Looks like Eliminalia could use some reputation management

Over the course of my long blogging history, I've been contacted three times to take down a post. One was something to do with a controversy among Santa Clauses: full beard vs. non-full beard. Or something.

Another was about a social climber/lifestyle brander/"influencer"/bleach blonde/serial wife from NY who sued her kid's school because the school something-or-other to do with an auction, and who was perpetually getting pictures of her kids (in outlandish, non-kid-friendly outfits) in fringe society gossip rags. And who never, as far as I could tell, ever made it beyond the B-minus NY society list. (Okay: I just googled her. I saw on Page Six that she's now engaged to a billionaire who's big in the fashion biz. Billionaire smillionaire. Still not the A-list, as far as I can tell.)

The third was about some guy from Ohio who had been accused of financial fraud.

I am not a journalist. Obviously. What I do regularly, however, is comment (generally thoughtfully, but often enough snarkily) on items I see in the news. I mostly rely on reputable news sources to key my posts off, and if it's a source I don't know, I'll look for verification. I don't make things up. I don't libel. I comment. I snark.

When fewer people were blogging, and more people were interested in long-form blogs (as opposed to 280 character tweets), Pink Slip got a lot more traction. The Santa Claus post, got many comments, and it was a comment (as I recall) that one of the Santa Claus organizations felt maligned them. So they emailed me, and I took it down.

Was there a threat of legal action? Probably. 

The last thing I want from a non-monetized, Sunday-painter blog is having to pay a legal bill. 

So, gone.

Ditto the social climber whose lawyer threatened to sue me for something or other. (Is sarcasm a suit-worthy offense.) I believe in the First Amendment, but do I want to pay a lawyer, even though I do believe I would have prevailed in a court of law?

Quick answer: NO.

For the Ohio fraud case,  heard last year from a lawyer. Turns out the Ohio guy was exonerated, so would I take the post down? Turns out, the post was so old, and from an earlier platform, so I can't take it down. Instead, I added a comment stating that the man accused of fraud wasn't proven to be a fraud. And let the lawyer know I was doing so. But that, apparently, wasn't enough. So a couple of months ago, I got another email from the lawyer. Where did things stand with my removing the offending post?

I wrote them back that I had made a number of searches using variations of the guy's name and situation, and - going 12 pages deep - couldn't find the Pink Slip post come up in any search. I responded by pointing this out, and haven't heard anything else for them. If they come back again, I'll tell them I'm perfectly willing to have their client pay a techie to figure out how to remove the post. But if it's going to cost me anything, it is what it is and will remain so until the end of blogspot time.

Given these incidenteens, I was aware that there are entities devoted to helping those who want certain parts of their history to be expunged from the web. 

Most of them are on the up and up. They try to legitimately remove unflattering, untrue, or out of date stories about their clients. They develop strategies for getting their clients to do something or become part of something that's positive. They seed the media, social and other, with mentions of these things positive, so that the good news rises to the top when the search engines start searching.

Other of these reputation management firms are not quite so ethical.

As is the case with one such no-goodnik company:

They look at first glance like ordinary news outlets

serving up headlines from around the world. The hundreds of websites, seemingly unconnected to one another, come in six languages and purport to cover far-flung cities such as Paris, London and Chicago.

But beneath the surface, the sites have something in common: They host frothy stories about clients of a little-known reputation-management company that promises to remake the online images of its customers.

The network of fake news sites is one part of a complex apparatus the Spain-based firm Eliminalia uses to manipulate online information on behalf of a global roster of clients, an investigation by The Washington Post and other media partners found. The firm employs elaborate, deceptive tactics to remove or drown out unflattering news stories and other content, the investigation revealed. Eliminalia had close to 1,500 clients over six years, including businesses, minor celebrities, and suspected or convicted criminals. (Source: Washington Post)

One thing to get a "frothy" story placed on a legit site; quite anther to place it on a fake site. 

Then there's this tactic:

Between 2015 and 2021, Eliminalia sent thousands of bogus copyright-infringement complaints to search engines and web hosting companies, falsely claiming that negative articles about its clients had previously been published elsewhere and stolen, and so should be removed or hidden, the company records show. The firm sent the legal notices under made-up company names, the examination found.

Hmmm. Maybe I should check and see whether those legal notices I got were from made-up companies. If only I had any interest in doing so...

Without naming names, the WaPo article cites a few examples of clients that Eliminalia had worked for. I checked out the one that caught my eye, and I must say that I don't think that Eliminalia was especially effective in burying the sordid past:

...of a well-known traveling circus clown who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Switzerland.

That is, unless there's more than one "well-known traveling circus clown who has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Switzerland." Maybe I got lucky and found the only other one. Maybe Eliminalia, despite its best/worst efforts, wasn't all that good.

Anyway, with this major story raining down on their parade, it sure looks like Eliminalia could use some reputation management of their own.