Patch

... but their emails keep coming.

And if you comment on any of their articles, if even to just agree with the content, and defend their writers from other rude comments, they will lock you out with no explanation. Unsubscribe now, before they do that to you, then keep spamming you with emails anyway!

It's a very aggravating place!

The featured editorial was why I purchased the package. They would not refund my money and said my niche is not something they can send a featured editorial out about even though I saw them posting articles in the same niche. This was towards the end of the campaign when this issue came up, not at the beginning. I only had 1 payment of $750 left at that time to make to them. Thomas Frank was the one who wrote my contract and sold me the package clearly knowing my niche was spiritual. My Niche does not go against Google guidelines and is a respectful site. After much back and forth they pretty much forced me to take more ads which did nothing and they knew I was not getting traffic from them. Do not waste your money and advertise with them. I was ripped off $3K. You have to pick and choose your battles in life and I did not feel that going to a lawyer for their discrimination would not be worth any of my energy or stress. I am at least happy I can share here to bring awareness. I will copy below what they offered me and I got (except they did not deliver the featured editorial). False advertisement on their end.

"GOLD PATCH CAMPAIGN 6 months
- Weather Page Vertical Takeover- Ads featured 100% of the time on (Desktop & Mobile) Patch towns listed above
- 140,000 total High Impact Ads (ad views/impressions) rotating in our Premium placement, across our entire network (Desktop & Mobile) in Patch towns listed above
- Spotlight Feature Editorial on the Homepage and Newsletter streams in the 20 Patch Towns of your choice
- Metrics overview - report of campaign to capture metrics of all ad views
Price: $750 per month (6 month campaign no automatic renewal)"

This patch is a scam do not buy it, get involved wit them. I was fooled to buy the 999$ package thinking they were real and would help people and it DOES NOT WORK. They market a 100% money back gaurantee it's a hoax I've been writing emails and no reply. Stay away from these theives.

Where to even start, aside from the obvious bias from our local patch, up until patch removed the ability to comment on local stories, the moderation team would delete comments of those who questioned the narrative, or didnt support leftist ideologies. There was an obvious double standard for anyone who appeared to have conservative veiws, especially when certain users only used their first names or went by some alias (its a hyper local news site, most people commenting are neighbors, some were unhinged enough to possibly cause harm in the real world)

Accounts were removed with no obvious violation of the TOS, no way to appeal the decision, any emails to the company went unanswered. Double standards when it came to enforcement of the TOS, with many leftist users getting away with insults, threats, and more.

Our patch editor, Dave, would jump into the comment section after looking up commenters to get information about them, if the user was going under a pseudonym, he would ridicule that user. He was very sensitive when it came to anyone criticizing his articles. He was the only editor for numerous towns in the area.

Patch would regularly turn the comments off certain topics that many people wished to comment on, such as the vice president visiting, articles regarding gun control, and anything that they didnt want anyone to discuss

There are also hundreds of ads per page, with some looking as if they were actually part of the website, some lead users to dangerous websites used to steal personal information.

Just because someone has a different opinions then patches. No reason to block or censored then. Plato said in 750 BC " no one is more hated then he who speaks the thuth" As true in his time as today.
Please allow people their opinion as long as it hurts one.

HAPLY NEW YEAR. I pray for all our safety and virus soon gone FOREVER.

One of the quidelines is that you MUST use your real first and last name, but if you read the posts, it is obvious that people are not doing so. Since when is "Sportschick" or "NewtanionKidsOnTheBlock" a real name. These accounts should not be allowed. I have received vulgar comments on my posts, and had my life threatened. I have flagged the comments, but they were not taken down. This website should be shut down.

Terrible. I have 2 complaints-

1. I accidentally followed "Across America". I unfollowers. They promised me I wouldn't recieve emails from that thing again. I unfollowed, and yet I continued to get news. Useless.

2. Everytime I look at the replies, I see angry people who's depressed and pissed off. Is Patch a "community" OR a place where people commit suicide? I think Patch is a place where people can commit suicide. If you want to sign up for Patch, stick to the communities you go to frequently. Otherwise DON'T RECOMMEND!

Take your money and flush it down the toilet. Lost 500 bucks. I did not have one hit from my ad! Stop!

Reports are unprofessional and degrading to humanity. Can we do away with negative communications please? Online harassment is painful and damaging. Please, please stop this website from producing content.

It's not as good as Topix was. Patch is much less American and more in line with China or even North Korea in a few sectors. Certain moderators love deleting news articles and issuing bans on posters that want a safe, happy community like it's illegal to even leave your residence except for business.

On a more positive note, unlike Topix, you can edit your own articles. And if one of your articles becomes a hotbed of hate speech and defamation, you can simply copy the content of your article, and then delete and repost your article.

Update: Someone on this site posted a personal threat against me, so I decided to close my account. Surprise! There is no obvious way to delete a Patch profile! That is not an option, anywhere on the site. It does not even appear in the FAQs. You can take yourself off the email list, but I see no way to delete the profile page. I have sent a message to Patch Support, to ask for instructions, but have not heard back yet. It's a huge red flag when a website doesn't let you exit. Fortunately, I don't have much information on the page.

I have been the target of some really hateful troll posts lately, on Patch, and have both flagged the posts and contacted Patch support about this problem. I have copied the URLs to Patch, so they can see for themselves. The flagged posts always stay up. These are posts that clearly violate the terms of use for the site. The only reply I've gotten from Patch support was a boilerplate email telling me how to flag offensive posts. Really?

Original review: This company has not decided what it wants to be. Does it want to rival NextDoor.com? Or does it want to be a regional news compiler (a "hyper-local" news source, in their words) that replaces the hometown newspaper? It tries to be both things, and fails miserably. Patch runs short versions of news stories lifted from other publications and wire services, ostensibly "written by robot." They encourage "neighbors" to post comments, and they allow members to submit posts addressed to their neighborhoods. They do nothing to verify that any member is who they claim to be, or that they live in the region. Therefore, it is fertile ground for the worst kinds of trolls. Each "neighborhood" has a moderator. But all that moderator does is send out snippy emails to anyone who is flagged by any peevish "neighbor" commenter, for any reason. It's like being in sixth grade all over again. So petty. There are even cliques and gangs. But the real reason I am taking the time to post a review here is that I believe there is a political leaning to Patch comment moderation, and I believe that it is pro-Trump. The company is owned by an investment group (Hale Group). Run by an ex-Wall Street guy. The Patch.com CEO is an ex-NYT reporter and author. So who knows whether there really is a political agenda behind Patch. Maybe it's just the loony leanings of my neighborhood's moderator. All I can say is what I have observed in my local Patch comment threads. Trump trolls have free rein to post the most outrageous things there, and if you challenge them you get censored and receive a "be polite" email. It's all rubbish.

(Update: I have tested my theory about Patch's political leanings, by posting some challenges to the right-wingers commenters, especially the pandemic deniers. My comments have all been killed. Patch is definitely a tool of the far right.)

Patch.com posted an illegal slanderous listing of police charges on me - against their policy to accept such a thing - and their policy states users will be banned for posting illegal contents, but I guess they get to choose who this refers to and allows to accept the police to post illegal contents and they did post this anyway - They refused to take it down from the post unless the charges were dismissed.

The arresting charge was not properly phrased for proper arresting charge and posted to Patch.com in a slanderous way instead to damage/ruin my reputation. Then when I request to have taken down - they tell me by their policy I have to submit to them a court document from the court signed of the dismiss charges or they refuse to take down. What about their policy- now i can only assume for what they allowed police to illegally post illegal slander on me that they allow slander to be posted as a policy or just allow the police to do this and break policy and not ban the policy from further posts.

Totally illegal for anyone to request a copy of your personal documents/especially court documents for any reason. The company address is in New York - so don't tell me New Yorkers are ignorant or stupid to not know the difference between legal postings and Illegal slander. Also totally illegal not to immediately take down due to my request the statements made about me on the Patch.com were affecting me from getting hired and lost me a full-time job offer paying $35.00 an hour.

You want the same news - on patch.com your better off reading the actual true non slanderous stories on AOL. They have tons of them Updated regularly to stay current in time relation of the event.
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I've sent a copy of link of the review of the above review to Patch.com stating here's your review you earned it!

Update a police officer that was a detective for the police told me something very interesting about patch.com the department does not use patch.com and I asked this officer why not - I was told by this officer - what they post up there on people's names and arrests dates locations and charges is illegal. Police stations are not supposed to post this type of police log or violations if they want to call it anywhere on the internet all police logs have to be published in a local paper if published or on a private are of the internet where other people that are not police officers can not access to view. I asked this officer why it was illegal to post he stated that it defames the individual listed (defame: damage the good reputation of (someone); slander or libel) by putting up this personal information and everyone listed on the patch from the police department with the charged offenses can sue the police department and the patch.com for posting this information for the public to view and himself and other officers have called police stations up that do use patch.com to post this information told them this and their response was they didn't care and the majority of the people are unaware of this and don't have the money to sue them. The police officer even stated they contacted patch.com via phone and told them this was illegal what they were doing and they replied the same to this officer and stated the public has the right to know this information even though the officer stated no the public does not have the right to know this information.

If you live in MA go to the law: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleVII/Chapter41/Section98f

It states: For the police - "however, that the following entries shall be kept in a separate log and shall not be a public record nor shall such entry be disclosed to the public, or any individual not specified in section 97DL" - This means they can not publish police logs nor arrest names and charges publicly even on the internet.

If you live in another state do a search your state will probably have the same/similar law about this.

MA happens to have open records not all states have open record laws - which means these records are public at courts and police stations - but you have to go in and request the individual record you can't go in and request an entire police log - you need to know the name, state in writing your reason, and you are told you can not publish this publicly anywhere even on the internet once you are given a copy of such public record and you are told if you do publish this you will be charged with a crime and can/will serve jail time. This is either stated in writing for the form you request in the public record or they will state this to you in person.

I would advise people that are listed on Patch.com to know their rights - in every state - and if they find this law - file a complaint with the Attorney General's office for violating such law of not being able to publish name and arrest charges - and quote the link on the internet where this law is stated in your state - and even quote a section in the complaint area what they are violating. Patch.com the owner name and address can be found on a web domain look up. (This information needed to fill the complaint out) And you can find the company name even who owns Patch.com on a web search.

What I don't understand here in MA how the patch.com has been getting away with this illegal act for so long - you can't tell me know one else ever noticed this from various state departments that know this is illegal to do? And the police departments in MA know this is also illegal to do to publish this information and they do it anyway? And Patch.com gets away with breaking the law and publishes this information publicly on the internet? Doesn't make sense to me. Since when do police get to break the law they are governed by and get away with it knowing they are breaking the law and allow others such as Patch.com to break the law. I hate to say it with all the police corruption I vote for Military Martial Law - 2 kinds - to come in and have the Military Martial Law and have the Military come in and take over all the police stations in the US and run them. There would be no public curfew if this Military Martial Law option were in effect. There would be no corruption and people would be safer in the community. All police would be fired and replaced by the military - Army.
---------------------------------------- by the way under the State of MA it is illegal for the police to post publicly police logs/arrest reports/names they are available to the public for free at walk in request - and they do tell you at the police station or at least are supposed to tell you that you can not post or publish it the arrest name/charge -, here is the MA State law stating this about the police in MA can not post police logs/arrest names etc on logs publicly - https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleVII/Chapter41/Section98f - Know your rights people and stand up for them for all of you all that have been publicly posted by the police on police log reports for arrests names/charges you have a very good law suit against the police here of a win win situation here - even at the very least and you can't afford a lawyer you can still file at small claims for the maximum which I believe is $7,000.00. Just bring a screen shot printout of the post with your name and charges on the police log and a print out of this law. Your rights are being violated.

I want the truth and not one sided append ions. I do not support a power play to destroy a human being. This has been going for 4 years with the Democratic Party. They have to much power over us the people. Christians would never act this way. It looks to me they are scared of being exposed.

My last email to patch.com:

Is there a reason for ignoring multiple emails from an advertiser? Patch has minimal reach and makes news announcements well after others, rendering them useless most of the time. After a number of paid ads, there was zero return on ad spend. I continued to take out ads on Patch despite that.

So it is surprising and disappointing to not even get a reply after multiple reminders. It just speaks of the poor quality of this organization.

I have seen/heard-of several reasonably and rationally written posts (in response to written articles) deleted simply because the administrator did not like what the reviewer had to say. Patch should allow people to express their comments freely, they do not.

E.G. They had an article yesterday regarding children in Loudoun county being vaccinated. I simply wrote in reminding people that the Covid vaccine was still in 'Emergency use' status (i. E. we still do not know if there are any long term effects, it has NOT been through full FDA testing yet), and that Covid was less dangerous to children than the Flu (according to CDC). There is no emergency for kids with regards to Covid.

Rather than leave the comment in place for discussion, they simply removed it. Several hours later, I noticed a comment praising the news (that children will be getting the vaccine). I responded to that individual with the exact same post from earlier. Within 1 minute that individual responded "You make some good points, thanks for sharing". But then, my post was again deleted.

Me and one other poster had a nice dialog initiated, Patch then decided they would not allow it, at least not my portion (they left the agreeing opinion there). Judge, Jury, Executioner. They need to remember the US was born on free speech and the sharing of opinions! I have now cancelled my subscription with Patch.

I did not see it at first, but it is true, our country is slipping towards a cancel-society. It's unfortunate that Patch does not stand its ground against this movement.