Data from the Lumen Database Highlights How Companies Use Fake Websites and Backdated Articles to Censor Google’s Search Results
https://www.lumendatabase.org/blog_entries/800 [www.lumendatabase.org]
2018-09-30 23:09
A company (or individual) will come across some undesirable content online, which they believe will cause them reputational harm. Desperate to censor the content at any cost, and lacking a valid case for defamation, they will often seek the assistance of a “reputation management” agency. These agencies will proceed to create a website masquerading as a legitimate news source, whose sole purpose is to host the very content their client is seeking to remove, usually disguised in the form of a news article. The article is then backdated to give it the appearance of being published prior to the allegedly infringing content. The reputation management agency then files a DMCA notice on behalf of the “journalist” who wrote the review, claiming it was stolen from their client’s website, all the while shielding the true client’s name with an alias designed to make it difficult to trace back to them.
source: HN