The SLANDER INDUSTRY.
It's pretty big online, and
some of you might have
even been victims of it, and
you have absolutely no recourse.
The slander industry online is
booming with websites like
Bad Girl Reports, Busted Cheaters
and Worst Homewrecker.
The Real Times had a feature
on this,
that I think is worth reading.
because it gives you a sense of
just how little power people
have when it comes to being defamed
online.
For about one-third of the people,
the nasty posts appeared to
be the first pages of their search
results.
So, if they Google their names,
it'll be the first thing
that pops up.
For more than half,
these gripe sites showed up at
the top of their image results.
One woman in Ohio for instance,
was the subject of so
many negative posts.
That being declared in bold at
the top of her search results,
that she is a liar and a cheater.
The same way it states that
Barack Obama was the 44th president
of the United States.
For roughly 500 of the 6000 people
we searched for, again,
this is from the New York Times.
Google suggested adding the phrase
cheater to a search of their names.
So these gripe sites, I mentioned
a few of them in the lead here.
Allow for anyone who's holding
a grudge against you, to accuse you
of all sorts of terrible things.
And you essentially have no power
in getting it changed or
taken down.
You might have a little power if
you have a lot of money laying
around, and you can literally pay
for a service that's put out by
the very people who created these
websites in the first place.
I'll get to those details in
just a second.
But Jank, gripe sites go.
>> Okay, so look, the internet has
given us wonderful things.
It's given us horrible things.
Because basically,
it puts up a mirror to humanity.
And it's removed the gatekeepers,
and that's got terrific upsides.
because the gatekeepers were
the people in power, and they
were oppressing the rest of us for
their own benefit.
It's got a horrible downsides
because it has unleashed demons.
And this is one of the darkest
corners of the internet, where
people slander you for profit.
And whether the twist coming up on
who's actually doing it is unreal,
but it also did
remind me of politics.
Because I remember there was
an right figure who was so toxic,
I don't even want to say his name.
Who originally came
up with the idea that is really in
essence become QAnon.
He said, now,
what about six years ago.
I forget the exact timing, but it
was around when Trump began to run.
He said, why don't we just accuse
our political opponents of being
child molesters?
And then it will show up at the top
of their Google results.
It doesn't matter if it's true.
We'll just hurt them politically,
and we'll shame them.
And then it will scare everyone
else into not fighting us.
So let's just slander them so
badly, they just surrender
basically.
And we just destroy any opponent
of ours, by lying about them in the
most horrific way you can imagine.
Just openly saying it.
And yeah, that became eventually,
I don't know that he was involved
in it or not.
But eventually, that idea became
QAnon about how Democrats are child
molesters and child murderers and
[INAUDIBLE] etc.
Now this though,
does it to not people in power, not
generically political opponents,
it does it to you >> To private
citizens >> You have no power, etc.
This isn't political,
this is just because they know
you can't fight back.
They know you're going to have
to pay the ransom.
>> Yeah.
>> So they pick you one by one, and
say the worst things about you.
It's on your Google results.
And God help you if you don't have
money.
How are you going to get it out of
there?
You can't, and then everybody sees
this is the result on you.
It's just the worst thing you've
ever seen.
>> It really is.
It's depressing when you
think about it.
Because this has now not only
become a system of slandering
people and destroying their
opportunities when it comes to
employment and what have you.
But it's become like there's
a profit motive behind all of it.
Which again,
we'll get to in a second.
But first, it's important to hear
from the very people who put
these sites up to begin with.
And so the New York Times got
in touch with the founders
of one of these sites.
Cyrus Sullivan, who's 37 years old
from Portland, Oregon.
Has been in the complaint site
business since 2008,
when he started STDCarriers.com.
It was inspired by his own
experience in his senior year
at the University of Oregon.
He said, he had sex with a woman
who belatedly told
him that she had herpes.
So he's holding this grudge,
he wants to retaliate and
he thinks of this website which he
stands by fully.
Even though he knows that there's
definitely a possibility that
people will go on there and
make false accusations about other
people.
He said he didn't feel bad about
spreading unverified slander.
"Teach children not to talk to
strangers, then teach them not to
believe what they read on
the internet," he said.
>> Okay, so this guy's just saying,
I don't care.
I'm helping people lie and
ruin other people's lives.
Teach your kids that they're
horribly evil people like
me online.
By the way, I don't know if a story
about getting STI is even true,
right?
Who knows?
These guys are the most vicious
liars and
least moral people on the planet.
So it's entirely possible.
So who cares if it's true anyway,
right?
And is that the right way to react
to a story like that?
>> No.
>> Of course not.
I'm going to ruin your life for
the rest of your life.
Anyways, but then opening it up so
that he could profit off of it,
so that other people could slander
without him verifying.
Just says he was a terrible person.
>> So how does he profit off of it?
These websites, typically,
will run adsense ads, for instance.
So they'll make a little money
there.
But where they make the real money
is by reaching out to the very
people who have been slandered to
let them know.
Hey, you want to get this
taken down?
You can, you just gotta pay for it.
So, Sullivan had started
a reputation-management service to
help get people get "undesirable
information" about
themselves removed from their
search engine results, the "gold
package" costs basically $700.
For those customers, Sullivan would
alter the computer code underlying
the offending posts, instructing
search engines to ignore them.
And by the way,
the $700 that's pretty expensive,
right?
Except the New York Times piece
goes into detail about other
services that charge anywhere
between $7500 to $25,000.
That's what's going on.
>> So the guy is running this site
that slanders who, then says, well,
I could fix that slander,
as long as you pay me the ransom.
In this case,
they have your reputation.
And, I mean, look, again,
these are real people.
These aren't they got no way.
I was slandered a thousand
different ways online, and
they do it professionally.
There's like trolls and
bots that do it on
almost every tweet that I have.
The right wing writes one thing,
the corporate
Democrats write another,
leftist write a third smear.
They all have their
different smears they do it, but
I'm used to i, right?
And I'm a professional and then you
could see other things about me and
I could fight back.
But when they do it to you,
what the hell you're going to do?
So do we have a government left in
this country?
Do they protect our citizens in any
way, shape or form?
>> It's Look,
I'm not making excuses for
them at all.
There needs to be something done
legislatively, but it's a lot
more tricky than we think.
Because one thing that protects
these websites is section 230,
right?
Section 230, stipulates that a
website cannot be held accountable
for what users post on it.
And l think that that protection
in some contexts,
makes a lot of sense.
Obviously in this context,
it does not make sense.
I mean,
if there is legislation, it would
need to be crafted thoughtfully,
and in a very nuanced way.
And that's difficult to do
when Congress is full of
a bunch of honestly people who
can't even legislate on things they
understand, much less things they
don't understand like the internet.
>> Yeah, look, I hear you on that,
and Section 230 is critical.
You almost can't have any websites
without 230s protection.
So I wouldn't want to get rid of
that at all, and I don't want to.
Any you know the thing with
politicians, they'll just use
it for their own, now you're not
allowed to criticize me online.
All the independent things should
be shut down.
We know how that goes, right?
At a minimum, someone should
obliterate them with lawsuits.
Right?
There are still some laws
in this country against defamation,
slander, you name it, etc.
Bad guys use those laws all
the time.
They will attack you and
then when you say it's not true,
they'll go defamation, and
I'm going to sue you, right?
[LAUGH] Are there any good guys
left in the world, right,
to try to fight back against this?
And probably part of it is
intimidation.
So anytime anybody fights back,
they probably spear them.
And so there aren't a lot
of people in our situation
where we've already gotten hit with
everything in the world.
And so we have in a sense
the luxury of being able
to fight back on your behalf.
And part of that and
now give the New York Times a ton
of credit for doing this story.
>> Mm-hm. >> And for the guy,
the reporter to actually put
his name on those sites as kind of
a guinea pig.
That was actually courageous.
And now he's like, well,
now I'm having trouble getting it
off >> Yeah, there were two
reporters who worked on this story.
And I know for a fact that at least
one of them immediately got
targeted on these websites.
So it gives you a sense of
the kind of retaliation that they
deal with.
So it does take a bit of courage to
report on this.
But look, you guys the biggest
thing that comes to mind for
me is when this type of defamatory
content exists online, think about
what that does to someone's
economic opportunities, right?
It destroys their possibilities and
it's already difficult enough to be
able to find a decent job that pays
the bills and provides for
your family.
The fact that this exists,
is just so heartbreaking and
terrible.
And we need to be
protecting one another,
being decent to one another, and
this is the antithesis of that.
>> But I will say when they look,
we do our show online.
And we're laser focused on making
sure that we get all the facts
right.
And then we layer on our
perspective and
analysis on top of that.
But we've been around for
about 20 years, we're literally
the oldest show on the internet.
And so we've gotten people to
understand that we're trustworthy,
and when we get anything wrong,
we correct it etc, right?
But when you read things online
overall, so I'm the reason I give
you all that context is,
I'm not one of these people.
because all if you see it online,
it's not true.
No, a lot of things you see on TV
are totally not true.
At the same time, please if you
just see as some sort of social
media post, check the source,
check to see where it came from.
Don't assume it's true because it's
written down.
That's the magical thing
about text.
The minute you write something
down, people go, well, that's
it's on a website, it must be true.
It's on Facebook, it must be true.
>> Yeah. Facebook is not
a thing, it's a platform.
>> It's a thing.
>> Okay. No, my point is that I
have had friends family members say
like, no, I saw it on Facebook.
But you didn't see it on Facebook,
you saw it on a page on Facebook.
>> Yeah. >> What page was it?
And did they actually have
any kind of credibility or not?
So please give each other a break
and don't judge each other,
half the time it ain't even true.