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Inside the Business of Online Reputation Spin

Posted by timothy on from the loved-the-armband-harry dept.

The Guardian has a long, thought-provoking piece (it's an excerpt from an upcoming book) on the way that online PR works, when individuals or organizations pay online spin doctors to change the way they're perceived online. Embarrassing photos, ill-considered social media posts, even quips that have ended up geting the speaker into hot water, can all be crowded out, even if not actually expunged, by injecting lots of innocuous information, photos, and other bits of information. That crowding out seems to be the reputation managers' prime tactic. Besides a brush of his own with identity theft (or at least unwanted borrowing), the author spoke at length with both Adria Richards and "Hank"; both of whom ended up losing their jobs in the aftermath of what became known as Donglegate, after Richards tweeted about jokes that she overheard Hank and another developer share at PyCon 2013.

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Works for privacy too... by retech · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This method works well to give privacy to an individual as well. If there's enough garbage information out there to effectively make it impossible to figure out truth from fact, then it's easy enough to hide in plain google site.

  2. adria richards by ganjadude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You know she is STILL out there spewing hate and racism? I checked her twitter page out after being reminded of who she was a few months back and shes still out there saying the same things that got her in trouble the first time.

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
    1. Re:adria richards by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be fair, these people make good money going that through very specific crowd on Patreon. It's their business model.

      That is why they are called "professional victims".