{"id":2923,"date":"2010-11-11T16:12:50","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T21:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/framingham.com\/news\/?p=2923"},"modified":"2011-03-27T03:37:47","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T08:37:47","slug":"aol-attempts-comeback-as-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/2010\/11\/11\/business\/aol-attempts-comeback-as-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"AOL Attempts Comeback as \"Patch\""},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Framingham<\/a>

Why is ''Patch'' trying to get people to believe they are a local website and hiding the fact that they are AOL ?<\/p><\/div>\n

FRAMINGHAM, MA<\/strong> - AOL, the online service that so many people loved to hate, is rearing its ugly head again.<\/p>\n

AOL, a company whose corporate ethics are virtually non-existent has been the object of thousands of consumer, employee and investor complaints and lawsuits due to; unfair consumer practices<\/em>, consumer privacy violations, unfair labor practices<\/em> and securities law violations<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The company was been the target of (and lost) one of the largest class action lawsuits in history.<\/p>\n

One class action lawsuit should be of particular interest to anyone considering \"volunteering\", \"contributing\", or responding to offers for paid work at AOL's Patch.<\/strong> That lawsuit had to do with thousands of people who were effectively unpaid or underpaid \"employees\" of AOL -- although the company called them \"community leaders<\/em>\" and denied they worked<\/em> for AOL.<\/p>\n

We've created a spoof \/ satire version of Framingham Patch<\/a><\/strong> which contains details of many of the lawsuits.\u00a0 Check the pages often -- we will be adding to the site as new horror stories about AOL and Patch develop.<\/p>\n

The Patch operation is being rolled out to appear \"hyper local\" -- they place text ads referring to themselves as \"local websites\" -- and the AOL name does not appear anywhere.<\/p>\n

In each target community, AOL\/Patch first hires a \"local editor\". The editor then runs ads to \"hire\" writers, photographers and other content producers -- although \"hire\" is not exactly the right word.<\/p>\n

AOL\/Patch will only pay writers \"per assignment\", as freelance 1099 contractors.\u00a0 There are no real \"jobs\" being created -- Patch is just looking for enough cheap content to seed the sites, and then expects to generate free content from locals who they encourage to \"volunteer\" and \"contribute\" -- never telling writers they will be disposed of as soon as Patch is up and running.<\/p>\n

Writers and photographers considering working for Patch should search the internet for stories about these jobs.\u00a0 To Patch, photographers are really just pre-sales lead generators. You will be assigned to photograph local businesses, then upload the photos to Patch where they will be sorted and sales people will try to get those businesses to advertise.\u00a0 While the entire operation is being promoted as \"local\" -- what is never said is that the majority of the revenue will be taken out of the local economy and sent to AOL's corporate headquarters<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Framingham Patch<\/a>!<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FRAMINGHAM, MA – AOL, the online service that so many people loved to hate, is rearing its ugly head again. AOL, a company whose corporate ethics are virtually non-existent has been the object of thousands of consumer, employee and investor complaints and lawsuits due to; unfair consumer practices, consumer privacy violations, unfair labor practices and securities law… [read more]<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":2925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,221],"tags":[1360,1363,1364,1358,1359,1362,1365],"class_list":["post-2923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-technology","tag-aol-patch","tag-aol-patch-lawsuit","tag-corporate-greed","tag-framingham-patch","tag-patch","tag-patch-lawsuits","tag-unfair-labor-practices"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2923"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2935,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2923\/revisions\/2935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.framingham.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}