Why has Google cast me into oblivion? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#81

Post by drakaal » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 9:37 PM UTC

I do this "for a living". Reputation Management is when you pay someone like me to make that result fall to the 5th page of Google so people searching for you only see the happy fun stuff you have done.

What is missing from the implementation from Google, that Google really needs to be "fair" is an OPT OUT.

You see when I go in and fix a reputation by outranking bad stuff with good, the bad stuff is still there if you know what you are looking for.

BBC JOHN DOE KILLS BABYSITTER is not going away, just not showing up when you Google JOHN DOE BABYSITTER because I will have place the top 40 results with things about How awesome SUSAN THE 16 YEAR OLD is who is now JOHN DOE's babysitter.

If Google did an OPT OUT, you would be able to say, "I am John Doe of Hicksville, IN" here is my picture, remove me from the interwebs. And nothing about you would be there. No good, No Bad.

Is this just me having sour grapes that my business of shaping reality is going away? No. If anything this is good for business. People will want what the EU has and flock to me.

For those who think I am a bad person. Yeah, I know that http://www.blackwaterops.com didn't pick its name because we thought we were the good guys.

But at the same time a lot of what we do is good. We work with organizations that share the name with bad people. You know how hard it is when you share the name with a serial killer to get a job even after that serial killer was executed?

You know how hard it is to recover from stuff 20+ years after the the Jack in the Box ecoli outbreak?

Or being named Play Boy's Hottest X and then trying to get a job working with kids? Even if you didn't ask to be associated with Play Boy?

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#82

Post by walshemj » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

josephlord wrote: post #32

gadders wrote: post #7

The EU really is a joke. I think if people want to hide stuff like revenge porn, or obvious slander, then fair enough. But unindexing legitimate journalism is stupid.

I think there are games being played here. The European Court ruled that some things should be made harder to find (revenge porn, obvious slander, spent convictions etc.). Google don't want to do this and are trying to make a mockery of the ruling removing from the results anything that they are asked to as long as it is about a person with the very aim of stirring a backlash against the ruling. Requests to take down…

The original person who started his was a Spanish business who wanted court records removed over his debts and their was a dr who had been in trouble or struck off from practicing by his country's medical certifying body.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#83

Post by EGreg » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

andrewfong wrote: post #60

ulfw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a jurisdiction with actual press freedoms" And where would that be?

So long as you're not reporting on matters of "national security", the U.S. actually has a decent track record with that ...

And IP

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1312/131202washingtondc.htm

http://www.dmca.com/takedowns.aspx

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#84

Post by walshemj » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 9:49 PM UTC

All google has to do is buy an European news paper and become a traditional publisher - they could buy the independent cheaply.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#85

Post by vbuterin » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 9:57 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #74

Should Google try to interpret the ruling as closely as possible, only blocking the most clearly irrelevant information, and honoring requests for appeals from journalists whenever possible? That would limit damage to those seeking information, but risk another turn at the courts. Or should they just implement it as broadly and bluntly as possible, lowering their risk of noncompliance, reducing their costs of evaluat…

There should be a name for deliberately making a big fuss of following every regulation as expansively as possible to prove a point; inverse civil disobedience, civil obedience maybe?

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#86

Post by wnoise » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

personZ wrote: post #46

kjjw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to think that it is in Google's interest to create a clumsy system that does not properly check requested deletions. Too many deletions that have no merit under the scheme will likely create a backlash, placing a negative highlight on the scheme to the average person on the street who will now start to read news article after news article about erroneous deletions. What the EU is trying to do is likely im…

How does this request not have merit? What makes it "clumsy"? Because the linked author says it is? Recall that the original action that yielded the right to be forgotten clause was a gentleman who wanted a debt confiscation and sale removed from the public record. The actual national agency told him to get lost -- the data was valid and unchallenged, and is a part of the recognized past, and is fully available and r…

> Is a newspaper article slandering him

It's not slander if it's true.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#87

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 10:11 PM UTC

andrewfong wrote: post #60

ulfw wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a jurisdiction with actual press freedoms" And where would that be?

So long as you're not reporting on matters of "national security", the U.S. actually has a decent track record with that ...

Reporters Without Borders puts the US at 46th position in their Press Freedom Index. An awful lot of things can be turned into "national security" issues.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#88

Post by Vik1ng » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 10:12 PM UTC

dap wrote: post #67

kjjw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to think that it is in Google's interest to create a clumsy system that does not properly check requested deletions. Too many deletions that have no merit under the scheme will likely create a backlash, placing a negative highlight on the scheme to the average person on the street who will now start to read news article after news article about erroneous deletions. What the EU is trying to do is likely im…

> For example, I fully expect a modern society to give a second chance to a difficult teenager that receives a criminal record. They could do that by avoiding judgment on a teenager with a critical record rather than not pretending like that record doesn't exist. And if the problem is that too many people are judging, then it's not true that society at large really does feel the same way about it. Give people facts,…

The reality is that someone who has 50 applications on his table and wants to invite 5-10 for an interview for 1 position is looking for easy ways to narrow them down.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#89

Post by vacri » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 10:14 PM UTC

andrewfong wrote: post #70

kjjw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to think that it is in Google's interest to create a clumsy system that does not properly check requested deletions. Too many deletions that have no merit under the scheme will likely create a backlash, placing a negative highlight on the scheme to the average person on the street who will now start to read news article after news article about erroneous deletions. What the EU is trying to do is likely im…

> For example, I fully expect a modern society to give a second chance to a difficult teenager that receives a criminal record. Many governments would hide such a record after a certain time. There seems to be a simpler way to accomplish this than the current EU approach: a name change. It seems much easier to have an individual change his or her identity than to have the whole of society collectively agree to not as…

A name change is not simple, particularly if you are a bit further along in life.

Re: Why has Google cast me into oblivion?

#90

Post by andrewfong » Wed, Jul 02, 2014, 10:17 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #83

andrewfong wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So long as you're not reporting on matters of "national security", the U.S. actually has a decent track record with that ...

And IP http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1312/131202washingtondc.htm http://www.dmca.com/takedowns.aspx

Those aren't great examples -- it's pretty rare to get taken down for simply reporting on IP issues. You can get taken down for distributing someone else's copyrighted content, but I have yet to see the government go after someone for simple journalism. The closest we've gotten to that was the Dajaz1 domain name seizure, but that was because they served up actual copyrighted songs (though arguably with authorization), not because of their reporting.

That said, there's been plenty of DMCA abuse and unwarranted legal nastygrams against journalists, but as far as I'm aware, in every case where people actually took the case to court rather than just giving in, they've won. Our IP system provides for plenty of opportunities for "extortion by lawyer", but it's a different problem than "press freedom" IMHO.