Well, the cynical take is: if the information is being published to influence readers’ / viewers’ / listeners’ opinions in order to enrich the publishers… then that information is much more likely to be mis-information, or distorted information as opposed to unbiased truth (whatever that is…)
I worked for a struggling little video processing company for a short while around 2012. On the floor underneath us was a big and growing company with twice our square footage and three times our headcount - their whole business: internet reputation polishing. Want to make your company, or yourself, or your dog more appealing to the general public via the internet? These manipulators would, for a fee, put good stuff about whatever you wanted as many places as possible. They would endeavor to remove or just overwhelm information that created negative impressions. Erase things you published and now regret, including copies of those things spread far and wide.
I’ve seen celebrity blogs (Scott Adams, among others) which shared things they were going through, then a couple of years later decide that they don’t want that information “out there” anymore and it disappears from everywhere, including the internet archive and similar supposed long term repositories of “what the web used to say.” Many stories about embarassing things that police officers did, like the Miami Dade cops who stopped off at Dunkin Donuts - in the County Police Helicopter - on their way back to base. That story lasted on the internet for about 10 years before it disappeared. Used to be simple to find with any search engine, now it’s no longer acknowledged as ever having happened. We lived across the street from the owner/operators of the Dunkin location it happened at, they’re the ones who originally told me about it, it was covered in multiple newspapers and copied into all kinds of personal blogs… now: gone.
Well, the cynical take is: if the information is being published to influence readers’ / viewers’ / listeners’ opinions in order to enrich the publishers… then that information is much more likely to be mis-information, or distorted information as opposed to unbiased truth (whatever that is…)
I worked for a struggling little video processing company for a short while around 2012. On the floor underneath us was a big and growing company with twice our square footage and three times our headcount - their whole business: internet reputation polishing. Want to make your company, or yourself, or your dog more appealing to the general public via the internet? These manipulators would, for a fee, put good stuff about whatever you wanted as many places as possible. They would endeavor to remove or just overwhelm information that created negative impressions. Erase things you published and now regret, including copies of those things spread far and wide.
I’ve seen celebrity blogs (Scott Adams, among others) which shared things they were going through, then a couple of years later decide that they don’t want that information “out there” anymore and it disappears from everywhere, including the internet archive and similar supposed long term repositories of “what the web used to say.” Many stories about embarassing things that police officers did, like the Miami Dade cops who stopped off at Dunkin Donuts - in the County Police Helicopter - on their way back to base. That story lasted on the internet for about 10 years before it disappeared. Used to be simple to find with any search engine, now it’s no longer acknowledged as ever having happened. We lived across the street from the owner/operators of the Dunkin location it happened at, they’re the ones who originally told me about it, it was covered in multiple newspapers and copied into all kinds of personal blogs… now: gone.