Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that links placed without any input by you is not a bad thing, often he said it is a good thing. John wrote "just because links are placed without your input doesn't make them bad (it usually makes them good, even)."
The more interesting thing is this response was about links from maybe not such good web sites. Web sites that steal content from others and publish it on their own sites. John responded that usually those links do no harm and usually do good.
Here are those tweets:
I'm pretty sure none of that is mentioned in our webmaster guidelines -- is there something specific you're worried about which we mentioned in the webmaster guidelines? Just because links are placed without your input doesn't make them bad (it usually makes them good, even).
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 9, 2020
Yea, links placed on sites that steal content from other sites may end up helping you. It isn't a strategy one should take with their link building efforts but it isn't something that someone should worry about in terms of Google downgrading their site's ranking because of those links.
Of course, John can just be saying here that links, without asking for them in any way, are the best types of links you can get. But of course, context is important.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
More:
Did you place those links there yourself, for example, by buying them? Just because a site isn't as high-quality as yours doesn't mean that links from it will harm your site in any way.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 13, 2020
Google isn't going to care about that - this kind of scraping happens, and in general, we deal with it reasonably.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) July 14, 2020
It is, however, something you might have thoughts on yourself (do I want to allow it?), and being opinionated about how you want your content shown isn't bad.
