Can We Be Friends? Sure, But…
NPR’s “On the Media” recently reran an interesting series of stories related to the Internet, including a piece called “Smirch Engine,” about online privacy or lack thereof, and how the anonymity of the Web can cause normally polite people to behave badly.
The story discussed how disparaging posts online can seemingly live forever, and be ruinous to individuals and companies.
It makes for interesting listening. Over the years, we’ve gotten requests from people asking us to take stories out of our sites’ archives because they are unflattering to their business and pop up high in search rankings.
My first question is always to inquire about the story: Is it factually correct? Every time this has happened, the answer has been yes. The person is just trying to clean up their reputation. And perhaps the story doesn’t reflect what is currently happening at the business. We’re sympathetic to that. But will be delete it from the permanent record? No.
At this point, I’ve always offered to do a follow-up piece on the company
