A Higher Purpose

With so many YASNS (yet another social networking site) on the web, a Wiki for feeding your brain (not necessarily with facts), blogs and opinion/editorial sites, what is available for those who feel a higher purpose? Main stream media purports to bring you facts but instead they bring you biased speculations, circumstantial evidence and opinionated viewpoints while rarely producing any facts.

Google has stepped up to the plate to provide a venue for higher knowledge. The Knol. A knol is  a way for people (not Google) to put their reputations and facts on the line, unlike a wiki that is viewed as mostly facts, but edited by the general public with or without verifiable facts. The wiki encourages citations and verifiable sources and provides a means to help promote accuracy and policing of the facts, but this is not 100% guaranteed as is stated in the Wiki’s disclaimer.

The Knol’s purpose is not understood by many, such as those that seem to think it is a market place to their wares as depicted by Will Johnson and his knol here.

For a better explanation of the purpose of a knol, take a look at this one. Maybe with a concerted community effort, we can help the Google knol concept flush out the “opportunists” and garage salesmen from its pages. Fortunately knols provide a star rating system, comments section and if the author allows, the ability to edit or collaborate on a knol. What tools are available beyond the star rating really adds to the credibility and reputation of the author.

Destroy Information on the Internet

Find out everything that’s being said about you online and get rid of the content you don’t like.

Next we DESTROY… This is where we go to work for you. Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web. – ReputationDefender™

Does this sound alarming to you or maybe impossible?

Using our network of websites & forums we dominate your name or business!
PROTECT YOUR NAME FROM HARMFUL INTERNET POSTINGS!

We specialize in moving those negative listings aside and replace them with positive information about you or your company! Dont be held hostage by negative Internet listings. – DefendMyname[.com]

How is this possible? How does a company remove anything you have published, from the Internet?

Do you have a Myspace, Facebook or Hoverspot account? A recent survey of hiring managers at CareerBuilder.com found that about two-thirds of the them rejected an application after performing a web search on you.

As soon as I had heard that companies are claiming to be able to do something like “remove” or “destroy” information on the Internet, a red flag went up. Our country is based on certain inalienable rights, of which freedom of speech and freedom of press are just a couple. So how are these companies able to relieve you of those rights? The answer is, they legally can not.

The first company I quoted (ReputationDefender), doesn’t even have a phone number that you can contact them with, stating “…we are in Beta and we are keeping our costs low, which allows us to keep our prices low.“ Prices? Oh yes, there is always a price, and in this case its $10 for you to find out what information about you they can find and then its $30 for them to do something about the information they find about you, if they can do anything at all. Then they claim to destroy information published on the web. If that doesn’t scream SCAM!, nothing does. I personally challenge them to destroy this post about them without hacking into my account.

The second company is a little more careful with their wording, and to an observant reader, disclose how they accomplish “squelching” any information about you on the internet. The process is simple, but completely unethical. DefendMyName will utilize the technology in search engines such as Google, along with their numerous forums and websites to post repetitious “good” information about you to ensure only the “good” information ranks highest in web search results. This is organized abuse at its finest as well as an unethical business practice. The company will only negatively impact the Internet and make it harder for researchers and folks searching the web for information, to find what they are looking for and force a longer sifting process. This type of flooding the internet with repetitious information is in essence suppression of information, oppression, and propagandizing.

I am sure you were thinking it so I will overstate at this time, yes, there is a price for the service.