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Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

#2
Just as there are SEO firms that help companies ascend the rankings, there are "reputation management" firms that erase bad news by publishing new articles & by pushing takedown requests on articles they don't like. As with SEO, Google appears to tacitly encourage this.

It seems obvious that there should be a review process for takedown requests, with penalties for frivolous requests. (Up to and perhaps including lawsuits to cover costs and for the sake of deterrence.) But it's not at all obvious to Google.

Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

#7

Just as there are SEO firms that help companies ascend the rankings, there are "reputation management" firms that erase bad news by publishing new articles & by pushing takedown requests on articles they don't like. As with SEO, Google appears to tacitly encourage this. It seems obvious that there should be a review process for takedown requests, with penalties for frivolous requests. (Up to and perhaps including law…

DMCA notices are supposed to be filed under penalty of perjury, but I'm not aware of anyone ever being prosecuted for that.

Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

#8

I'm curious how Google notifies people about things like this... do they pull an email out of whois, or your DNS SOA? If there's nothing linking your website to a Google account, it seems like they could just make your website disappear.

Do they even?

Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

#9
> Why does Google allow fraudulent DMCA notices to be filed with no penalty?

Because there is no law that requires a penalty. It's very common on YT, if you are big enough of a company you can file them willy nilly and never get any consequence

Re: Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it

#10

I'm curious how Google notifies people about things like this... do they pull an email out of whois, or your DNS SOA? If there's nothing linking your website to a Google account, it seems like they could just make your website disappear.

Do they even?

> So imagine my surprise when I was notified that Google removed the article from its search results

You know you can just read the linked articles, right?

Edit: parent has edited their post, it used to say something like "google has never notified anyone about such things".

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