[HN Gopher] The Slander Industry
___________________________________________________________________
The Slander Industry
Author : mcenedella
Score : 135 points
Date : 2021-04-25 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| yrgulation wrote:
| On a tangent, the author could have used "this person does not
| exist" to generate fake images of people and a random name
| generator.
|
| EDIT: If it weren't for hosting costs, it might actually be fun
| to spam the slanderers with fake posts on fake people.
| [deleted]
| yifanl wrote:
| > Mr. Sullivan told us that copying content was a great way to
| lure people to his sites. (He said he didn't feel bad about
| spreading unverified slander. "Teach children not to talk to
| strangers, then teach them not to believe what they read on the
| internet," he said.)
|
| The fact that his business relies on people not being able to
| teach themselves not to believe what they read on the internet
| proves that he doesn't actually believe that this is effective
| mitigation. We aren't going to see a cultural shift in timescales
| shorter than a decade.
| litoorachure wrote:
| >We aren't going to see a cultural shift in timescales shorter
| than a decade.
|
| Why not? We already did. 2000 was still in the era of "never
| give out accurate personal information online." 2005 was fully
| in the MySpace/Facebook social media era.
| yifanl wrote:
| Facebook captured not just internet powerusers, but an
| entirely new (and eventually, a substantially larger)
| audience. I would very much doubt there's a larger audience
| currently offline out there today.
| anarazel wrote:
| It seems like a model fairly vulnerable to a few people with
| resources suing? Both from a copyright and a defamation angle?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > We asked her whether this was extortion. "I can't really give
| you a direct answer," she said.
|
| I feel like attorneys general should be prosecuting these sites.
| gizmo wrote:
| Clearly the people running these sites are true scumbags.
| However, the article doesn't mention that the only reason these
| sites making false claims have any value is because google
| directs traffic to them! If somebody slanders me on a site nobody
| reads why would I care? I only care if Google slanders me through
| their search results. That's what you're paying for to get the
| slander removed: removal from search results.
|
| And yet nobody talks about the responsibility search engines have
| to prune obvious scams, viruses, and the like from their index.
| Google is not a neutral actor in this, it's Google's algorithm
| that's getting exploited, so Google has both a moral
| responsibility and the actual capability to fix this. Legal
| action against these slander sites is important too, but more of
| a secondary concern.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Do you think that Google has being a motherfucking sorcerer as
| a job qualification? Just sentiment analysis would not be
| sufficient and epistemological truth detection is beyond what
| is possible. "Have you resurrected Abraham Lincoln? No? You
| bastard!" No sane moral system declares not doing the
| impossible a sin.
|
| Their interests are already aligned against it, no need for
| farcical allocation of responsibility.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| this will always remain an incredibly difficult problem to
| solve. the fact that people mention Google should fix it shows
| that we like to rely on 1 or 2 large companies who should solve
| this and it isn't even in our imagination that if the power of
| Google distributed over 30-50 companies might not create the
| same issue in the first place.
|
| take this thought further (this is going to suck and most will
| hate this and I won't blame anyone who does because I've also
| not completely finished this idea in my own head) ... what if
| everyone got slandered somewhere online. Or in other words I
| can't change the way people treat me but I can influence my
| response to how I react. If everyone is slandered then nobody
| is slandered because the narrative becomes the Web is shit so
| you can't anyway trust what people write online.
|
| A lot of the problems would go away if we'd come to the
| conclusion that what happens online really is just a fake world
| with people sharing unfinished thoughts (that constantly
| evolve) rather than everything we publish is like a public
| statement (because it sometimes even has our real name acting
| almost like a signature on a contract).
| stevenicr wrote:
| "If everyone is slandered then nobody is slandered because
| the narrative becomes the Web is shit so you can't anyway
| trust what people write online."
|
| Basically how everyone looks at news / journalism on tv and
| the net then?
|
| Looking at the 'news feed' on yahoo is not much different
| than the old enquirer fake news tabloids of the grocery
| stores in times past.. yet people sometimes cling to "this is
| the way it is.. I saw it on the web" - even though I think
| deep down they know they only get half the story / not half
| the truth.. with any organization online.
|
| So it's entertainment to shame the 'others' and some people
| take it pretty hard when the 'others' shame their allies..
| yep, not hard to imagine at this point sadly.
|
| I long for a browser extension that follows my choice of
| editors to remove all huffposts and many individual authors /
| 'journalists' / editors from portals / socials / etc - even
| then the truth will not be complete and much of what is not
| true will still entertain/influence/stir up anger, etc.
|
| once we get more deepfakes across the net I think people will
| finally start to see it for what it is - all one big enquirer
| trying to get eyeballs and clicks and as just as trustworthy.
|
| Although - some people have started to say things like 'if it
| wasn't true fbook would remove it - or put a notice on it -
| and they haven't so it' probably true' - similar with google
| I guess - ugh.
|
| If google / fb continues to censor, fix and filter - it could
| have a similar opposite effect. Ok we need a button on google
| to show unfiltered.
|
| More unfinished thoughts it seems.
| zepto wrote:
| > this will always remain an incredibly difficult problem to
| solve.
|
| Will it? Google prides itself on solving hard problems.
|
| What if it only costs $10Bn a year to solve it?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You can always solve the current problem.
|
| But this is an arms race with uncountable adversaries who
| profit from finding new ways to spread. Some will always
| succeed.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| it's true once a business is set up to do this it will
| want to do things to perpetuate itself, but obviously it
| only got set up in the first place because it was obvious
| and easy to do and therefore really cheap, if it was far
| more difficult to do it would become expensive to do
| because difficult things must be managed with work which
| costs money.
|
| In short I am not sure you are correct that there will be
| uncountable adversaries trying to do this.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _this will always remain an incredibly difficult problem to
| solve. the fact that people mention Google should fix it
| shows that we like to rely on 1 or 2 large companies who
| should solve this and it isn 't even in our imagination that
| if the power of Google distributed over 30-50 companies might
| not create the same issue in the first place._
|
| -- The issue doesn't seem unsolvable at all. Google can
| investigate the network of slander websites and reputation
| management consultants the same way these news reporters did.
| Use some AI to find per quality site devoted to this stuff.
| Google already devotes a lot of resources to similar things.
| Google doesn't have to be certain a site is garbage to
| delisted it, just get enough red flags.
|
| -- But oppositely, if you had 30 dispersed search sites, it
| seems likely this stuff would become utterly intractable, an
| endless game of whack-o-mole. And so it seems like your
| literally is primarily using kind of garbage reasoning just
| to take a shot at Google. Not that I like Google or whatever
| but it's an illustration of a common HN prejudice.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I don't need my search results censored, I'll decide what I
| want to read.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| There is no such thing as "natural" search results, the
| search results are the result of complex interacting
| algorithmic logic that Google implements to try to give you
| "good" results.
|
| When Google for instance penalizes a site for being slow; or
| for being spammy; or being identified by the algorithm as
| likely to be disliked by most users, and not be what they are
| looking for; or for having spyware; or for seeming to use
| "black hat" SEO with irrelevant keywords...
|
| ...are these actions "censorship"? What kinds of shaping of
| google results are censorship and what kinds aren't?
|
| The results are _inherently_ shaped, they only exist because
| of algorithms that implement choices, there are no "natural"
| unshaped results.
| markbnj wrote:
| Let me get this straight: someone posts slanderous lies about
| another individual in order to defame them and perhaps profit
| from the defamation; google is exploited to drive the slander
| to the top of the search results; and you think any attempt
| to remove the slander would constitute censorship and
| compromise the purity of the information you have access to?
| Really?
| parineum wrote:
| That is the definition of censorship and it does change the
| information available. Knowing that someone is being
| slandered can be informative.
|
| You have to make a choice of what you prefer but the choice
| you're making is censoring slander or not.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| The idea that Google should act as judge of what is slander
| and what is a true allegation of wrongdoing is what gets up
| the hackles of anyone who still thinks free speech has
| value. The parent comment said nothing about the slander
| being proven such in court, google is simply assumed to
| know what is slander and what is not.
|
| Which of course it doesn't, a state-of-the-art AI's
| language comprehension is still extremely rudimentary and
| would be prone to being gamed by powerful malicious actors
| even if it were human level.
| lupire wrote:
| You are free to choose a search engine that ranks results
| closest to your values.
| unicodepepper wrote:
| Your decision is not quite as neutral if all the options you
| see point in the same general direction.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Seems like a search algorithm update is called for.
| arp242 wrote:
| At the end it does say you can contact Google to have these
| kind of results removed, which seems to work well.
|
| I don't disagree they should probably be more proactive, but
| it's tricky because "X is a horrible person" can be legitimate
| articles too; banning domains is a whack-a-mole, and of course
| you'll get complaints about "censorship".
| anxman wrote:
| It doesn't remove the images though
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Very good point about Google. Will they care enough to ever
| leave their "neutrality" behind?
|
| This reminds me of Yelp asking for tribute or protection
| payments lest they put all the worst reviews on top and bury
| the great reviews.
| Nemi wrote:
| This may be controversial, but I don't agree. Any legitimate
| item can be used for bad things if someone wants.
|
| At the risk of making a bad analogy, a car can be used by
| someone to go on a rampage and mow down hundreds of people. If
| that happened you can be sure that someone, somewhere would
| suggest that the auto manufacturers have a responsibility to
| stop this kind of thing from happening again by making a "kill
| switch" available to police that can be used to stop the
| vehicle remotely.
|
| Another bad analogy would be using a hammer to kill someone.
|
| Clearly there is a fuzzy line there somewhere. I am not saying
| that companies have no responsibility in keeping their products
| from being used in bad ways by bad people, but I do think it is
| important not to only look at the bad thing and say that
| companies need to stop that bad thing from happening at all
| costs.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It's not controversial, it's just Google's search engine has
| become extremely complex and there is a lot of manual
| intervention going on already. It is very convenient for them
| to say they want to keep neutral but it doesn't work this
| way.
|
| To use your analogy, imagine a wave of murders done only with
| a specific brand of hammer. As the CEO of the company
| manufacturing these hammers, at the very least you would want
| to inquire as to why your hammers were used and if there are
| ways to modify your product in order to avoid this kind of
| hammer misuse of your product in the future. At least any
| decent person would do that. On the other hand, you could
| argue in the world where the so called "shareholder value" is
| the ultimate reference, the CEO would see it not as a
| misfortune but rather an opportunity to sell more hammers.
| lupire wrote:
| If your hammer is the most popular and least expensive
| hammer, there's not much to be done.
| jankassens wrote:
| I don't think Google is quite as neutral here. Google
| suggests adding "cheater" to the search of the victim's names
| and ranks those websites.
|
| What if the manual of the hammer included a section "try
| hitting someone with it".
|
| Now, Google's recommendation clearly came from seeing those
| words appear together, but to me Google is somewhere between
| completely neutral like grep, a hammer, or a car and fully
| editorialized like a blog or newspaper.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| The irony. The NYT, an institution that betrayed the society in
| which its hosted to embrace misinformation, flattery and
| reputation destruction as the primary tools of its trade,
| publishes an article on the evil people that specialize on one
| aspect of its own operations. Next: an article on how dangerous
| Substack is.
| gizmo wrote:
| Doing good journalism is hard. Yes, the NYT sucks, but they do
| good reporting too. And this article is very good, so if you
| want to complain about how bad the NYT is maybe reserve that
| criticism for those times when a bad article from the NYT hits
| the front page.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| On the contrary. I believe the NYT to be harmful to the US
| because of the division and self loathing it so energetically
| pursues, mostly through fabrication, intimidation and
| slander. The brand is well on its way to complete bankruptcy,
| as more and more Americans realize their corruption. I for
| one, will do what I can to speed that process up by pointing
| out their hypocrisy every opportunity I get. Hopefully one
| day the NYT will be so toxic that no reasonable person will
| want to be caught reading it or writing for it. Maybe then
| something better can take its place.
| slibhb wrote:
| I basically agree with you. But the fact that the NYT is
| "bad for America" doesn't mean this article exploring the
| slander industry is bad or wrong, only a bit ironic.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I have the same reasoning. The NY Times has done some awful
| things, and they have some biases that are offensive to me.
|
| But I am a paid subscriber! (As I am with the WSJ). Why? It's
| a much better source, even with the faults, than all that
| "free" journalism that the Hacker News people seem to like so
| much.
| splithalf wrote:
| You get the future you pay for!
| colinmhayes wrote:
| And I guess you get a future full of clickbait in the
| race to the bottom that is journalism that no one pays
| for.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Maybe so, but the future we don't pay for is splogs,
| misleading websites, paid "astroturf" efforts, etc.
|
| I'd rather have the devil I know.
| textgel wrote:
| I'd not like to see this response go unanswered; I'm the
| first to attack these organisations for the damage they
| do and I've long abandoned reading them, having written
| them off for the damage they've already done.
|
| But I can respect honest acknowledgement of the bad while
| arguing the good side is worth staying. You'll (obvs)
| have a better perspective as a subscriber and given you
| can approach the thing with nuance I'm willing to go with
| your take on it.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Nah, a reminder of how bad the NYT is, is always a good
| reminder. NYT isn't guilty of making mistakes, they are
| guilty of spreading lies. To frame their deception as an
| honest mistake, is deceptive in and of itself.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I wish these kinds of vitriolic posts cited some specific
| instances and sourced their claims. Otherwise I'm left to
| Google "NYT bad" to try to corroborate any of it.
| timeschange wrote:
| Bari Weiss's resignation letter from the NYT is probably
| the best place to start
| https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
|
| Matt Taibbi has a good article on this too
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-
| destroying-i...
|
| Glenn Greenwald talks about this on his Substack a lot,
| too, and the malpractice of the larger media as a whole.
| This recent and highly topical Twitter thread is one of
| many examples.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/138376788266
| 898...
| splithalf wrote:
| It's common knowledge amongst most educated people. Sorry
| if you had to find out by googling. Probably a sickening
| feeling if you've been a subscriber or passed along any
| of their retracted news as fact. I too used to trust the
| nyt, but "show me incentive and I'll show you the
| outcome."
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| And imagine if Google is in bed with corporate media,
| vice versa? Good luck searching for examples.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| So what you're saying it that's it's _utterly essential_
| for the posters complaining about The NY Times to source
| their claims? Why don 't they do it then?
| textgel wrote:
| They do, however those comments with links to evidence
| all seem to get flagged for some very strange reason.
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Oh no. I was just making a random philosophical point.
| Nothing really to read into. Just that it would be
| difficult to find examples of organization x criticism,
| using organization y, if both x & y are partners.
| quantstats wrote:
| Hacker News and painting The New York Times as the harbinger of
| the end of civilization, name a more iconic duo.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Batman and Robin
| TomMckenny wrote:
| On the positive, the personalities you'll be forced to work
| with at YCombinator companies is made clear by the fanaticism
| found in the comments here.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| That is how a self proclaimed monopoly on truth should behave,
| shouldn't it?
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/iMGwD
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| "Slander Machine"?? You mean like the NYT?
| throwitaway1235 wrote:
| Off the charts hypocrisy.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| It seems like the value proposition of this sort of extortion
| would rapidly fall if you just made a GPT3 bot that slandered
| people using a name generator to iterate over the less than 1
| billion unique names that exist in the world. Publish and spam
| social media, mangle search results, then we'll be back to where
| we were in the 90s, with no one believing the contents of search
| engine results.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| -with no one believing the contents of search engine results.
|
| History is merely repeating itself i guess. Is Google is
| becoming the problem that it originally came to solve?
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| Neal Stephenson wrote about something like this in "Fall" -
| mass slander bots. Ultimate goal was destroying the credibility
| of the internet. In his world, it worked, and people started to
| watch only curated feeds. But it didn't help much..
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| You need more than GPT3-generated text. As the article notes,
| slander sites often feature photos of specific individuals,
| taken from their social media profiles or other sources, and
| sometimes cropped in some way to make the target look even more
| ridiculous.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Well, it's a good thing nothing like that exists anywhere
| online. :)
| [deleted]
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised at the absence of Scientology from the
| article. They pioneered slander sites in the early millennium in
| order to attack their critics, and they had excellent SEO-fu that
| would usually make the slander sites rank higher than the
| target's own site. Because they have branched out into other
| businesses to bring in money, upon seeing the title of this
| article I half-expected them to be offering services to third
| parties in this vein, too.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _In certain circumstances, Google will remove harmful content
| from individuals' search results, including links to "sites with
| exploitative removal practices." If a site charges to remove
| posts, you can ask Google not to list it....
|
| I eventually found the Google form. I submitted a claim to have
| one URL removed. "Your email has been sent to our team," Google
| told me.
|
| Three days later, I received an email from Google saying the URL
| would be removed from my search results._
|
| Useful information, though one would hope to never need to use
| it!
| textgel wrote:
| _Cough_ _Cough_ Massive Hypocrite _Cough_
| https://www.dailywire.com/news/lawyer-covington-kids-threate...
| _Cough_
| prezjordan wrote:
| Not a trustworthy news source
| textgel wrote:
| agreed, but generally that comes with being a slanderous news
| organisation
| sanity31415 wrote:
| No less trustworthy than the NYT.
| qPM9l3XJrF wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2019_Lincoln_Memorial_.
| ..
|
| See citations, trustworthy enough for wikipedia
| drak0n1c wrote:
| In related recent news, Justice Charles Wood wrote a 16 page
| order denying NYT's request to throw out a defamation suit
| filed against NYT.
|
| https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/maEy58HDFCR7qdtFOb...
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| Was the NYT's reporting false? Someone on Twitter saying
| something is obvious libel doesn't necessarily make it so.
| textgel wrote:
| Yes, they were even forced to walk it back
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/opinion/covington-
| teenage...
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| "Forced to walk it back" is an oddly condemnatory way to
| describe admitting to a mistake. Granted the mistake has
| already been made, surely it's a good thing to own up to
| it?
| textgel wrote:
| No, the pattern of slander an individual, wait for the
| story to pass then apologise later once the damage is
| done and a litigious response is coming to bear (claiming
| it was a "mistake" or whatever excuse is necessary) is a
| tactic used by scum and defended by the same.
| adolph wrote:
| The "Slander Industry" has existed for a long time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell
| peppermint_tea wrote:
| this makes my blood boil, the author is obviously technically
| savvy, but how damaging it can be for someone (even technically
| inclined) in this day and age.
|
| related horror story:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/technology/change-my-goog...
|
| it would be a real shame if an organised group of person would
| start posting programatically to these slander sites with
| material from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and randomly
| generated names. Storing all these pictures will cost something
| afterall.
| peppermint_tea wrote:
| on a second thought, we could re-use the names and some of the
| texts on these slander sites with the newly generated posts
| (with the generated picture) to give website administrators a
| hard time figuring out which post is a real person and which
| one is a duplicate, bonus, google will index all these "john
| doe" and "jane doe", bluring the real person/victim in a ton of
| results with different pictures so anyone looking at the
| results will think the site is total garbage (which it is)
| llarsson wrote:
| This is truly despicable.
|
| Using SEO tactics to launch an automated slander campaign against
| common people, who likely have very little other web presence so
| that the slanderous material som be among the top hits, and then
| charging them money to have it removed.
|
| Horrible, considering how many recruiters will lazily just Google
| a candidate's name and blindly trust the results.
| jcadam wrote:
| This is one of those instances where it is fortunate I have a
| common name. The top results if you google my name is some 18th
| century scottish architect. Hell, there's even another software
| engineer with the same name in the UK who always appears above
| me in search results. He had made a name for himself in the RoR
| community, apparently - I get emails from recruiters who
| apparently think I'm him (looking for a RoR expert) all the
| time.
| mbg721 wrote:
| This, along with many of the excesses of cancel-culture, goes
| away if recruiters/employers stop acting like twelve-year-olds
| who just heard a piece of juicy gossip. What do we think when
| someone in their personal life cuts off a friend with the
| reasoning "I don't mind this person, but what will my other
| friends think of me??"
| zackees wrote:
| When will The New York Times investigate one of the largest
| slander laundering operations ever created in the United
| States: The New York Times?
|
| The New York Times => Wikipedia References NYT => Google EAT
| score adjusts ranking according to what the NYT/Wiki said. Once
| "The Network" decides to slander someone there is 0 recourse as
| all the other sites de-rank or disconnect the individual.
|
| To get an extreme idea of how carefully in lockstep the
| "Network" acts to collude against actors it doesn't like, look
| what was done to erase "covfefe" off the internet:
|
| https://www.zachvorhies.com/covfefe/
| gadf wrote:
| It's actually a positive. The commoditization and proliferation
| of content-free and evidence-free complaints against people
| will lead inexorably to the distrust of all such things,
| leading to a birth of a future "evidenced-based" moral culture
| that will wipe the slanderous, coercive and blackmail-esque
| "fake accusation" intelligence-industrial complex from the face
| of the earth, break it into ten thousand pieces and scatter it
| to the winds upon the waste. The trend is already in progress,
| and much of the blackmail networks are already undone. The
| pendulum will swing back. We're just in the the lowest, and
| fastest, point of its arc right now.
| xbar wrote:
| Do you have an accurate pendulum measuring system?
| splithalf wrote:
| Used to think this but now I'm not so sure. If you aren't
| already a skeptic I can't imagine what else you need. People
| used to pay the national enquirer for fake news. People want
| to believe horrible things about other people and will not be
| encumbered by facts or rationality.
| [deleted]
| tomohawk wrote:
| This is rich comming from the NYT.
|
| They are now only the 8th defendant since 1964 to be in the
| situation they are in for likely acting with "actual malice" and
| "reckless disregard" in making defamatory statements.
|
| https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/project-veritas-wins-ea...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Project Veritas? Really? These are the guys who have cut
| together several "Homer Badman" style videos of their political
| opponents and tried to pass them off as news. They also tried
| to plant literal fake news and were caught[1] by a traditional
| media organization. I'll be surprised if this lawsuit results
| in anything.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42150322
| Ferrington wrote:
| Your complaints regarding Veritas hardly compare to the
| wrongdoings of the New York Times. Just recently you had the
| NYT reporting that Trump supporters had murdered a police
| officer with a fire extinguisher, then retracting that story
| and claiming he died from exposure to bear spray only for the
| truth to finally come out that he had died from natural
| causes the day after the alleged murder.
|
| As for edited videos complaint all media outlets take this
| approach, with Vertias being one of the few to release their
| videos in unedited form.
| timeschange wrote:
| If you look closer at O'Keefe and his organization you'll
| find that since the ham-fisted attempts to slander ACORN
| backfired, they've grown more savvy, and they now release
| more unedited footage and have won more lawsuits than they've
| lost
| c3534l wrote:
| They are, ironically, professional slanderers.
| Vaslo wrote:
| They are no longer an independent news organization and instead
| are a trafficker and sycophant for one set of views
| masquerading as independent journalism.
| tartoran wrote:
| This is a good reason to keep off the social media as much as
| possible because anything can be doctored to go against you.
| Starting from the real name, anything you say and and opinion,
| photos of you, all can be used against you not only if they're
| public but if the attacker can get into your private circle (eg,
| hack the accont of a person that is and vaccum up all info about
| you).
| bondarchuk wrote:
| www.nytimes.com
| makomk wrote:
| This is, of course, not new - it's been going on for at least a
| decade. One of the networks of sites like this even funded a
| lawsuit against one of the big revenge porn site networks that
| was carefully written to be entirely porn-specific and avoid any
| arguments that touched the shared parts of their business model -
| presumably because revenge porn was so evil it was bringing
| unwanted attention and they wanted it gone before someone took
| action that might affect them.
|
| I remember noticing this same thing back then with those sites as
| well: "Most sidebar ads are programmatic. That means they are
| served up by an ad network with no involvement by the people who
| run a site, and they change every time you visit. That wasn't the
| case here. The RepZe ads were permanent fixtures, written into
| the websites' coding." It was really obvious that the adverts for
| removal services on that network of sites weren't standard
| programmatically-selected ads, that they must have some kind of
| business arrangement. On that network, they also seemed to be the
| only genuine ads - meaning that the removal fees were presumably
| their sole source of income.
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