Re:When anonymous attackers went after two Yale law students...
by time_management on Thursday February 19, 2009 @10:15AM
(#487328)
I think Google needs to start treating searches on people as a special use case where user-generated websites like Autoadmit get low marks.
It used to be that "public figures" could be scrutinized harshly, in print media, while private citizens had a certain degree of protection. It would be considered harassment for the paper to write an op-ed about John Q. Doe, store manager at the local Drug-Fix, being bad at his job.
Now, it's worse to be a private citizen, because it's much easier to destroy a private person's "Google resume". I could talk shit about a prominent politician for days and wouldn't have much of an effect on his Google presence, but if I (or anyone) decided to go into "digital hit man" mode on Joe Q. Bloggs, it wouldn't take more than half an hour. Because there's so little content about him, it would be easy to make over 90% of web content about him be negative.
It used to be that "public figures" could be scrutinized harshly, in print media, while private citizens had a certain degree of protection. It would be considered harassment for the paper to write an op-ed about John Q. Doe, store manager at the local Drug-Fix, being bad at his job.
Now, it's worse to be a private citizen, because it's much easier to destroy a private person's "Google resume". I could talk shit about a prominent politician for days and wouldn't have much of an effect on his Google presence, but if I (or anyone) decided to go into "digital hit man" mode on Joe Q. Bloggs, it wouldn't take more than half an hour. Because there's so little content about him, it would be easy to make over 90% of web content about him be negative.