Google is fighting back against exploitative, slanderous websites
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/10/22527481/google-search-results-slander-industry-individuals-nyt-report
Reported today in The Verge.
Google is fighting back against exploitative, slanderous websites
Google is updating its search algorithms to prevent sites from filling search results with unproven slanderous claims about individuals, The New York Times reports. The changes follow a recent series of reports from the Times, which found a vast web of sites hosting unverified and potentially life-ruining claims about individuals, alongside an industry of other services promising to remove the offending content from search results for substantial fees.
The search giant is making a series of changes to its rankings to combat the sites, which Google's vice president for global policy and standards and trust and safety David Graff said should eventually have a "significant and positive impact" for those affected. Now, when users report they've been a victim of these sites by using its pre-existing process, Google will register that person as a "known victim," and will automatically "suppress" similar results for that person's name, the Times says.
It's an important shift considering how these sites operate, where posts are routinely taken from one site and republished across over a dozen more. The Times even conducted an experiment where it created one such post about its own reporter, only to see an initial crop of five posts spawn 21 more across a network of 15 sites. Google's changes could help to stop these numerous posts from clogging up search results. The NYT reported that completely taking down the posts would have cost it around $20,000. Individual sites and services reportedly charged upwards of $700 to get each post removed.
Some of the changes have reportedly already come into effect, with more coming in the months ahead, but the Times reports that its own tests have