Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/11/when-reputation-management.html
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I kinda figured that “reputation management” amounted to a lot of shilling on websites in order to drive negative comments down or make them look insignificant in comparison with good references. Given that we are talking about defendants who are either unidentified or fictitious, its fairly easy to get a whole bunch of phony default judgments for plaintiffs.
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There’s a degree of evil genius involved here. Using the courts to stifle speech, but without actually having to go through the courts; it’s outright fraud, but probably not the sort of fraud that will actually be prosecuted. Until the courts catch on, someone has actually come up with a winning mechanism for “reputation management,” which has frankly always been bullshit. (Well, until the clients realize they’ve been implicated in fraud and finally go after the companies.)
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Lawyers have blogs, too. Popehat being one that many Happy Mutants are already familiar with.
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Ok, business model # 489:
Follow defamation suits of this sort to figure out the original target of the negative comment - automated defamation system makes the variations of same defaming statements all over the place. Send standard sleazy blackmail letter to rep management agency saying give us share of proceeds and we stop - those people have no morals so they will deal definitely!
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Yeah, but I wonder how long this has gone on already without anyone noticing, and it’s not the lawyers but the judges who need to be aware. The beauty of this scam is that hostile lawyers aren’t involved, if you do it right.
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Trouble is, these cases are asymmetrical. In this corner, a business or professional with hundreds of thousands of dollars possibly at stake. In this corner, we have a comment poster. How many of my comments here do you suppose I would go to court to defend?
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Knowing when to believe and when not to believe what I read gets more complicated every day.
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Don’t read anything; that makes the problem much easier to solve in realtime.
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Seems like the penalties for spurious court actions are too low.
This guy should heave been bankrupted by fines and criminal charges already
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