"I never "link built" anything, the links just happened naturally"
Great. that's what's supposed to happen, links accumulate naturally.
(I'm deliberately ignoring the inconsistencies in your story, BTW ;-)
"Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty"
How are you being penalised? Did you get a warning of bad links in your Google Webmaster dashboard? If not, how do you know?
Links accumulate, and some disappear over time. That's natural on the web. If Google taking out a bunch of low quality sites affects your own site, that only means the value of your site is significantly positively affected by these sites, so your site was over-ranked. Now it's placed closer to where it should be.
Being linked to by big traffic sources also brings attention from less known sources - that's quite normal.
Great. that's what's supposed to happen, links accumulate naturally. (I'm deliberately ignoring the inconsistencies in your story, BTW ;-)
"Yet, I get penalized for it. It's fucking shitty"
How are you being penalised? Did you get a warning of bad links in your Google Webmaster dashboard? If not, how do you know?
Links accumulate, and some disappear over time. That's natural on the web. If Google taking out a bunch of low quality sites affects your own site, that only means the value of your site is significantly positively affected by these sites, so your site was over-ranked. Now it's placed closer to where it should be.
Being linked to by big traffic sources also brings attention from less known sources - that's quite normal.