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Get SourceForge to take down their unsanctioned mirror

Open lgarron opened this issue 1 year ago • 1 comments

https://sourceforge.net/projects/folderify.mirror/ seems to have a bunch of dark patterns in service of getting you to visit and see ads/use their services. There's a disclaimer rendered in tiny text, but it's significantly outweighed by a lot of other bright UI elements and the only link to the project page is a buried link to the "folderify Web Site" under a section called "Follow folderify".

The page is jumbled, with:

  • a project icon that is a blurry picture of the word "folderify",
  • a description consisting of sentences from different sections of README.md mashed together arbitrarily,
  • unrelated bullet points grouped as "features",
  • screenshots listed as "project samples",
  • "Additional Project Details" that list the programming language as Python even though there isn't a single line of Python left in the project source, and
  • no install instructions, but
  • numerous downloads of the source code that are useless to the kind of people who wouldn't already know how to find the project on GitHub,
  • where the download seems to be throttled by a 5-second speed bump to show you more ads.

I have no problem denouncing this as garbage, but a small mercy seems to be that no one is downloading or leaving "reviews" there. It also looks like the downloads include any "value added" beyond the project source, or any sketchy installers.

I'd still like to get it taken down, because this is a clear SEO grab that doesn't actually help users. If someone knows the most effective to take it down way I'd love to hear, else I'll have to figure out how to poke them some time.

lgarron avatar Jan 15 '24 07:01 lgarron

As the owner, it looks like you have to create an account, then open a support ticket. They likely will decline the request it looks like though, but it's worth a shot.

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/42490/can-you-delete-a-project-on-sourceforge

TheBox193 avatar May 06 '25 22:05 TheBox193