Bookish Discussion: Bloglovin’ and why I’m disappointed

Hello friends and welcome to my first ever Bookish Discussion! Today, I’ll be discussing Bloglovin’ and why it disappointed me.

First of all, a lot of people use Bloglovin’. It’s “…a platform that allows users to read, organize, and discover their favorite blogs on mobile and desktop. It is a design-focused platform that aggregates feeds from sources with RSS feeds, allowing users to discover and organize content.” (thank you, Wikipedia.)

So, something similar to the WordPress Reader, right? Yes, it sounds like it is. Why am I upset about a platform that is helping spread the contents of my blog? Because there is a difference between signing up for a service and being featured on it, and being forced to be featured on another service that you didn’t sign up for.

You’re probably confused, so here’s some backstory. A few days ago, I was checking my Stats and saw that a visitor had been referred to me by Bloglovin’.

Figure 1

I was confused, because I didn’t have an account, and I hadn’t put my blog on there. I pressed the link, and was stunned to see some of my posts on their website. I even had a follower that I was unaware of.

This raised a lot of questions:

Who put my blog on there? How does this work? Are they affiliated to WordPress and so any new blog is automatically added?

So, I searched on Google. I literally typed:

“Somehow my blog found its way onto bloglovin, I didn’t put it there what is going?”

The 5th result seemed promising:

Offbeat YA: How Bloglovin’ Ate My Blog (and Yours too).

And then I read about how Bloglovin’ takes your RSS feed and uses it to add blogs to their site. You have no control over it, as long as your RSS is public. And if it isn’t public, then no one will be able to find your blog.

As I read, I got frustrated because I understood how Roberta (the author of the the above article) felt. She didn’t want her blog on there, and she didn’t know how to remove it. And then there was the issue of Bloglovin’ opening posts from your website in their frames.

Apparently, that’s still happening because when I press a post link, I get this:

Figure 2

And I’m confused about the pop-up. I can’t press no even though I DON’T want to sign up. But forget that, the main issue here is the frame thing at the top. You can even see in the background behind the popup the page on my site, but it isn’t really my site.

Roberta’s post was written in 2013, and updates from another post proved that the issue was still a problem in 2017.

That post, by Ashley @ Nose Graze, talked about how you can now read full posts on Bloglovin’ and actually comment on there. They even claimed to search engines (using something called a canonical) that they are the original owners of the posts. (More about that here.)

Figure 3

One the main page (above: Figure 3), if you click the title of a post, it leads you to their link of the post (see Figure 2). The commenting feature still exists right now and if I press ‘Add comment’ on the main page (above: Figure 3), I get this:

Figure 4

I’m guessing that because my posts are on ‘post summary’, they aren’t showing my full posts on their website. Pressing ‘More Tag Thursday…’ here goes to my actual post page, not their version of my website. There’s a problem because this link that I’m sent to from Figure 4 isn’t the same one that I get sent to in Figure 2. IMO, I should be sent to my URL on BOTH pages, not their link.

At least the canonical issue was resolved.

I don’t have anything against my posts being read on their website, but I feel like they should have to visit my website to comment.

You’re probably wondering: What’s all the fuss? WP Reader does the exact same thing and I’m not complaining.

The fuss is because I voluntarily signed up for WP so my blog is featured on their Reader. However, I didn’t sign up for Bloglovin’ and I didn’t ask for my blog to be put on their service. They aren’t Google or Bing who have to have access to your blog or else you pretty much don’t exist. It’s a service that I didn’t sign up for and, at the moment, don’t want.

That’s my issue. I didn’t sign up for Bloglovin’ so they shouldn’t have a right to feature my blog just because I have a public RSS. It’s like saying that your information HAS to be on Facebook/Twitter/Google+ because you exist and use the internet. That’s not right, and it isn’t fair. They don’t have a blog removal option if I wanted to remove mine.

There are some things I can do (check out Ashley’s post) about it, and you too if you are in this situation.

I’m not saying that Bloglovin’ is bad. It’s kind of like a Facebook for blogs and can serve to help bloggers get more followers/readers. However, I don’t like the fact that I have no say in whether my blog is featured or not. At a time, I wanted to sign up but now I don’t want anything to do with them.

Maybe in the future I might sign up, but for now, no. If you followed me on Bloglovin’, please be sure to drop a comment on my actual website so that I’m aware of you! I love all my followers💖💖!

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A lot of people in the Blog-o-sphere use Bloglovin’ and I don’t mean to hate on you. 💖 I just wanted to talk about my experience and why I don’t use it.

Let’s Discuss:

Do you use Bloglovin’? Do you think Bloglovin’ should be able to put your blog on their website without your permission? Is that fair (In your opinion)?

I’m interested to hear what you think and want to have a healthy discussion. Your opinions will be respected!

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