Consider this just a polite request to remove that accurate but ucomplimentary post about my client.
The web has created some new business niches, and one that fascinated me was the emergence of online reputation defenders, who purport to make sure that Google searches and web research about individuals and businesses do not turn up negative information that can harm business prospects, career advancement, or reputations generally.
While I can see the appeal and potential profitability of such services, manipulating online content is an ethical gray area. It is as wrong to artificially make someone look good on the internet as to artificially make them look bad. In general, anyone who has been out and about very long will find both positive and negative information about themselves on the web, of varying accuracy. People who have experience with web research understand this, so the impressions they get from checking out a potential employee or business partner will usually, though not always, be tempered with skepticism.
They can and should apply common sense: What is the source of the negative information? How old is it? Was this one incident or complaint that doesn’t seem representative of the individual or company as a whole? I would rather have all the information available, and be able to make my own decisions, rather than have the most favorable material elevated in visibility and the least favorable made difficult to find or removed altogether. These services promise to “bury” the negative material.
A lot of what these services do is track searches and audit web presence, both of which are legitimate and can be valuable. It is when they start trying to change what the web offers about an individual that the ethics alarms start ringing. “We’ll create the high-quality webpages that people see first when they Google you,” says one of the companies in the field. This primarily means that they establish puff-piece Wikipedia pages on their clients that are completely unreliable, but that leap to the top of any search.
One public relations consultant who cheated my company out of about $30,000 has such a site: it describes him as a world-class author and a confidante of the powerful, and makes him sound like he is on television every day. You would never suspect that he primarily works out of a bar on a laptop. The page won’t fool anyone who is used to encountering such things, but the reputation services are designed to mislead the casual, unsophisticated web researcher, both those who give too much credence to negative material and those who can’t recognize an advertisement when they see it. (Wikipedia should police such entries more stringently, or at least apply the same standards of authority and accuracy that it does in other areas.)
What initially puzzled me was how these services accomplished this prominent part of their claims: “We’ll suppress inaccurate or misleading links from your top search results.” Well, I found the answer out first hand, when one of the reputation services was hired by an individual whose mishandling of a 9/11 charity had been discussed in an Ethics Alarms post. How do they “clean up,” or as another company says, “suppress,” negative stories?
Easy. They lie, threaten, harass and misrepresent themselves.
The Ethics Alarms post in question was based on an AP story, reported by two reputable journalists, one of whom has a Pulitzer. The story was picked up by many major outlets, including the New York Times. About a month after it was posted on the blog, I began getting very aggressive comments from a commenter with a Gmail address who insisted that I correct, retract and apologize for the post, because it was “terribly inaccurate.” His comments, however, didn’t say why it was inaccurate; it just explained why the individual, a minister, is a wonderful guy. I responded that if he pointed me to reliable information contradicting the story, I would consider it. He didn’t. Instead, he tried a bluff, saying that a simple Google search would prove that the allegations in the AP story were false. I Googled; there was no such information. His posts also kept denying allegations that weren’t mentioned in my story, leading me to believe that the comments were cut and paste jobs.
After I had made it clear that his comments were not going to get a retraction, the same individual sent me an email, this time sporting an email address referring to an imaginary consulting firm, or at least one that I couldn’t locate on the web. He said that his client’s “legal team” had been “working on this gross exaggeration you chose to post on your blog.” Threatening a “stronger course of action” if I didn’t comply, he insisted that I remove the post and that “this same request has been sent in a Legal Brief to the AP and I expect them to remove it shortly.”
Right. The AP always removes accurately reported stories when an aggrieved subject threatens a lawsuit.
He closed with:
“This is a polite request. If you feel that you are unwilling to do so I will have our Legal Resource contact you as the article on your website is very inaccurate.”
The email, like the comments, referenced allegations that were not in my post. I wrote back, in part:
• I do not consider threats “polite requests.”
• I have seen no evidence, other than your say-so, that anything in the AP article quoted by me was false.
• If I have documentation demonstrating that the AP and its Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter was wrong, and if the AP removes the story, I will correct the record immediately, as is my practice. Not before.
• I am a legal ethicist , and any attorney who brings the kind of frivolous, bullying litigation you are threatening, “politely,” will regret it.
The employee of the reputation service posed as a good faith commenter, planted irrelevant puffery on my blog, denied the truth of what appears to be an accurate story, referred to a “legal team” that probably doesn’t exist and threatened a bogus law suit. My research indicates this is the typical modus operandi in the field of “reputation protection.”
I am going to dedicate myself to making sure that the public, the media, and the web community understands how such outfits operate, and to ensure that their reputation online is accurate: they are unethical bullies, whose goal is to limit and warp information, without regard for the truth.
Anyone who hires such an organization has automatically undermined his reputation, by employing an agent who uses these methods.
Ethics Alarms 
Thanks for that, Jack. As a public relations consultant who specializes in crisis communications and real-deal reputation management, I’ve watched the growth of these services with increasing interest – and no small amount of alarm.
REAL reputation management nowadays means doing the right thing, all the time, and giving the public good reason to trust you. If you subsequently screw up – or if something beyond your control happens that makes you look bad – strategic decisions need to be made. In the case of the former, owning up and doing better next time is almost invariably the correct approach; the public understands that mistakes happen and will forgive if the organization clearly takes the situation seriously (and I mean seriously, by the way. Tearful contrition followed by a well-publicized stint in rehab is a cliche, and the public regards it as such). In the latter case, aggressive efforts to separate the individual or organization from the event need to be undertaken. But such efforts only work when said individual or org is truly blameless, and this is rather rare.
I’ll happily take on a client who’s got a problem with their image, with one caveat: if they merely want to be stitched up so they can go back out and behave like a drunken lout again in the future, they can find someone else.
Not one mention of the Streisand effect?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Is there a reason you are not naming names and organizations (or, at least, purported names and organizations)? The best way to fight back against this behavior is to call out the people engaging in such behavior. They need secrecy to be effective, and without their names here, this blog post (while calling the behavior out as unethical) would likely not be found by someone who has been contacted by this group.
There IS a reason, you need to tell me if it’s good or not.
When I first focused on another sleazy industry, the viatical settlement companies, I mentioned an especially egregious offender by name, quoting extensively from the website. I got a cease and deists letter from the company alleging disparagement. It wasn’t, and I simply stated what they did based on their own words, with some explanation from me, but disparagement suits are expensive, and I have neither the time nor the money for them. I think the company was bluffing—a law suit would have exposed their secrets—but I have a lot of topics, and it just doesn’t make sense to spend my resources on just one. I took down the post, one of only three I have removed from either site. I did tell the lawyer that she was a disgrace, because it was abuse of process.
I later wrote a general expose, which has been read and cited elsewhere. It’s a smallish industry. IF I knew which company “Josh” was working for, I would have cited it by name. But the companies typically hide their identities. I could have mentioned the industry leader, but on a cost benefit basis, it seemed a bad bet.
We have a location where ethics and expediancy clash. The ethical thing is to publish information about them into oblivion. The expediant thing to do is to ignore them, or tiptoe around the issue.
Nobody wants to be a martyr, but we’ve excoriated people on this blog for similar behavior. (Ex: Not reporting something as wrong. Not naming names of false accusers.) Where do we draw the line, and why? Is it just rationalization? Is it the difference between an ethics hero and a neutral, or a neutral and an ethics dunce? I’m pretty sure I could make a case either way, and I don’t know if I believe either.
I know I’m guilty of similar behavior. I’ve given in on my principles a couple times recently. Going through airport security, I let myself by scanned instead of opting out so I would inconvenience the firends travelling with me. In another event, I allowed a BestBuy employee access to my property, also so I would not inconvience a friend. Do I lose my liberaltarian card for this crumbing, or was the relatively minor deviations offset by the avoided cost to my friends?
I’d like to think that I would publish their names and face the consequences (so I could publish that behavior as well), but it’s easier said than done. I think we often forget that.
In a bit, I’ll give you a COTD for this.
In the current case, it’s not much of a choice—I have a business partner (my wife) and a precarious financial situation just beginning to improve, In some circumstances, I would take one for the greater good—here, I can’t.
And 80% of the benefit of flagging the problem is there anyway. Look at the names of the companies—they are all descriptive and generic, and they all do the same thing, as far as I can see. But I can’t prove that everyone of them does, and fingering just one would be a) a little unfare and b) a lot dangerous.
Would you mind cleaning up some of the obvious grammatical issues? As I’ve been known to say, there are few good writers, but many more good rewriters.
* Change the neutrals to ethics neutrals OR change the ethics dunce to just a dunce
* “I would inconvenence” -> “I would not inconvenience”
* The final paragraph really should have a transition. “In this case, …”
As for the details about your situation, they tie right into my point. If you were in a better financial state, you’d be more likely to call out these specific bad actors. It’s easy to behave ethically when the possible repercussions are relatively minor for someone in your position. The more difficult the possible repercussions, the harder it is to perform the ethical action over what is best for you and yours.
That’s the real key behind some of our country’s issues, and the meat of 1984. Most people don’t stand up against the TSA because the possible negatives for them are not worth the benefits. The TSA does what it does because it worries about being blamed for an attack if more sensible (but supposedly weaker) policies are in place. The federal government created the TSA for essentially the same reason. It was best for them to do something, even if it was an unethical waste of money.
Looking foreward, the mainstream republican candidates are getting pulled more and more into looney town, because alternately, they wouldn’t have a chance (or think they wouldn’t have a chance). Ethics losing out to expediancy. I disagree strongly with Huntsman on many political issues, but he at least has the ethics to stand his ground, even if it dooms him. Romney? Not so much.
1. Of course, and ask any time. I can edit easily, and you choose your words carefully—I’ll refine whenever you need it. Just tell me.
2. Sure Courage is always a calculation, and is at risk of being recklessness.
3. I’m not through with these guys. I promise.
1) Normally, it doesn’t really matter. I also have a tendency to rewrite things to death. I’d write a 5 page paper in college in an hour, and then spend the rest of the night rewriting it.
2) But we praise the more courageous as Ethics Heroes. We consider the personal recklessness as a good thing. Now, if we could just make rational unethical behavior a thing of the best.
3) Excellent. Ken at Popehat laid out a good template this week… I’m sure you’d know if DC/MD has an Anti-SLAPP suit with any juice behind it.
Hmm… a question for each of you.
Jack – Why not link back to the previous Ethics Alarm article at a minimum?
tgt – What was the 1st of Jack’s articles that brought you to become a regular? (Just curious…)
Tim…which EA aritcle are you referring to? I usually link back. Wait, you mean the non-profit one? Sure…I’ll do it now.
Tim,
I’m not sure. It appears the first couple articles I commented on were:
https://ethicsalarms.com/2010/11/22/the-university-of-central-florida-cheating-scandal-irony-the-youtube-ethics-hero-is-really-the-ethics-dunce/
https://ethicsalarms.com/2010/11/22/unethical-post-of-the-week-the-los-angeles-times/
https://ethicsalarms.com/2010/11/19/one-step-removed-from-ethics-dunce-hood-yankee-shortstop-derek-jeter/
I suspect either the Jeter article or TSA article brought me to the site. I could see either of them being linked from other blogs I regularly read. I think there were some religion questions that cropped up in December or January that made me a true regular.
I’m entertained that comments with internal links to ethicsalarms still need to be moderated. I guess the software doesn’t drill down to that level.
This has been bugging me all day and now I know why! It reminded me of a car dealer here in Houston that has been running TV ads for a spray product for your cars that disrupts police radar guns.
I’m willing to bet, unless there was a breakthrough recent, that they don’t work. Mythbusters tested them years ago.