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UC Davis spent thousands to scrub pepper spray references from Internet
- Overtonwindow 10y agoWell, few things give more attention to something than attempts to bury it. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- cjarrett 10y agoA search with bing for 'uc davis' highlights three recent articles written about their coverup. Streisand's effect indeed!
- personjerry 10y ago...with Bing?
- jessaustin 10y agoYeah come on get with the program. The consultants told us we have to use Google services so their search engine will like us.
- ksenzee 10y agoThe article describes how the SEO firm specifically targeted Google search results, so yes, I'd run that search with Bing too.
- CyberDildonics 10y agowhy would you mention a specific search engine?
- Nadya 10y agoIn case someone searched "UC Davis" and didn't find 3 articles in the results on Google or DuckDuckGo or some other search engine. I didn't find that specification particularly odd, personally.
- mikestew 10y agoIf a tester entered a bug and you can't repro because the bug doesn't specify the environment, you'd rip 'em a new one. But someone uses two measly words to describe their test environment in this case, and now you question them about their eloquence? Or maybe I have you wrong, so I'll ask: why would you ask why someone mentioned a specific search engine?
- frogpelt 10y agoIt wouldn't be weird if the specific search engine mentioned was Google.
- Houshalter 10y agoI believe the Streisand effect is usually false. 99% of the time censorship works, and you only hear about the rare 1% of times when the public found out. Particularly I'm familiar with moderating a large subreddit. It's amazing what mods can get away with, and users have no clue. Since all removals are silent. So many people shadowbanned and have no idea and just keep commenting like normal.
- Nadya 10y agoI wonder how many more years until large bodies (used in a company/regulatory sense) understand this. Unless their attempt is to gain coverage on something - trying to hide it is going to have the opposite effect due to social media...it seems like so many people are aware of the Streisand effect except everyone in a PR position.
- EdHominem 10y agoThey've got no obligation to tell their clients about it. If it all blows up the client is only going to need more PR work.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoOn the other hand, if there are companies that have succeeded in quietly optimizing away their critics, then we wouldn't know.
- Nadya 10y agoYes, you're right on that. A form of survivorship bias - as it isn't really possible to know all the big happenings that have gone unknown.
- vinhboy 10y agoIt's been a while since I've looked into these "reputation" services. Do they actually work, when not hit by the Streisand effect, or is it just snake oil?
- jessaustin 10y agoMy impression is that the more "reputable" such services have a series of steps that they take that could plausibly affect reputation. (E.g. "We monitor these sites for mentions of your firm; when negative reviews show up we work with you to overwhelm those with positive reviews.") It isn't clear that those steps do actually improve anything we could classify as "online reputation".
- ben_jones 10y agoAnecdotal but from the various policies I've observed on my sites, a shill DMCA-like notice to remove content is often enough to get that content removed. A service that does nothing but send thousands of these to all top google searches would seem feasible and somewhat effective. Again the internet is not free if we use it as a collection of walled gardens.
- DanBC 10y agoBut that would be a criminal offence, right?
- esmi 10y agoJudging by all the other spam I get I think no. Especially if it's just a notice that they have no intention of actually following up on.
- vkou 10y agoFiling a false DMCA claim is perjury. However, not a single person has ever been prosecuted for this.
- HNaTTY 10y agoCriminal offense in that it's perjury, but you could also be required to pay the other side's legal fees. As far as I know, punishment for the perjury has never happened. The only case I know of where legal fees were paid is Automattic vs Steiner.
- klenwell 10y agoWhite did not respond to messages left for her last month or Wednesday, but a résumé posted for her on LinkedIn cites her experience handling “a successful 6 month long strategic SEO (search engine optimization) and online reputation management campaign for the University of California, Davis, and Chancellor Linda Katehi.” Culminating with a lengthy feature in the Sacramento Bee. Mission accomplished.
- SilasX 10y agoSo ... do they get a refund? I'm guessing the consultants' contract covered them here, as they can't do much about a legit info request.
- deong 10y agoRight. They probably executed the original contract well enough, but you can't game Google to prevent future news stories from appearing. That's the nature of the game. These companies just flood the internet with innocuous data about the client in a way that's carefully aimed at pushing "bad stuff" down in the rankings. This works for a number of reasons, but a major one is that search engines prefer recency. Searching "Kobe Bryant" today is going to find way more articles about him scoring 60 in his final game than about him being accused of sexual assault in 2003. If you keep making the news for doing bad things, that same tendency works against you. It's not like these firms can make Google ignore all the articles about you that haven't been written yet. Success is predicated on the idea that you'll stop doing stupid shit after whatever initial event required the service.
- SilasX 10y agoRight, but it's also kind of a special case in that your "future stupid stuff" must include the hiring of the very service that's going to clean up your previous stupid stuff -- so long as the public regards such hiring as stupid. I guess this is one case where it's especially true that "if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself" :-p
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ljk 10y agoDoesn't seem to be working - top google results are about them trying to erase it now...
- atom-morgan 10y agoIf you've got nothing to hide..
- ceejayoz 10y ago"Have you tried just... not pepper spraying peaceful people in the face?"
- spacemanmatt 10y agoNo sir, I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.
- alanh 10y agoThe reference is narrowly escaping me. Help? edit in reply: Haha, no, not Green Eggs & Ham another edit: I thought the parent & grandparent posts might belong together, but apparently not. I think GP is simply using this trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HaveYouTriedNotBeingAMonster http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HaveYouTriedNotBe... — or perhaps this recent Dilbert strip http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-03-08 http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-03-08
- ghurtado 10y agoDr Seuss?
- Sanddancer 10y agoMister Horse from Ren and Stimpy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGlN6mluGA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGlN6mluGA
- spacemanmatt 10y agoMister Horse is correct!
- tymekpavel 10y agoI'm surprised the chancellor hasn't been forced to resign yet. Beyond authorizing the pepper spray incident, she's made many more questionable decisions. 1. Serving on the DeVry board without permission from the UC President, and receiving a generous paycheck. All while DeVry is under federal investigation. 2. Serving on the board of a company selling textbooks to students and receiving stock-based compensation totaling half a million. 3. Apparently now spending tens of thousands of dollars to scrub her previous mistakes from the Internet.
- wl 10y agoI'm surprised that the chancellor wasn't forced to resign after the release of the Kroll and Reynoso reports about the pepper spray incident. The police action against the protestors was illegal and the police department knew it. They only went forward because of Katehi's mistaken insistence that the occupiers were not members of the campus community and needed to be removed before the weekend lest these outsiders rape students. Had the police department handled the situation the way they wanted to, they would have removed the tents at night (when the laws against camping were clearly being violated) and when there weren't large crowds around.
- labster 10y agoThere's only one reason they ever remove a UC Chancellor: they stop raising money for the University. Donor cash is job one. Obviously, she's good at her job if she makes money, even if she moonlights in jobs that actively harm students. The only solution is to stop donating to UC Davis -- and UC in general. If the Annual Fund calls you, ask them "Has Katehi resigned yet?" That's what I do. If you really want to help students at UCD, give to ASUCD or CalPIRG or something, not to a slush fund of a Chancellor who spends student fees on her own image. Disclaimer: UCD alumnus here. Edit: Although five lawmakers calling for her resignation might also decrease donations to the UC: http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/article71848252.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/the-public-eye/art...
- tkinom 10y ago
- neves 10y agoAm I evil if I vote up this post so it counteracts the consultant job of hiding the pepper spray event from the internet?
- spacemanmatt 10y agoNo, you're a good citizen. When I saw the story hit facebook, it got reshared faster than anything else today.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoThings like this is why I consider the PR people to be the worst of the worst scum.
- coroutines 10y agoI wonder how they decided spending money on this would be a good investment. They must know how the internet works. What specifically were they paying for that made it worth it? Keeping references to the incident away from their Facebook page? Who HASN'T seen that image by now? What a misguided allocation of funds.
- unabridged 10y ago>I wonder how they decided spending money on this would be a good investment. Its not their money and they have no shareholders. They don't care if works or not. These PR people cashing the checks are probably friends of friends of the Chancellor.
- ben_jones 10y agoComment I saw on Reddit: "Right before these conflicts of interest came out, the Sac Bee did a fluff piece about Katehi without any mention of the pepper spray incident. It was a female writer talking about how wonderful it was for Katehi to break the glass ceiling." It seems there is some conflict of interest here, as the article seems to attempt to shift blame from the Chancellor to the university. Would it be unreasonable to assume there is a special relationship between her and someone at the newspaper?
- tobltobs 10y agoThis is one of the few areas where the EU is better in protecting the rich and/or corporations. In the EU you can force Google to remove stuff like this from the index. I always wondered why the US is lagging behind on this.
- awinter-py 10y agoHmm, should have paid that money directly to US News & World Report. Not sure how tear-gassing sophomores affects the ranking but I'm guessing low six figures can get you spot #3 on the liberal arts list.
- oluckyman 10y ago"UC Davis spent thousands...". Shades of Dr Evil.