Google tool misused to scrub tech CEO’s shady past from search
Capital F for “frustrating”
During the investigation, FPF noted that his article on Blackman was completely absent from Google’s results, even thanks to research with the exact title. Poulson later achieved that two of his own substitution articles were also affected. The Foundation was brought to the obsolete contenting tool for updating when checking its research console.
Google’s tool only takes the word from anyone when it suggests the deletion of search results. However, a bug in the tool has made it an ideal way to delete information in search results. When entering an URL, the tool allowed users to modify capitalization in the URL slug. The foundation article was entitled “Anatomy of a censorship campaign: the crusade of a technological official to stifle journalism”, but the requests recorded in the Google tool included variations such as “anatomy” and “censorship”.
Since the obsolete contents exceeded was apparently insensitive to the scrap, the robot robot would check the URL, encountered a 404 error, then desexed the work url. Investigators determined that this method had been used by Blackman or a person suspicious for his online profile dozens of times between May and June 2025. In a funny way, since Blackman landed in the role of CEO in the online reputation management company The Transparency Company.
If you are looking for the article Freedom of the article of the press foundation or the own pulseon reports, it should normally appear in Google’s search results. The FPF contacted Google about the problem and the company confirmed the buckt. He has published a correction with unusual speed, telling the foundation that the bug affected “a tiny fraction of websites”.
It is not clear if Google was aware of the bug previously or if its exploitation was widespread. The Internet is vast and those who seek to hide malveillance the information is not inclined to make their methods known. It is somewhat unusual that Google admits a fault so easily, but at least it solved the problem.
The obsolete content tool does not register who submits requests, but whoever was behind this disinformation campaign may want to examine the Streisand effect.
