Brandon Connell appears on the Curtis Sliwa show
Posted on May 22, 2008 under Brandon Connell, Reputation Management | No CommentBrandon Connell was called in on Curtis Sliwa’s news talk radio show at WABC New York to discuss the issue of online reputation management Monday May 19th, 2008.
The discussion was brought up because of the case of the young girl who committed suicide because of emails she received from a woman using a fake myspace profile. A recent episode of 20/20 on ABC also talked about a case where a student was raped and someone was allowed to post anonymously on JuicyCampus.com that the girl deserved what happened to her.
“Unfortunately anonymous posting is legal because of Section 230 created in 1996 which protects website owners from lawsuits by people who have been defamed online” says Brandon. “Anybody can post anything about you regardless if it is factual or not and it gets posted by some websites without any proof such events happened.”
Under the law, the person who posted the defaming material is not protected from defamation lawsuits if it is proven that they were the one that posted it and the material is false.
“Websites that allow such content advise their users to post anonymously so they are not identified.”
Some of the websites use what seo experts call black hat spamming methods such as keyword stuffing which is the use of keywords over and over in title tags, and on the actual html page. They also use duplicate domains and allow search engines to index their auto-generated content such as site searches.
“Even though the sites are spamming, Google allows them to rank high on it’s listings” says Brandon. “I am confused as to why they come up high in Google results especially when there was an instance where a Google founder turned up as a person listed on such a site. Until people in power end up the victims of such a website nothing will be done to update the law.”
Websites owners are not protected by Section 230 if they are proven to have authored or significantly edited such content.
Other mainstream media such as newspapers, radio, and television are not protected from lawsuits stemmed from libel and slander.
Brandon Connell is currently accepting calls from all media sources. Brandon Connell is known as an independent seo consultant that works with celebrities, high profile executives, business owners, and individuals. Brandon Connell is also a recording artist, music producer, and songwriter affiliated with B.M.I.
Comment by Ned Dolejsi
