There is a constellation of sites online that exist for the sole purpose of destroying people's reputations. @Aaron_Krolik and I wanted to figure out who was making money off them and how. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Investigating the reputation extortion industry was incredibly challenging! The reportorial equivalent of walking into a dark room, turning on the lights, and watching roaches scatter. Fake companies, false identities, and lies lies lies.
We had an idea to help make sense of it. We'd slander a made-up person. But that had ethical issues. So instead the fearless @Aaron_Krolik volunteered to destroy his own reputation. I kept asking, ARE YOU SURE???? "Will do anything for attention" he wrote about himself. 
So @Aaron_Krolik did 5 posts about himself on cheater/complaint sites. Then they took on a life of their own, self-replicating to new sites. We saw why this is so devastating for people as they quickly infiltrated his search results.
A "reputation" company quoted @Aaron_Krolik $1,500 to take down ONE of the now dozens of posts about him. What we ultimately found was so dark, that the people facilitating slander and those claiming to help with cleaning it up are often one and the same: nytimes.com/interactive/20…
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