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"It's good practice to own your own name and domain" Good luck with that. Subdomains make that basically impossible; even large, established corporations with

"It's good practice to own your own name and domain" Good luck with that. Subdomains make that basically impossible; even large, established corporations with big branding budgets have difficulty with this. The real problem here is that people still think that if they see something written down, it must be true. People might as well be reading The Weekly World News, though the kind of harassment described here would be well below the standards of WWN.

danso 13y ago
You're absolutely spot on...the problem is that we often don't have time or motivation to challenge what we see...which is why headline-writing can so easily color opinions of an entire article body. Even in this case, even when I knew this blog post was part of a smear campaign, some reflex in me instinctively mused, "Hmm, maybe this guy is bad...look at all the words devoted to him". Now imagine any given employer or background-checker seeing this, without the context of the OP...what are the chances that they'll be skeptical of the smear campaign? But because as humans, we have limited time/energy/patience...computers and sound algorithms really are one of our best allies in rooting this kind of thing out. I'm just surprised that Google's ranker hadn't already flagged this...It's a single-post blog with a circle-jerk of links to other single-use blogs, with the kind of keyword stuffing that was common in the AltaVista days...and I'm pretty sure the text is verbatim from other such smear sites. Isn't that enough penalty to take the site down from the top of the SERPs?
- betterunix 13y ago
  I would rather see a system based on digital signatures, with keys tied to identities. If you are checking someone's reputation you should be able to check the identity of people who are making claims about them -- are they former employers, jilted lovers, or did they choose to remain anonymous? I want to know what former employers and coworkers have to say; I do not want to know what an ex-boyfriend masquerading as a former coworker says. If we could establish a mentality of checking for a signature from a verifiable key before assuming that a statement is true it would go a long way toward solving this problem. Of course, this comes with problems as well. How do you verify public keys? Web of trust systems do not seem to work in practice; people do not have the time. A CA model would allow a central authority to silence people who say the wrong things by denying them verification. The system cannot be like SSH, because you need a way to verify keys from people you have not yet contacted. I agree that search engines should be working toward a solution, but in this case that would not have been enough. This stalker went as far as sending messages to the victims' employers.
lazyjones 13y ago
> Good luck with that. Subdomains make that basically impossible; even large, established corporations with big branding budgets have difficulty with this. It's not only anonymous harrassers causing problems - for example, I've had a few magazines (2 mainstream owned by the same outlet and 1 industry magazine) in my country campaign against my name recently, after our company pointed out illegal price fixing in the industry. Now the top google (and bing) results for my name are 2-3 such articles in magazines with otherwise decent reputation, previously my personal web page, facebook page (with 0 friends 0 comments), old university web pages and various old programming projects were the rop results. How do I "clear my name" other than being more active on the web, using my own name (I haven't bothered to blog or post stuff online for various reasons, one of them is that my personal life doesn't belong there), or hiring SEO experts to push more neutral content to the top? I guess I'll just sit it out ...

danso 13y ago

You're absolutely spot on...the problem is that we often don't have time or motivation to challenge what we see...which is why headline-writing can so easily color opinions of an entire article body. Even in this case, even when I knew this blog post was part of a smear campaign, some reflex in me instinctively mused, "Hmm, maybe this guy is bad...look at all the words devoted to him". Now imagine any given employer or background-checker seeing this, without the context of the OP...what are the chances that they'll be skeptical of the smear campaign? But because as humans, we have limited time/energy/patience...computers and sound algorithms really are one of our best allies in rooting this kind of thing out. I'm just surprised that Google's ranker hadn't already flagged this...It's a single-post blog with a circle-jerk of links to other single-use blogs, with the kind of keyword stuffing that was common in the AltaVista days...and I'm pretty sure the text is verbatim from other such smear sites. Isn't that enough penalty to take the site down from the top of the SERPs?

betterunix 13y ago
I would rather see a system based on digital signatures, with keys tied to identities. If you are checking someone's reputation you should be able to check the identity of people who are making claims about them -- are they former employers, jilted lovers, or did they choose to remain anonymous? I want to know what former employers and coworkers have to say; I do not want to know what an ex-boyfriend masquerading as a former coworker says. If we could establish a mentality of checking for a signature from a verifiable key before assuming that a statement is true it would go a long way toward solving this problem. Of course, this comes with problems as well. How do you verify public keys? Web of trust systems do not seem to work in practice; people do not have the time. A CA model would allow a central authority to silence people who say the wrong things by denying them verification. The system cannot be like SSH, because you need a way to verify keys from people you have not yet contacted. I agree that search engines should be working toward a solution, but in this case that would not have been enough. This stalker went as far as sending messages to the victims' employers.

lazyjones 13y ago

> Good luck with that. Subdomains make that basically impossible; even large, established corporations with big branding budgets have difficulty with this. It's not only anonymous harrassers causing problems - for example, I've had a few magazines (2 mainstream owned by the same outlet and 1 industry magazine) in my country campaign against my name recently, after our company pointed out illegal price fixing in the industry. Now the top google (and bing) results for my name are 2-3 such articles in magazines with otherwise decent reputation, previously my personal web page, facebook page (with 0 friends 0 comments), old university web pages and various old programming projects were the rop results. How do I "clear my name" other than being more active on the web, using my own name (I haven't bothered to blog or post stuff online for various reasons, one of them is that my personal life doesn't belong there), or hiring SEO experts to push more neutral content to the top? I guess I'll just sit it out ...