–Yes, weight loss and dieting lenses are far more often spam than good–especially when they’re selling something, or promoting an affiliate site. Acai berry reviews have earned a rotten reputation elsewhere on the web, for example, and that’s seeping into Squidoo as well.

–Affiliate lenses promoting other affiliate programs. Go figure. (For example, the Yuwie affiliate network has been spamming Squidoo with the same content, thousands of pages a week, for a while. So, they’ve earned their way onto our SquidDon’t list. If you’ve got a Yuwie lens, chances are it will get shut down. Sorry).

–Gambling lenses. (Yeah, that means you, TexasHoldem lenses. And most poker lenses. We’ll probably overcorrect heavily on these, and can’t guarantee that we can move swiftly to unlock false positives. Your best bet is just to stay away from gambling and lottery lenses or the topic in general).

–Dealing with credit card debt, cash gifting, envelope stuffing, mortgages, currency trading, Forex, Regenesis, etc. There’s a clear way to make good stuff on this topic, but alas, most people just make spambait on it.

–Hate lenses. Sure, you can give negative reviews. But spewing hate at a person crosses the line, and if we get contacted about them we might lock them. Think happy thoughts.
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–Ringtones lenses. Free (and so-called legal) movie download lenses. Free Mp3 download lenses. Yikes. These exploded in the last year, and we’ve never seen ONE that’s worth anyone’s time. Really.

–Illegal Adult lenses. Child pornography, anyone? No.

–Lyrics lenses. Be careful. We’re getting swamped by these, and most of the time they are junky, copied and pasted, and have serious copyright issues. If you have an entire account dedicated to lyrics lenses, make sure you’re adding a significant amount of personal review and curation, quoting correctly, and don’t steal from someone else on the web.

–And a few that are harder to generalize, but obvious when we see them.

If you are interested in these areas, it’s entirely possible you will bump into our filter (we call it the SquidDon’t filter). If you do, don’t be surprised if your lenses get locked or your accounts get suspended.

Hey, there must be other things you’re passionate about in this world. Why not make a lens on that, and leave the onlinetexasholdem4u pages out.

My hope is that 99% of you won’t even know the spamfilter is there.

No, we’re not trying to censor anyone. No, we don’t like mediating. No, we’re not trying to keep the site Puritanical.

We’re just trying to keep it something that we’re all proud to be a part of. So if that means you’re left scratching your head over editorial choices or standards, we apologize in advance.”