美国国家公共电台 NPR The Man Who Spent $100K To Remove A Lie From Google

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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

In Europe, if you find a webpage about you and you don't like it either because it says something not true or because it's too personal, you can make Google hide it from the search results. It is the law. Google has done this with more than a million pages. Now, here in the U.S., even in the most blatant¹ cases the law does not protect people this way. Here's NPR's Aarti Shahani reporting for our series on speech in the digital age.

AARTI SHAHANI, BYLINE²: When Wall Street investor³ Jeff Ervine searched his name on Google in 2010, the first result was a website called Con⁴ v. Con.

JEFF ERVINE: And I clicked on it. And it went to a picture of my wife and I.

SHAHANI: He was in a tuxedo⁵, she in an evening gown. They looked rich.

ERVINE: And I clicked on it again.

SHAHANI: And the site said Ervine, who'd managed billions of dollars, was in fact a con artist who tried to trick a know-nothing kid into a sweetheart deal.

ERVINE: It was very dark and sociopathic in nature in terms of what he was writing.

SHAHANI: He, the author of the website, was a 26-year-old who hated Ervine because Ervine helped put him behind bars.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: How Hakan Yalincak got to this point in his life is a story of a brilliant college kid.

SHAHANI: That's CNBC reporting on Hakan Yalincak in 2007. Yalincak was a New York University student swindling investors⁶ out of millions of dollars. He got caught. Ervine helped do it. In this interview on the eve of Yalincak's 42-month sentence, he sounded remorseful⁷.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HAKAN YALINCAK: I didn't need to be so ambitious, be so greedy. And now for the rest of my life, no matter what I accomplish, this will always be there.

SHAHANI: But it turns out the young man was terribly vindictive⁸. After serving his time and getting deported⁹ to Turkey, he made sure Ervine would pay by publishing that website, Con v. Con, which was full of lies. At first, Ervine shrugged¹⁰ it off. But then prospective¹¹ clients and partners kept bringing it up.

ERVINE: And I would go into meetings, and I'd spend the first 15 minutes explaining this story.

SHAHANI: It was after the financial crisis, after the Bernie Madoff scandal. Not a great time to try to explain yourself.

ERVINE: Because even if it wasn't true, and - no one would take a career risk.

SHAHANI: Ervine knew he couldn't talk any sense into his attacker. But he assumed he could get Google on his side. He had his lawyers fax and mail a letter to Google's chief counsel with a simple request - please stop highlighting this one site. Google ignored the request. Ervine was shocked.

ERVINE: You are helpless. And you're hopeless. And what can you do? It's like slut shaming or anything else that goes on on the Internet today.

SHAHANI: Google holds the position that in the U.S., it's not obligated to remove defamatory content, lies from search results. It'll consider doing so as a matter of discretion¹² if there is a court finding. So Ervine's lawyers ran into court and sued. It took more than a year to establish jurisdiction¹³, to serve the papers overseas and to win. The final court hearing is extraordinary. Judge James F. Holderman, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, he apologized to Ervine on behalf of the American justice system. He said, quote, "you in my opinion have done everything right. You have been a model citizen. You have assisted your government in exposing and prosecuting¹⁴ fraud on other people. And then you are victimized. I wish I could do more," end quote. For Ervine, winning didn't feel like victory.

ERVINE: I had to have my lawyers write to Google with the judgment¹⁵ saying, we have obtained the judgment that this is false and defamatory. We'd like you to take it down. And then...

SHAHANI: And then it takes a few months for Google to respond that, yes, they'd help, and then another month to actually do it. Only the help felt a bit like a slap in the face because Google decided¹⁶ to add a disclaimer in alarming red letters that Jeff Ervine's search results have been altered. It looked like he had something to hide, not like Google had made the mistake of highlighting fake news.

ERVINE: There's no humanity or kindness in Google. There's none. It's not about anyone else. It's all about Google.

SHAHANI: NPR submitted to Google a summary of Ervine's case and asked what happened. A spokesperson says, I'm not really sure why it took a while to respond, and we don't comment on individual cases. Jeff Ervine says his reputation was damaged, and it hurt his career. Today he's building a tech company called Bridg-it to protect people like him, others attacked online. He doesn't want anyone else to pay like he did. All told, Ervine spent about a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. In Europe he would have just filled out a form. Aarti Shahani, NPR News, San Francisco.