Google Tool Misused To Scrub Tech CEO's Shady Past From Search (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0178517534
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/30/2216225/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search/
> Google is fond of saying its mission is to "organize the world's information," but who gets to decide what information is worthy of organization? A San Francisco tech CEO has spent the past several years attempting to remove unflattering information about himself from Google's search index, and the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation [1]says he's still at it. Most recently, an unknown bad actor [2]used a bug in one of Google's search tools to scrub the offending articles .
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> The saga began in 2023 when independent journalist Jack Poulson [3]reported on Maury Blackman's 2021 domestic violence arrest. Blackman, who was then the CEO of surveillance tech firm Premise Data Corp., took offense at the publication of his legal issues. The case did not lead to charges after Blackman's 25-year-old girlfriend recanted her claims against the 53-year-old CEO, but Poulson reported on some troubling details of the public arrest report. Blackman has previously used tools like DMCA takedowns and lawsuits to stifle reporting on his indiscretion, but that campaign now appears to have co-opted part of Google's search apparatus. The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) reported on Poulson's work and Blackman's attempts to combat it late last year. In June, Poulson contacted the Freedom of the Press Foundation to report that the article had mysteriously vanished from Google search results.
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> The foundation began an investigation immediately, which led them to a little-known Google search feature known as Refresh Outdated Content. Google created this tool for users to report links with content that is no longer accurate or that lead to error pages. When it works correctly, Refresh Outdated Content can help make Google's search results more useful. However, Freedom of the Press Foundation now says that a bug allowed an unknown bad actor to scrub mentions of Blackman's arrest from the Internet. Upon investigating, FPF found that its article on Blackman was completely absent from Google results, even through a search with the exact title. Poulson later realized that two of his own Substack articles were similarly affected. The Foundation was led to the Refresh Outdated Content tool upon checking its search console.
The bug in the tool allowed malicious actors to de-index valid URLs from search results by altering the capitalization in the URL slug. Although URLs are typically case-sensitive, Google's tool treated them as case-insensitive. As a result, when someone submitted a slightly altered version of a working URL (for example, changing "anatomy" to "AnAtomy"), Google's crawler would see it as a broken link (404 error) and mistakenly remove the actual page from search results.
Ironically, Blackman is now CEO of the online reputation management firm The Transparency Company.
[1] https://freedom.press/issues/censorship-whac-a-mole-google-search-exploited-to-scrub-articles-on-san-francisco-tech-exec/
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search/
[3] https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surveillance
Re: (Score:3)
There is one difference, I only skimmed through the previous iteration of this story but did not notice an explicit claim that Maury Blackman was behind the removal. Implicitly? That's a different story.
DDG / Bing (Score:2)
All that to avoid switching over to DDG for another search?
[1]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=maur... [duckduckgo.com]
Haven't even tried Yandex for this one.
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=maury+blackman+domestic+violence&t=brave&ia=web
Re: (Score:2)
I like duckduckgo.com and startpage.com. I only use google for silly things.
A small wish (Score:2)
I wish that tool could be used to remove [1]duplicates [slashdot.org] from Slashdot
[1] https://search.slashdot.org/story/25/07/30/1631222/tech-ceos-negative-coverage-vanished-from-google-via-security-flaw
"Ironically" ? (Score:2)
No, that is not ironic
Re: (Score:2)
Nope.
Try it yourself:
[1]https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
vs
[2]https://tech.slashdot.org/STOR... [slashdot.org]
And think about how you would be able to serve a folder directly from the filesystem that contains files that only differ by case, if URLs would be case-insensitive.
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/30/2216225/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/STORY/25/07/30/2216225/google-tool-misused-to-scrub-tech-ceos-shady-past-from-search
Innocent until proven guilty etc? (Score:3)
In my country court proceedings are secret, as their disclosure can harm ongoing investigations, or simply violate someone's constitutional right to privacy.
Accusations are not convictions. And even if you were convicted of something that's no one else's business. You pay your debt to society, you have the right to a clean slate. Never hear of the Right to be Forgotten laws?
If the US does not protect its I'm sure that one day it will get finally get rid of the media circus bullshit and let people have their dignity.
You're the record holders for bible-thumping, how about "Judge not lest ye be judged" etc.
On-line reputation firm (Score:2)
I would suspect that the ability to remove unfavorable items from search would be a strong recommendation for an on-line reputation firm.
Re: (Score:2)
But it's ironic! Like rain on your wedding day!