Paying the Danegeld
May 6, 2021 7:30 AM   Subscribe

The Slander Industry [slNYT] Two NYT reporters investigate "the secret, symbiotic relationship between those facilitating slander and those getting paid to remove it" by having one of them submit himself to a reputation-wrecking website and seeing where else his face and name popped up, then going to the reputation-repair sites. A follow-up of sorts to this article (earlier on the blue). (Via boingboing).
posted by Halloween Jack (11 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well obviously they would say that.
posted by pompomtom at 7:44 AM on May 6, 2021


After a couple of stints in jail — among other things, he was convicted of sending death threats to a woman and of throwing Sriracha Doritos into the face of police officers, “using the spicy dust as a weapon, like pepper spray,” according to a court filing . . .

Well I can't say I'm surprised this is the sort of person behind extortion sites.

Great article, thanks for posting it.
posted by Stoof at 8:08 AM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


As I said in the previous thread, this "industry" literally exists thanks to the separation of legal responsibility between platform and user courtesy of Section 230 - if you note, these sites are structured around the release of anonymous user posts, and thus have no legal liability for what is said, no matter how defamatory. What's infuriating is that this isn't just extortion - it's extortion that is to some degree made legal because of legal indemnification we've set up.

Also, we need to kill the "don't believe everything you read on the internet" argument. Too often it's used to excuse abuse by arguing that the real problem is that people are too credulous, and not that bad actors are actively publishing false, defamatory content.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:18 AM on May 6, 2021 [7 favorites]


Also, we need to kill the "don't believe everything you read on the internet" argument.

While I agree that our current approaches to Internet regulation (government and otherwise) aren't working, 99.9% of people have no influence over that process so I think this is a valuable thing try and teach people. Of course the way that schools do it is often harmful because the examples they usually pick (Don't trust Wikipedia because anyone can write anything!) are usually more accurate and complete than the "official" references.

I think the better version of that statement is "Think through why someone would post this on the internet, then decide how much you should believe it". Contextless slander is usually false, because most people who have legitimately been wronged by someone usually feel awful about it, so are reluctant to post on random forums and face criticism from strangers who don't believe them.
posted by JZig at 9:48 AM on May 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


We soon discovered a secret, hidden behind a smokescreen of fake companies and false identities. The people facilitating slander and the self-proclaimed good guys who help remove it are often one and the same.

I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

posted by chavenet at 11:00 AM on May 6, 2021


this whole scam is predicated on the slander sites showing up in google results. an almost pure SEO play. so google could cut them off at any time. i can’t imagine that this part of the web makes anyone else any money, including google. so how to convince the goog to do the right thing?
posted by bruceo at 1:04 PM on May 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


You're asking Google to play whack-a-mole (which they're already playing with SEO purveyors.) They'll just reopen shop elsewhere, and continue to manipulate SEO to get their info in results. The problem isn't Google - it's that we've indemnified allowing someone to provide a forum to publish defamatory responses. And the answer is that we need to pull that indemnification back, so that these operators are now opened to being sued.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:37 PM on May 6, 2021


This situation is the microcosmic, personal, version of mainstream media, and advertising.
posted by Oyéah at 4:02 PM on May 6, 2021


Yeah, there's no real cost to getting blocked for these sites. They just change the domain name and pop up again. The search term they want is your name, which is probably not a popular one unless you're famous, so they're likely to crawl up organic search eventually.

[Thats why the advice for individuals targeted, who cannot change the system themselves, is to try and produce lots of "good content" to show up when you search your name. If you have no Internet presence, you are an easier target for these sites]

If there were _legal_ consequences, they might be more cautious, but just getting blocked by search engines is not a real consequence and trivial to work around (and it can't happen instantly, so they make money each restart cycle).
posted by thefoxgod at 4:35 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


It's surprising that the two people interviewed and photographed for this article were willing to be. Maybe it's hubris (I can outwit this reporter!) or maybe they just don't care. Or maybe they think any publicity is good for business.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 1:52 PM on May 7, 2021


Maybe it's hubris (I can outwit this reporter!) or maybe they just don't care.

They can't be held legally liable for what they're doing, so why would they care?
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:13 PM on May 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


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