News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How the powerful clean up their digital past using a repu... by Nursie on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @07:13AM (#30257522)
I've seen it fail as well, an old friend had some rather intimate pictures leaked. They sank a lot of money into suppressing them but ultimately it seems to be a fruitless endeavour.
Re:How the powerful clean up their digital past using a repu... by toyg on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @08:08AM (#30257909)
You cannot guarantee suppression but you can discreetly reduce frequency until very few available versions exist, and hope they quietly die in the long run. You see this happening with certain videos and pictures, typically sex-related.
Re:How the powerful clean up their digital past using a repu... by nebula8804 on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @03:36PM (#30264275)
I hear Elon Musk does this with old articles about his history. The skeptic community actively tries to archive the old stuff. Furthermore he also seems to employ SEO techniques to stay on top of any negative stories. For example, there was a Tesla Whistleblower story about some FSD controversy (the millionth one). Next thing you know he releases a literal Tesla Whistle on the company store and all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.
Re:How the powerful clean up their digital past using a repu... by autoexec on Tuesday February 08, 2022 @09:55PM (#30268140)
> all of a sudden when you search Tesla Whistleblower....you are inundated with articles about Tesla's contribution in the field of human powered audible alert systems.

If that was a genuine effort to bury news articles it seems to have backfired. Search results are full of information on actual whistleblowers and news articles returned that were written about the whistle seem to have no issue bringing up the actual whistleblowering

Re:How the powerful clean up their digital past using a repu... by nebula8804 on Wednesday February 09, 2022 @12:23PM (#30275263)
Maybe now but when the article dropped was around the time he announced the cyberwhistle. He has probably gone past the initial newsworthy window.