Practice Good Theory

If you use Twitter as your main article/link "feed", use the button below to get a tweet whenever a new post is added to this blog. Follow @PracGoodTheory

What do socialite Lois Pope and lawyer Tim Broas have in common? Someone is paying for Google-searches of their names. "Reputation" firms offer a few cents for each search. Some paid-search is legit (e.g. keeping tabs on where one ranks), but most is an attempt to "game" widely-used search-engines.. Fake everything: Other than search, "workers" will post fake reviews for books, and even for photo-portfolios put up by models. They will plagiarize articles and post them to a site that is pretending to be informative. Recently, a businessman was convicted for posting negative Yelp reviews about his competitor's business.  Another businessman  claims that Yelp offered to bury negative reviews for a fee. The New York attorney recently went after people posting fake reviews to Yelp, and other such sites. Even the Israeli government is paying  students for positive reviews. Wikipedia just cancelled 250 sock-puppet user accounts used by a paid PR firm.