleading and 6 liked it while 8 found it informative. I'd move on instead of wasting my time. I don't have time to read the hundreds of comments some writers have particularly after I found out the comments are easily removed. Places like Seeking Alpha are supposed to make my investing time easier not more labor intensive.
Do they have this feature?
And no. The nubmer of followers does not help.
I disagree that "everybody here" is doing anything of the kind (fwiw, I find this forum to be far far from an "everybody here" knee jerk conformity club on virtually every topic... and find the terms "everybody here" and "y'all" to be something of a "straw man" device, particularly when paired with dismissals of people here as "emotional" or practicing "group think"). What's more I disagree with your contention posted a few minutes ago that "This is what is up for debate. Is SeekingAlpha intentionally colluding with them?" Maybe you've come to the opinion that that is what's up for debate, but, I've not... and I don't see how you are qualified to tell us that that is what's up for debate. I specifically framed my comments on Saturday as being about the state of the blogs and their comments on SA "Intentional[ly] or not" on the part of Seeking Alpha.
Below I've reposted the two comments from this past Saturday where I presented my concerns re Seeking Alpha. I've copied them here exactly as they appeared except for some added bolding. Of course, you are free to continue ignoring the points I raise as you like to or not, but, it does not remove them from reality.
"Though I don't "hate" Seeking Alpha, below is one of my two major concerns with Seeking Alpha, originally shared here in TMC in April of 2015. Note this concern was based on my understanding of comments Tesla's VP of Investor Relations shared with me on a phone call. I've spent almost no time on SA in the eighteen months or so, so it's conceivable what the comment below speaks to has changed... but as of 2015 when I was still frequently reading/commenting on SA, two major concerns had me quite strongly of the opinion that SA's reputation here on TMC was well deserved (of course, this does not mean every blog or comment on SA is intellectually dishonest or without value... and I do appreciate Randy, VA, dalalsid, etc, publishing on SA, especially given the flak they are open to in the comments sections).
"Seeking Alpha is a blog site, not a news organization. They edit the blogs submitted for grammar, and spelling, but other than something like hate speech, they do not edit the content of these blogs... at all. In fact, I once had a conversation with Tesla's VP of investor relations, Jeff Evanson, when Seeking Alpha was showing up on the Yahoo news feed, and I wondered if Tesla might address the flow of make believe about Tesla distributed by Seeking Alpha. My understanding of what Jeff said is that this lack of any editing for content is an explicit policy of Seeking Alpha and part of their strategy. I took Jeff's comment to mean that by having a clear policy of no editing for validity of the content in the blogs on its website Seeking Alpha was positioning itself out of danger of lawsuits. It sounded like something Jeff had spent some time learning about. Fortunately, Yahoo no longer includes Seeking Alpha content in their headlines about TSLA."
Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2015
(post #5752)"
and
"Lols, neoroden, you've actually hit dead on my second major concern with SA... but that pertains to the comments section, not really the blogs themselves.
SA's rule is "no allegations of bad faith". So, when one of their contributors, or one of the people in the comments section (let's call him "Mark"), writes utter rubbish for the 1000th time, one is not allowed to use the comments section to point out Mark's extensive track record of intellectual dishonesty to others on the site. Nope, that's considered an allegation of bad faith and will get removed. Instead, one is only left with rebutting each newly created bit of fiction from "Mark" one at a time... but, as pretty much any 7th grader knows, if one cares not for intellectual honesty, one can keep an argument without any merit going on forever. For those of us who do care about intellectual honesty, that is almost always just a massive waste of time running around the bush chasing after a cheeky 7th grader.
Whether intentional or not, Seeking Alpha has basically created a safe harbor for factually false rubbish producers. First, they remove themselves from accountability for the factual accuracy of what they "publish" as that comment from 2015 I reposted today describes, secondly, they censor any comments pointing out a track record of intellectual dishonesty even if it is stupendously long (i.e. JP, Anton, Speigel, etc.)... thus, they artificially reset the credibility playing field for each comment for those who've literally written thousands of comments full of intellectual dishonesty. Intentionally or not, this leads to a third concern... such a safe harbor for game playing and propaganda, overflowing with such "Marks" slapping each other on the back over their fictions and inane rebuttals to content based replies, drives away in frustration those looking for a fair exchange of ideas, making the site even more skewed."
I will just add the point a few made after my comment was posted, that it is particularly displeasing that while SA does not allow "allegations of bad faith" when we've simply pointed out a lengthy track record of falsehoods by SA members, SA does allow its contributors to allege all kinds of bad faith on what is outside of SA, i.e., Elon Musk and Tesla (smears such as "con man", "welfare queen", "ponzi scheme", etc.). Not saying this collusion, but it's not very pleasing either.
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ValueAnalyst
Closed
Again - you are confused about how moderation of comments work. SeekingAlpha does not have a team of moderators who sit down and discuss and check the book on which comments should get deleted. If someone cares enough to report a comment, most of the time it simply gets deleted. It's not the most effective way of doing things, but that's just the way it is. Keep in mind that there are thousands of articles being published every day, and I bet you their moderation team isn't more than a few people. Do you really think a handful of people thinking more than a second before deleting a comment that is reported? They could not possibly cover even one-tenth of the articles!
If what the FUDsters are doing on SeekingAlpha is a crime, then there are ways you can deal with it outside of SeekingAlpha, but I bet you that you won't get very far, because what they are doing isn't actually a crime ( I don't think.. I'm not a lawyer).
ValueAnalyst
Closed
I don't think that would solve the problem. Just like FUDsters are populating the comments section with FUD, they can find ways to "downvote" an article etc...
Look at the comment below Tesla articles.. the FUD comments get a lot of "likes" always from the same people. Why do you think this would be any different for articles?!?!
The way that has worked for me is: I follow a number of authors who I believe have presented well thought-out arguments, so I only read them. You can go to my author page and see who I follow. You build this list over time... pretty simple and effective if you ask me.
All you need to know about Seeking Alpha is that there are commenters with 25,000+ comments on Tesla and NO STAKE IN THE STOCK.
Think about that for a moment.
This is the Die Hard moment where Bonnie Bedelia watches a terrorist trash the Nakatomi plaza lobby and concludes that [Tesla] is still alive, because only [Tesla] could make someone that angry.
For the rest, I agree with Value Analyst. There is no grand conspiracy. Seeking Alpha just happens to be a haven for those "affected" by Tesla's existence and like every other for-profit website, is also a click-house for sensational titles.
A number of authors have been grandfathered and are more readily approved than newcomers. The "Nattering Naybob" is a perfect example of someone who writes utterly bizarre, self-indulgent articles, peppered with stock ticker symbols (for clicks), under a pure pseudonym, all of which are prohibited for any newcomer.
As I said in the other thread -- I think the disservice is not being done to the longs, but to the honest shorts.
I think Donn Bailey and Montana are being utterly misled by the cacophony of phony, afflicted, employees of competitors that pollute the comment section.
Look at Mark Spiegel's twitter page. He doesn't even link his (secretive) "hedge fund", he links his CNBC appearances.
Again. Think about that for a moment...
Think about that for a moment.
This is the Die Hard moment where Bonnie Bedelia watches a terrorist trash the Nakatomi plaza lobby and concludes that [Tesla] is still alive, because only [Tesla] could make someone that angry.
For the rest, I agree with Value Analyst. There is no grand conspiracy. Seeking Alpha just happens to be a haven for those "affected" by Tesla's existence and like every other for-profit website, is also a click-house for sensational titles.
A number of authors have been grandfathered and are more readily approved than newcomers. The "Nattering Naybob" is a perfect example of someone who writes utterly bizarre, self-indulgent articles, peppered with stock ticker symbols (for clicks), under a pure pseudonym, all of which are prohibited for any newcomer.
As I said in the other thread -- I think the disservice is not being done to the longs, but to the honest shorts.
I think Donn Bailey and Montana are being utterly misled by the cacophony of phony, afflicted, employees of competitors that pollute the comment section.
Look at Mark Spiegel's twitter page. He doesn't even link his (secretive) "hedge fund", he links his CNBC appearances.
Again. Think about that for a moment...
ValueAnalyst
Closed
This is pretty much what I have been telling you guys. SeekingAlpha does not edit for content or fact check articles. They do edit for spelling, grammar, and just want to make sure the articles on battleground stocks aren't making outlandish assumptions for 2030 for example. What Jeff Evanson's told you over the phone is exactly in-line with my understanding of SeekingAlpha works.
Yes - you can't simply state someone has a bad record. That will get flagged as "blanket dismissal" or "allegation of bad faith" etc.
Can you imagine if a bunch of people starting pointing to each other's records on every article and if SeekingAlpha had to go back and check every time?!?!?! It is extremely arrogant of you to think that you and your investment are entitled to such level of due diligence by a third-party that you freely can use!!!
Sudre
Active Member
In that case I will continue to ignore all Seeking Alpha Blogs and use other sources. Somehow I don't find issue with most others. If Seeking Alpha is the place where people actually pay money as members to down vote blogs for an agenda then it is no use to me. It would actually prove the point that the members at Seeking Alpha are using it to manipulate rather than a source of information if they would vote a blog as misleading when it is not.
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